I had an e-mail exchange recently with Keith Spencer, who came to Wolfson after I left and has been the cox of the Wolfson women’s first eight for the last three years. He had written me initially to inform me of how Wolfson Rowing has been doing. We ended up discussing some peripheral issues, one of which was the value of "doing squad" (to use an Oxford expression).
In this letter, I will evaluate the experience of "doing squad" - not just in its Oxford context, but also in the national or pre-elite or development camp context in the United States.
I should explain to non-Oxford readers where the term "doing squad" comes from. Oxford (as well as Cambridge and a few other places) is peculiar in that it has both a developed collegiate rowing scene and a university one, and many people do both. Six Oxford crews race their Cambridge counterparts each March: two heavyweight and one lightweight men’s eights, and the same for the women. Oxford keeps a full second lightweight men’s crew as well, but Cambridge is too pathetic to do the same. In many years, Oxford also runs a men’s heavyweight development squad during the Winter, and a third heavyweight crew drawn from that squad will make appearances at Winter head races. A few years ago, a women’s heavyweight head coach wanted to do the same (and lined me up to be the development coach) but the team’s short-sighted officers did not let him go ahead with the plan.
After the assorted Oxford-Cambridge races, the members of the University squads are released to join their colleges’ crews for the racing season, which starts in late April. After the bumps (late May), each university squad runs a "Summer Squad" which enters boats in Summer regattas, notably Henley, with an official aim of developing talent for the following year’s squad.
So the question that confronts a lot of people is this: should they "do squad"- that is, should they leave their college crews after the bumps in order to participate in the Summer Squad, and then should they trial for the University Squad during the following year, again instead of training with their college programs through the Fall and Winter. The overwhelming common wisdom is "yes" if they are good enough to make the cut.
Regular readers will know that I rarely follow the common wisdom, especially when that wisdom is British. When I coached at Wolfson, I actively discouraged people from doing squad (with some very specific exceptions), even though I myself was talked into coaching University crews twice (as development coach for the women in Summer 1994, and as assistant coach for the men’s lightweights in 1995-96).
After evaluating the Oxford context as I remember it from my time there (which ended in 1996), I will turn to the broader US context. For collegiate rowers, I am not a big fan of that either (again, with exceptions).
I suppose the place to start is to consider why people do squad in the first place. Usually, it is an idea that they are looking to improve their rowing, and to have a supposedly better rowing experience as a result. There are several problems with this.
First comes attitude. So many people go off to squad and come back (if they deign to come back) with the attitude that they are superior beings. Better rowers they may be, but rarely does this also qualify them as superior beings. These sorts of attitudes do not make the squads themselves faster, and they certainly do not make the college crews faster. During my time in Oxford, the attitudes of the heavyweight squad rowers - no matter which crew they were in or whether that crew was any good or not - had some of the worst attitudes towards the sport and towards other rowers.
What made these attitudes more amusing, however, was that the squads were, for the most part, terrible. There is a reason that during the 1990s Cambridge has dominated all events other than men’s lightweights (which has been the most evenly matched, with Oxford being the better long-term bet because of its interest in development and its willingness to keep a second eight).
I probably do not have to underscore how the men’s heavyweights have consistently been clubbed by Cambridge despite having better resources and better rowers on paper. The arrival of Sean Bowden as head coach certainly marks a step in the right direction, however it is not the coaching but the system which is inherently flawed. Cambridge used to run essentially the same system as Oxford, and so would get roundly thumped because of Oxford’s better resources. As soon as Cambridge figured out the problem - especially under the presidency of Max Justicz, a Brit who had done his undergraduate rowing in the United States (at Boston University) - the tables turned. Max, of course, brought in Sean as Cambridge’s coach back then, along with John Wilson, a former Oxford coach. But, the impression I formed during my time in Oxford was that the problem with OUBC was not the coaching but the system. As long as certain immobile figures retain any hand in Oxford rowing, I do not suspect that things will get any better. Oxford may win now and then, but Cambridge will have the presumed edge.
As for the women’s heavyweights, they went through a different head coach every year I was in England (1991-1996). They fired them before they could do anything. The coaches had no autonomy and no ability to implement long-term plans. The coaches could not even always boat the line-ups they wanted because of political concerns. Then there were other issues I will not even mention. OUWBC was a nightmare.
The women’s lightweights used to be the most useless of the four squads. For many years, they did not even deserve to be on the same river as Cambridge, which has traditionally had a very strong women’s lightweight program which could rival its American counterparts. Things changed notably when OUWLRC implemented a system, first put in by Ben Hunt-Davis. However, they shared a Summer Squad with OUWBC, which was a mistake for two reasons: it mixed them up with OUWBC’s problems, and the OUWBC summer people tended to ignore the lightweights because of their greater interest in developing women for the heavyweight program. I am told this is not still the case, but it was very true when I was in Oxford. CUWBC handles both heavyweight and lightweight women’s rowing, but it does so year-round in a system which has worked in general for years and which does not give the lightweights the short straw.
If the main reason to do squad then is to improve rowing, then Oxonians may be turning to the wrong place. OUBC rowers regularly complained of how their rowing gets worse during their time on squad. OUBC brought in its mercenaries, and left several of them the worse for their experience. A lot of Isis (second boat) rowers I knew were heavily demoralized as they slogged up and down the river all year only to lose by increasingly embarrassing margins. And Cherwell (third boat and development squad) rowers rarely seemed to get much out of their experience other than the kit. And while Cambridge develops its undergrads and feeds them up the program, the younger members of Oxford’s squads rarely go anywhere. So why bother?
Why bother, indeed. Some may remember my infamous Summer development crew in 1996, a decidedly heavyweight crew rowing under the auspices of the Oxford lightweights which included people who did not see the reason to waste their time on the heavyweight development squad. The "Nephthys Heavyweights" filled a need, but even I don’t know what we were trying to prove. After all, it should not be in OULRC’s normal interest to develop heavyweight rowers.
I think the rowers in that boat had the right attitude, though. I hope they got something out of it - the crew was certainly faster than any of their individual college crews. We were not together very long - I was in America until mid-June and the crew was not ultimately assembled until several days after my return. We had an experience and learned a thing or two. I am not sure that validates it or not. Leila Hudson, then OULRC president, advertised OULRC’s Summer squad that year as being open to anyone under 14 stones (196 pounds), and the Nephthys Heavyweight crew I coached was not the only overweight crew as a result (although we didn’t stop at the 14-stone barrier). Leila wanted to get disaffected heavyweights on board, large people who didn’t think they could do lightweight but might conceivably get down, and just a lot of people in general in the spirit that if she got a lot of people rowing she could have a big pool of people from which to do future development even if all the heavyweights were ineligible - the competition for seats would just spur the true lightweights to perform better.
Summer squads could sometimes represent an exception to my no-squad rule. I felt that any worthy college crew should stay together at least through Henley. In fact, it upset me to see good college crews disband after Eights because some of their rowers really considered themselves squad rowers rowing for their college for a month but now returned to squad crews. Even if a college crew contained no such rowers, it might still disband as rowers decided to abandon the crew in order to trial for squad. If you have a good season, keep your crew together and try for Henley in your eight.
But the number of crews successful enough to merit a trip to Henley represented only a handful of crews. For those who wanted to continue on, and even have the experience of racing at Henley and Nat Champs, squad rowing represented an outlet (forming composite crews is another, but often these are leftovers after squad rowers have departed). From my observation, there were potentially talented rowers trapped in colleges with poor boat clubs (especially true for women), and so the only way they could be in a fast boat, recognize their potential, or even get proper coaching was through doing a Summer squad. Sadly, I saw some of these rowers quit the sport the following year, because they were not good enough to make squad during the year and they found they could not force their college clubs to improve their approaches by themselves.
Summer squad was also a chance to row with other like-minded rowers from other colleges, without the pressure of coursework hanging overhead, in a camp-like setting, often under some excellent coaches who might provide new perspectives (some Summer squad coaches were pretty random, but most were either regular coaches from the year or were some of the more clued-in college coaches whose crews were not going on to Henley). If done right, Summer squad could be an enjoyable learning experience. And, coming in the Summer, it did not disrupt collegiate training plans.
When I seconded three Wolfson rowers to OUWBC after Henley in the Summer of 1995, it was well known that I did not want them doing squad the following year. Likewise, when I coached the Nephthys Heavyweight crew in 1996, it was obvious that most of those guys couldn’t do lightweight squad the following year even if they wanted to. So what was the benefit to the Oxford squads? Well, being in those crews was simply equivalent to joining a composite crew and gaining some extra experience. Those who went on to trial for squads the following year were better for it. Those who returned to their college programs had something to add. And, as long as there is an element of informality about Summer squad, there need not be the attitude issues which accompany the university squads during the year (although attitudes do sometimes emerge from those who come out of Summer squads, who think that the little bit of experience accrued there makes them know everything about the sport). Summer squad should be fun - and being fun can still mean being serious. But it should be kept in perspective.
Certainly our women's first eight in 1995, composed almost entirely of novices starting that year, was going as fast as Osiris by the end of the season, if not faster. The only reason I encouraged members of that crew who had the time (as three of them did) to row for OUWBC at Nat Champs that year is I thought having more experience would be good for them and we were unable to keep our crew together after Henley because several people had work conflicts. Otherwise, if we could have stayed together, I would have kept us together and gone to Nat Champs with the goal of embarrassing OUWBC (any Oxford college which has tremendous athletes such as I had back then, and which has its act together, can certainly launch a credible challenge to OUWBC - they're asking for it - and I remain convinced that Wolfson has the potential to be that college for a variety of reasons). CUWBC regularly put crews in the finals of the eights at Nat Champs back then, and one year Cambridge had as many as three eights in the finals, and another year I watched as many as five Cambridge development eights make the semi-finals. OUWBC lagged severely. There were college crews faster than us who might easily have topped them.
There is also seemingly something odd with doing Summer squad despite having no interest in regular squad the following year. If the purpose of Summer squads is to develop rowers in Oxford in general - and I do not think it is or was when I was there - then there would be no issue. But most squads were not all that interested in rowers merely along for the ride in the Summer who would not at least feign interest in trialing the following year. So, before doing Summer squad, many rowers have to consider whether they have any interest in trialing for real.
Perhaps the biggest factor against doing squad during the year is the huge time commitment. Frankly, I think all of the squads over-train. I was often asked that if I were appointed head coach of one of the Oxford squads, what would be the first change I would make. The answer was easy: cut out almost half of the training time. They train twice as much as their American Division One counterparts, yet go slower (despite also having the advantage of graduate students, who are not eligible in the US). So a lot of promising athletes never do squad because they simply do not have the time. At Wolfson, with its overabundance of scientists, this wasted time is an even bigger issue.
A sensible college program is much better for time organization. Indeed, my 1995 first eight trained less than any other serious first eight on the river despite being the least experienced, training only about seven hours per week through the year. By April, we were down to no landtraining and only two or three one-hour water practices and one regatta per week - rather less than optimal, but we made sure we were efficient with our time. If a college program operates on a squad system instead of a boat-by-boat system, there is increased flexibility in scheduling and a greater trend towards development. There are a number of first-rate coaches around Oxford, and many of them will gladly get involved with a college program they find worth the effort. The time spent developing the college crews will produce faster college crews, and thus better (and certainly more rewarding) rowing experiences.
A sensible college program, in my book, would be one run by a coach (as opposed to by a student), with a plan for the whole year (as opposed to term-by-term) and for the whole squad (as opposed to boat-by-boat). Such a program could do its own development, maximize its resources, and focus on promoting itself from the inside. People running off to squad disrupt this flow. They train differently. They have overlapping and often conflicting foci. They develop attitudes counter to the other rowers on their college crews.
Of course, it goes without saying that the coach cannot himself be doing squad. There simply is not enough time to train and coach with the requisite dedication to both. One of the two has to suffer. I also am very wary of coaches too close to the Oxford squad system, as they usually fail to see the potential in well-run college rowing. I also found many squad rowers who coached college crews of the opposite sex to have dubious motives - highly unprofessional and not conducive to serious rowing. In my time in England I saw far too many women’s crews victimized in this way, and it made me sick.
Another reason I personally did not like my rowers doing squad during the year (which would not be an issue for most people) was that it was hard to reconcile the technique I used with the traditional British technique used by most of the squads. If I were to get a bunch of squad rowers used to rowing a certain way who came back to the college in April and I had to integrate them with college rowers who used a radically different technique, it would disrupt training at that critical time of year. Certainly my crews were very distinctive and got a lot of stares on the Isis and at races for what was considered, in Oxford, unorthodox technique. I do not think this is still an issue - first of all, because I am obviously no longer coaching Oxford college crews, and second of all because British technique has begun to modernize in order to handle the hatchet blades (which were fundamentally incompatible with traditional British tech). OULRC technique broke the Oxford mold when Chris Jones was head coach, although I cannot comment on Mark Lauder’s current style because I have not seen his crews. OUBC has presumably gone over to the Notts County style under Sean Bowden. I have no idea how the women’s squads are rowing currently. Britain’s elite international crews have noticeably changed their tech over the decade, and this is bound to trickle down.
Now a quick switch to the US, and an entirely different scenario. This should probably be a separate essay, but it just might make a good contrast.
There of course is no equivalent to the Oxford college/university dichotomy in the US. So where do college rowers go during the Summer?
The United States has a pretty extensive development system, which runs mostly in the Summers to take advantage of collegiate rowers looking for the extra experience. Remember that post-graduates are ineligible to row for their universities over here. So rowing might factor into someone’s decision of where to attend graduate school - possibly in a city with an important rowing club, or perhaps in a town with good water for the individual to scull on. These are issues which do not concern this discussion.
Where we see the closest equivalent to the Summer squad system is in the various camps and development programs around the country during the Summer. Undergrads relocate for the Summer in order to join these programs, which exist at several levels - from the USRA-run elite and pre-elite camps, to the USRA-sponsored development camps run by specific clubs which have bid for the honor, to the clubs which simply run their own independent development programs. Then, of course, a lot of athletes without the US team aspirations go home and join the local club so they can keep rowing over the Summer.
So, I ask the same question I asked of the Oxford Summer squads: is it worth it? Well, that depends. Most of the development camps are excellently coached, and the sponsoring clubs provide good equipment to use. There is also the opportunity to row in crews which are faster than the crews put out by the individual colleges. It is actually quite an opportunity to learn. Regardless of what people think of the US National Team and its organization (the debate never stops - nor do the lawyers, this being the United States), most of the development camps are essentially independent and are run out of established clubs. In Britain, it would be as if LRC, Molesey, and Upper Thames, for example, ran programs during the Summer months designed to develop promising collegiate or post-collegiate rowers, teach them to scull, and race them at high-level regattas throughout Europe as an extra layer beneath the NCRA and Leander and what-not crews racing at the International and U-23 levels, and then Commonwealth crews, and finally these development camps.
Sounds great - no? Where’s the negative? The negative is the toll this can take on collegiate rowers. It is my experience that the US collegiate racing season is probably the most intense experience rowers can have in the sport. Even international athletes competing at their country’s trials, at the World Cup, and at the World Championships see their season spread out much more. Collegiate racing in the US consists of two months of travel every weekend, important match-ups, and increasing championships, at precisely the time of year with the heaviest academic work-load. The process is mentally exhausting as well as physically. Many rowers simply need some down-time - indeed, most do.
Even if rowers think they are up for doing a Summer development camp, they sometimes fizzle after a couple of weeks. If they make it all the way through a camp, they often return to college in the Fall very burned out. This is never a good thing to be. It certainly does not help their rowing, nor does it help their college team’s.
I never discourage people from doing development squads over here - but I do caution them. If they are truly excited about the prospect, then they should do it for the tremendous experience. If they feel almost obligated, then they should refrain. They must come to Summer rowing on their own terms. They should not do it because it is expected of them.
The way I see it, rowers only have one chance - four years - to have the collegiate rowing experience. They will never get that chance again. But they have their whole lives ahead of them to compete on some sort of squad. Granted, if an undergraduate is capable of making his country’s national team, that is an honor worth working for. But most of this Summer rowing is not the national team. If it will cause burn-out, then it is not helping the rowers gain spots on the national team in the future, yet it is depriving them of a fulfilling collegiate career.
On a related note, I lament the US championship-winning crews which do not go to Henley and use "national team commitments" as an excuse. It is a poor excuse, and time was - not long ago - that it was never heard. Certainly, the absence of any of the top US men’s heavyweight collegiate eights from Henley this year is notable (the California crew in the Ladies is apparently the second varsity). The absence of top lightweight crews is more explainable (Harvard won the national championship, but failed to win Eastern Sprints, the historically more important race, and so Charley Butt turned down the invitation; Princeton, which won Eastern Sprints, finished a dismal sixth at nationals - half that crew is in the Temple in a composite with half of Princeton’s second varsity heavies). The excuse is basically bogus, because anyone can do both (as has been proven by those who have successfully raced at Henley with their college crew and then gone on to join their national team crews). Even if it had some validity, it would be a shame and lends credence to the charges that some college crews are no more than mercenaries who fail to understand the role of athletics in a collegiate experience.
I might add one other post-script to the question: what about me? During college (and high school before that) I never did anything rowing-related over the Summers. I needed a break after the racing season. As a coach, I am in a similar position. While other coaches scramble around during the Summers looking for the right squad to coach, I enter the Summer emotionally drained. I need the break. In part, this has been exacerbated by my experience at William and Mary, where I have been stretched to my limit (and I stretch a long way - some people may remember my last term in Oxford where the joke on the Isis was that I had a crew I was somehow connected to in every single division in Eights - it may have been a joke, but it was not far off). I invest a lot of myself emotionally into my crews, and if I had to maintain this intensity through the Summer, I would either not be up to snuff during the Summer or I certainly would not be refreshed and ready to return in the Fall. Perhaps when I am no longer involved in as high-maintainance a program as William and Mary, then I will be able to keep going. But William and Mary Rowing has been an enormously draining experience - which is one reason it was so rewarding.
If I were to approach Summer coaching, it would have to be on my terms. If an opportunity came up I was excited about, then off I’d go. But if not, then the down-time is important. That is what I tell my rowers, too. Athletes always ask me what sort of training program they should follow over the Summer. As far as I am concerned, there is no routine they should follow, merely ones they might follow. I will write programs if they really want, or suggest camps for them to attend if they really want. But I want their activity to be up to them. There college rowing experience - which they can only have once - will be greatly enhanced if they can make the most of it, approaching extra-collegiate rowing as an additional opportunity when it does not interfere. It can never be a surrogate. And if they do a camp in the Summer, they must be prepared to transfer what they have learned back to their college crews in a positive way through leadership, not in a negative way through arrogance.
I once had a debate running with another coach in Oxford. He argued that the job of the collegiate coaches in Oxford was to produce athletes to feed into the University squads. I argued that my job was to produce fast college crews and to make rowing a rewarding part of my athletes’ collegiate experience. In the US, there are those who argue that College coaches - particularly from the elite programs - should be the main feeders for the US National Team. Instead, I think the role of the collegiate coaches in the US is exactly what I said it was in Oxford: to make our crews go as fast as possible and to contribute to the collegiate education and experience of our rowers.
Before doing squad, rowers must consider what makes this sport rewarding - why is college rowing so exciting and intense and does it lead to the longest and strongest friendships?
I have read Steve Gladstone's letter in the Independent Rowing News. I am not a knee-jerk anti-Gladstone person, as so many are. I have a ton of respect for him as a coach. However, I do think he is missing the point. Is his job to put together the best crew he can assemble by bringing people to his university (currently Cal, previously Brown) who will accomplish that, or his goal to take the people who are at his University and make them the best he can? Certainly, with a great coach like Gladstone and a successful program, he will attract good rowers to attend whatever university he is at. Rowing is one factor for students in determining where they will study. But rowing is not the only factor. What is the value of having a collegiate rowing program if not the collegiate rowing program itself?