I am doing no coaching myself this summer - taking a much-needed break after over-extending myself for the past year. But I have been out on the river in the launch with my old college coach Charlie Butt (yes, indeed, the very same coach whom the Independent Rowing News named both the Collegiate Coach of the Year and the International Coach of the Year last year), learning a thing or two. And I have had the opportunity to scull out of Weld Boathouse - I haven't been sculling at all in five years, and haven't trained seriously in a single since 1992. I have also had some fun coxing a crew doing a tv commercial.
Harvard has two boathouses, Newell and Weld, and walking around in those hallowed confines provides quite a contrast from the movable boathouse I currently coach out of (also known as a trailer). Newell Boathouse is home to men's crews, plus some odd national-teamers, recent alums, and a couple of racks rented by Tufts University. There are boats and oars everywhere - Harvard crews often switch equipment mid-season depending on which hull they think they go faster in, so there is a wide range of boats. There are also a bunch of Pococks (dreadful boats from Washington State which are virtually indestructable and make for good training boats so that Harvard can save its good racing boats for use only during the racing season). Newell has two tanks (proper ones, not at all like that bizarre thing at Oxford's Iffley Road Rowing Center) - a still-water tank and a moving-water tank. There is also a video room downstairs, as well as a very large workshop (legendary boatman Everett Abbott just retired this year). Upstairs, there are four locker rooms (one for each squad - varsity heavy, varsity light, frosh heavy, frosh light), weights, twenty-odd CII ergs, six gamut ergs, showers, a bathroom with laundry machines, two "lounges" (one for each varsity squad - both have balconies overlooking the river) and the coaches' office. The walls are hung with an eclectic collection of old photos, nineteenth-century oars, and banners from recent regattas (not to mention odd notes from Harry Parker like: "Summer rowers: wash your own towels - do not leave them here to mildew and rot!").
The Harvard varsity heavyweights are coming off an undefeated regular season and a convincing victory at Henley (beating Cambridge in the final - a Cambridge crew which had taken out the Notts County lightweights in its semi). The only blemishes in the Crimson big boat's year were losses at San Diego (an unimportant pre-season regatta) and Eastern Sprints (and Penn, the Sprints winner, fell to Harvard by nearly three lengths come Henley). Along the way, the Princeton crew which everyone has heralded as the national champ (see my Letter from May) lost to Harvard both times they met, and sheepishly stayed away from Henley (come on, Princeton, where were you?).
Meanwhile, across the river sits Weld Boathouse. Weld is equipped similarly to Newell, but is slightly larger. Its main occupant is Radcliffe Crew (the Harvard women still race under the colors of Radcliffe College). It also houses a handful of national teamers and recent women alums. Many of the Harvard graduate schools also have boats at Weld (in the U.S. remember that graduate students are not eligible to compete for their universities - hence the advent of rowing programs at Harvard Business School, Harvard Law School, and I'm not sure which other grad schools). And Weld is home to one of Harvard's less-known but very impressive attributes: non-varsity rowing.
Harvard not only has the largest varsity program in the country, it also has intramural crew and a sculling club. The whole outfit is run by Dan Boyne, himself a fine sculling coach who leads his own empire. And Dan's empire is indeed impressive. It goes without saying that the amount of money spent by Harvard on maintaining recreational rowing, the intramural crews, and the sculling club far eclipses the amount of money William and Mary is willing to spend on its intercollegiate program. Hell, it even eclipses the amount of money William and Mary Rowing has in its budget even after we include all of our dues, fundraising, and donations.
So, what is the deal with NON-intercollegiate rowing? Well, it is actually one of the nice aspects of Harvard not duplicated to this extent anywhere else (and even those other colleges which have non-intercollegiate programs in addition to their intercollegiate ones do not come anywhere close to matching the resources available at Harvard). Anybody with a Harvard affiliation can meander on down to Weld and learn how to scull. Dan maintains a fleet of singles, from the untippable wherries to sleek racing singles (some built by Dan himself), to match rowers of all sizes and abilities. This is where I learned to scull. By my final year as an undergrad, I was using a women's lightweight Kaschper (changed the shoes, but otherwise a good fit) about four days a week. The boat, now quite aged but well-maintained, still sits on the racks waiting for a buyer. If I still weighed that little I would buy it.
Some people wonder what the deal is with Harvard's intramural crews. They are not the equivalent of Oxford college crews for one main reason: the season overlaps the varsity season, so rowers on the varsity squads are ineligible to compete for their Houses (the Harvard "House" system is modeled after Oxbridge Colleges, although with much less autonomy - it's anyone's guess why they are called "Houses" and not "Colleges" - probably because Harvard undergrad is officially "Harvard College"). Since the Harvard varsity squads are so large, that means that a whole lot of good rowers are disqualified. Varsity rowers are allowed to cox for their colleges, and varsity coxswains can row (that's how I managed to row). The house crews are composed of a handful of rowers who rowed in school but wuit the varsity team here, plus a larger handful of rowers who rowed in one of Harvard's many freshman crews but did not return for the varsity squad in their second year or did not make the varsity cuts, and a large number of complete novices who fancy giving rowing a try but do not want the same intense atmosphere of intercollegiate competition.
My coaching career began with North House Crew. I was quite fond of the intramural crew tradition at Harvard, because I like to see as many people as possible participating in the sport. Several varsity rowers actually made their start in their house boats, and several rowers I taught to row as novices continued to row after college. The level of rowing is as serious as people want it to be.
Back then, Eliot House was the perennial power in men's and women's intramural rowing. Trophy shelves were put up in the Eliot dining hall specifically to hold the rowing trophies (those shelves looked awfully empty when we captured the women's trophy). The way room assignments were done in Eliot was always mysterious, and the house's rowers often ended up with the nicest rooms - the joke was that should an Eliot crew ever lose those rowers would find themselves living in basement rooms the following year.
North House was a spirited place, the farthest from the river of all of Harvard's houses. Rowing was not a thing we excelled in (actually, we had a lot of varsity rowers in the house, but since they weren't eligible for intramurals, North Crew was quite poor) - I don't believe any North crew had ever come close to winning. But, looking around my sophomore year, I realized that the only thing separating us from Eliot and other successful houses was proper coaching - we needed a system. I coached the program in my last two years - we had five crews (three men's and two women's), four of which won the intramural championships (my men's first eight only got as close as third). We racked up points for the overall intramural trophy - rowing was the last intramural championship of the year and could be counted on to provide North a stack of points. North House was the smallest house, yet only about three other houses could maintain enough rowers for five eights. Our rowing successes bolstered house spirit, and even got me special recignition and a nomination for a Harvard Athletics Department award. And it first gave me the idea that I should try coaching.
Non-intercollegiate rowing is a wonderful opportunity. So many people get introduced to the sport. Their level is unimportant - merely the participation. I would guess that in any given year nearly one thousand undergrads try rowing at Harvard, of a total of less than seven thousand students. Many are freshmen who come down in droves at the beginning of the Fall to give it a try. Many scull out of Weld. Many participate in intramurals. The more people who have the opportunity to row, the better, as far as I am concerned. Harvard certainly gets that concept right, and that is also one reason for the continued success of the varsity teams.
And every so often, a non-intercollegiate Harvard crew even shows up at Henley and other big regattas (the last house champion to go to Henley Royal was Eliot in 1991, but some Harvard Sculling Club entries have appeared since - I am not sure when the last Harvard house entry appeared in the Head of the Charles, but it strikes me as odd that there haven't been any since before I was an undergrad - I thought of entering a North House crew but never got around to it since the deadline is during the summer and I was out of the country every summer).
So, before anyone wants to mock the plethora of rowers who drift around the Charles out of Weld, consider this: shouldn't this sport reach out to as many people as possible? Don't rowers of all levels gain when our rowing brotherhood gets extended? Everyone starts sometime, and the opportunities available here do produce some rowers who go on to bigger things.