William and Mary Rowing Club owns a trailer and a few cinder blocks, on which the boats live for lack of a boathouse (or even a place to build a boathouse - we're negotiating for sites) by the side of College Creek. Despite what the name "creek" implies, it is actually a river, albeit one which zigs and zags for four miles from the boating site until it flows into the expansive James River. However, at very low tide there is not enough water to row in. Generally the river is a comfortable width and there is virtually no other boating traffic.
Being a club-level program at a small college means there are a lot of inherent problems in human and financial resources. However, I am convinced that given the right athletes all of this can be overcome. Thanks to the previous head coach, the club has enough good equipment and an infrastructural base on which to build. What needs to happen now is for those people who have been attracted to join the club actually turn into the right athletes.
Tradition is lacking at William and Mary, but the sport itself has plenty. The trick is tapping into the sport of rowing at large and conveying it to the new rowers. Rowing in Williamsburg, Virginia, is far removed from the rest of the rowing world, and the antiquated computer system makes accessing rowing resources on the internet difficult. The novices do not get to see other rowers until they go to their first outside regattas several hours away. They do not see good crews rowing up and down the river, so they have no idea of where they are going. They do not see other novice crews, either, so it is easy for them to get isolated. All the novices really have to look up to is the Varsity, and in the case of the men there is virtually no varsity program (there are only four varsity men right now). So my job is to take a small handful of novice men and not only teach them to row but teach them to be the core of something new - the tradition of William and Mary Rowing which they will create.
The hardest thing to do in this situation is to instill in the noviceswhat it takes to be a competitive rowing program. They have no one to look up to, no one to set the example. It is one thing to tell them what they will need to do to have an enjoyable and competitive year, but it is another thing to get them to do it. On top of that, the good part of rowing is the spring racing season. But to get there requires learning how to row in the long boring fall and then suffering indoor fitness training in the winter. Many novices all over the world never even stick with it until the first racing season, even those in top programs. A program like the one at William and Mary can even less afford to lose people over the course of the year.
The first thing the novices must understand is that they are indeed building a new tradition. What has gone on here before is not an example - they need to realize they are starting afresh. Even if they are utilizing an infrastructure which was already in place, they are beginning a tradition themselves. They have to be primed to do their best from day one, all the while recognizing the enormous limitations and hurdles they face. But the bar must be set high. Allowing them to be happy just scraping by will condemn the program to eternal mediocrity. If they are going to invest as much time into rowing as they do, then they must derive some sort of benefit. What prevents programs from developing is when the novices get to the end of their novice year and don't feel like they've gone anywhere- they've merely experimented and played around, but have many other activities they'd like to try. In programs such as that, every year means starting over. What makes a program develop is when the novices get to the end of their year and feel like they have accomplished something and that they can rise still further. Getting in at the beginning of a tradition can often be even more exciting than being part of a long-established tradition.
But, in a sport such as rowing, and in a College such as William and Mary (second oldest college in the US), tradition counts for a lot. I tell stories, I encourage the freshmen to surf the Web, I try to be the bridge. But there is only so much a coach can do. On one hand there is overload: "back at Harvard we did it this way..." gets old after a while. On the other hand, the rowers won't find it on their own. The trick is finding the middle ground, encouraging them to find their own excitement in discovering things themselves. At the end of the day, it is they who are in the crews and it is they who have to be the foundations of the new tradition. If they don't feel like it is their accomplishment, then they won't feel like it is their tradition, and there will be no tradition. To be a coach is not just to take a day-to-day or even a week-to-week approach to the squad currently being looked after, but to also look beyond the current squad and make sure that the program is heading in an overall direction, that when the coach leaves it can continue on its own momentum. That requires the rowers themselves to feel that they are not only out there to row each day, but they are contributing to something even greater. It is natural, though, for the rowers to think only in the short-term, which is why the coach has to act as their subconscience.
Sometimes, luck plays a role. When I went down to the boating site for the first time, I looked up at one of the old Schoenbrod eights we have for training the novices. There sat the "No Prisoners." The discovery made my day. The "No Prisoners" was built for Harvard in 1979. It was a good boat in its day when it was well-maintained, living inside at Newell Boathouse, being cared for by a full-time professional boatman, and only getting used for about a month a year (the racing season). No crew lost a race in that boat from its construction until 1988. I was in the crew which lost to Princeton in it that year. We put it on the shelf and won Sprints in a Vespoli. The following year, however, I found myself back in the "No Prisoners," and won several races and an EARC title. But after the 1989 season, it was decided that it was no longer in good enough condition to use as a racing boat, so it was sold to we didn't know whom, and I figured I wouldn't see it again. Well, William and Mary bought the boat, and here it is. My novices have a more direct connection to tradition than they realized.
So, once again I set off to build a rowing program. I love this job!