If I did not know him personally, I would think that "EA Gilcreast" was a myth. An icon for generations of rowers, he has deeply influenced so many of us in ways we do not often realize. People came in from thousands of miles away.
In February 1997, I wrote on these pages of advice he had given me as a coxswain. He did not tell me what to do to improve, but rather how to go about coxing so that I would improve. These were good words of advice for all coxswains, but better yet they were words of advice for life. The most important lessons in life are not the specific ones but rather the ones which teach us how to deal with future situations and force us to improve ourselves as human beings.
EA Gilcreast is old school. There are few coaches coming into the sport today who fit this mold, the class of a sadly by-gone era. We knew him as Mr Gilcreast, although at the dinner I learned that he was in reality Dr Gilcreast. Such, though, was the reverence in which we held him that we rarely had the courage to ask him about his past.
Many years have gone by since I coxed for Coach Gilcreast. I often cite him as one of my main influences as a coach. When I do, people often ask me what exactly he taught me that I have taken up in my own coaching. Rarely can I articulate anything in particular. Just why that is became clear at the dinner: my entire worldview in rowing comes from him. It is impossible to point out a single thought or two, when in reality it is the entire context in which those thoughts occur which needs pointing out.
In his talk to those of us assembled, Coach Gilcreast gave us a short overview of the sport and his accidental role in it from 1950 until the early 1970s. And a series of accidents it was, since his associations with rowing - both his initial and his continuing associations - were entirely a string of chance events. He told of how he happened to start coxing in his second year at Yale, and how he later became a coach at Yale - varsity lightweights and freshman heavyweights, and assistant coach to the Yale Eight which struck Olympic Gold. He completed his doctorate at Yale, and decided to go into teaching. He arrived at Exeter in 1967 right when the previous long-time coach was on the verge of retiring - which gave him the opportunity to build a program there in his image. And build he did, putting in the foundation for what is today probably the finest high school rowing program in the United States. He coached the varsity men from 1969-1986 and the varsity women from 1989-1993.
Listening to Coach Gilcreast talk reminded me where I got many of my ideas from. When he arrived at Exeter, the program rowed in fours. He saw no reason to muck about in the small boats: with 900 students on campus the human resources were there to build a truly powerful program in eights, and to compete in the top division of the New England Interscholastic Rowing Association, by far the strongest schoolboy league in the country. He wanted to open the program up to everyone, and eights provided that flexibility. The number of seats increased, the amount of opportunity increased, and the level of competition increased. He joked, of course, that this was not entirely a visionary thing - the bottom line was that fours were slow and he wanted to coach faster boats. But, certainly, the program under his guidance put great emphasis on getting everyone possible into a boat - more athletes means better athletes. It also means more opportunities to educate students, which is what sports in an academic setting are all about.
Coach Gilcreast understood academics. He understood why people do sports. And he understood why these two elements should be combined. Rowers coming out of his boathouse were expected to excel in many ways, not just on the water. What they learned in his boats was supposed to help them do that. He was first and foremost a teacher. Rowing, Coach Gilcreast told us, is the last amateur sport. By this he did not mean that it lacks professionalism or excellence, but that it is the most open and pure, and the least pretentious.
Another accident took place shortly after he arrived at Exeter: the Academy went co-educational. So, he quipped, just as he was expanding the program to make use of the 900 boys on campus, the number of boys was suddenly cut in half. He oversaw the incorporation of girls into the program with the same goals as he had formed for the boys.
When I was there, we always thought he was a bit of a misogynist. He had that sort of air about him. Once, he was giving us a pre-practice talk in the varsity boys’ bay. From the varsity girls’ bay on the far side of the boathouse came a horrible squeal, as the girls fourth boat cox screamed commands to her crew to carry their shell out of the house. I don’t remember who the cox was, but her voice was shrill and I think she was probably about 15 years old. The noise disrupted Coach Gilcreast’s talk, and he stopped in his tracks with an anguished look on his face. When the cox had finally left the house and become less audible, he looked at us and asked: "what the hell was that?" One rower replied: "it’s a girl, sir."
What has long been obvious to me since I myself became a coach is that Coach Gilcreast did not have a bias against women per se. I can certainly imagine him not taking kindly to women’s rowing at one point, but the bottom line was not one of sex, rather it was one of seriousness. Everyone had to prove to him that they were serious about the sport and about life. Until they did that, he could not respect them as athletes. That would go for men as well as women.
He retired from coaching after the 1986 season. Those last few years with the boys were difficult ones, filled mostly with some very bad luck, injuries, and inopportune equipment breakages. Those of us who rowed for him were fiercely loyal. We wanted the best for him and were willing to row to the end of the earth for him. If we were frustrated for our own bad luck and poor results, we were even more frustrated that we couldn’t do better for him.
But the girls were also going through a bad patch in the mid-1980s. Not long after retiring, he was called back into service to rescue the faltering girls’ program. He put it back on the map in short order. When I, and others who had rowed for him, heard that he had become the girls’ coach, we were initially shocked. But when word got out what he was doing with them it became clear that we had, in our immaturity, misjudged him on the issue of girls in the sport.
After coaching the girls for a couple of years, he took on a new assistant coach. She is still coaching at Exeter and put a quotation from him on the dinner program which she heard him tell the girls in a pre-season meeting in 1991: "There are only two things in this sport: working hard and knowing how to row - we’ll help you with knowing how to row, the rest you must bring."
Coach Gilcreast came to high school coaching from having been a college coach. This colored his approach. Coaching at Yale, he regularly got students who had rowed before college. But, he felt, they were often useless to him. They came in with attitudes, with mentalities about how great it was to row for their old school. They were not prepared to become college rowers and they did not have what it took to succeed as college rowers. When he became a high school coach, he took these observations with him, and determined to instill in his students the love for the sport in its purest form and the discipline necessary to continue on with it - and he took great pride in the number of Exonians who would continue on to row through their college careers and beyond. He realized the importance of coaching the whole person.
At the dinner, he spoke about the changes in technique and coaching philosophy over the years, particularly his first two decades in the sport. When he began coaching at Yale in 1953, pencil blades were still being used. The width of the blade increased and its length decreased until macons came in during the 1960s. At the same time, the Germans introduced new training standards, and this produced a massive paradigm shift around the world. Listening to rowing history from a man who is both a historian and a rowing coach is always entertaining.
It also made some things clear. Although he shifted with the times, Gilcreast was the consummate technician. His crews could put most college crews to shame in terms of style. There was no one better in the land. I still have a large picture of the 1986 Second Varsity crew warming up before the Interscholastic championships: the top of the squad had been decimated by injury that year, and our second boat had a crew full of people who might otherwise have been in the third boat. The stroke had been rowing for barely a month. We switched personnel almost daily between the first two eights, and so this crew in its final line-up had barely rowed together. Nevertheless, the crew is perfectly in synch, with the same posture and even the same backsplash at the catch. It is quite a remarkable picture. Coach Gilcreast’s crews rowed beautifully.
After dinner, in a chat, he remarked further on this. He had never fully been converted to the theory of putting on mileage. He would row his crews, but if he spotted technical flaws he would stop and drill. He wonders if he should have just let them splash around a little more. While Exeter quite often turned out physically small crews dwarfed by our opponents, we could many times beat them on technique. Yet in his four years coaching the varsity girls, his first boat - rowing with the best technique on the lake - finished second each year, by a combined total, in his estimate, of eight feet. Eight feet in four races! What if they were just a little stronger even if they would have been a little rougher?
But he stopped himself. It was all about fundamentals. Sometimes, if things are not going well - and even if they are - it is necessary to slow down and go over the fundamentals and not simply splash around. No matter how good a crew has become, these periods are crucial if it hopes to develop its full potential. After thinking about this concept, he added that this was probably a good lesson for life, too. Often people too easily get caught up in the relentless pace of life. What they need to do is slow down periodically, take stock, and review the fundamentals which make life rewarding.
In looking back over some of the things I have written in this Letter from America series over the last three and a half years, I am struck by something after this weekend. I had thought that what I was writing was based on my own observations over my years in the sport. But I have just realized that I can trace all of this to one man: E Arthur Gilcreast. He did not tell me all of these things, but he gave me the mindset and the tools that let me figure them all out on my own.