Musings of a high school coach

Youth Nationals are over and I’m feeling a hint of discouragement but also looking forward to improving our lot in life.

In the last 3 years, we’ve had a lightweight women’s eight,  heavyweight men’s  eight, and lightweight men’s eight in the Grand Finals. Last year was our highest placement, a 4th in the lightweight men’s eight.  Only one graduated from that boat leaving 7 returnees this year.  My thought a year ago was “Wow, a full year to work on improving.  Life is good.  We should certainly be in the medals in 2009.”

That year transpired and our light eight was second in petites.  What happened?

Since we started Westerville Crew, it’s been my job as head coach to  define the stroke, set the level of work ethic expected of the kids, acquire more (and better) equipment, negotiate with the City of Columbus for a rowing site, build our awareness in the area, and, importantly,  to create a more competitive team.  We started out slowly beset with all the startup problems- finding coaches, finding kids, inadequate equipment, not enough launches, never enough money, lack of work ethic, kicked out of one rowing site, etc, etc.

Despite that, we improved every year.  We did have several items in the inventory to help.  First, we had 8 miles of unfettered reservoir– no wake-boarders, big bass boats, water-skiers, or other high powered craft.  Secondly, we had an unusually successful template to follow: The Cincinnati Junior Rowing Club became our model (and our nemesis).  We gathered all of the intelligence we could on CJRC.  In every regatta, they beat us by boat lengths….until finally our men’s heavyweight eight beat them in a fall head race.  It was a moment of intense emotion for our team.  We finally succeeded in beating a team which had not been beat by another Midwest heavyweight boat in a dozen years.

Other coaches asked me how we did it.   I wasn’t sure…..there were just so many factors.  Over the dozen years, we increased our meters rowed tremendously, or as I often told parents, if we were better coaches, we could probably row less.  The varsity men light and heavy eights were rowing the full length of Hoover Reservoir 5 days per week, or 24,000 meters a day.  On Friday, we would  shorten it to a mere 8-10K, to make 6-days per week workouts.

We increased our erg count to 45 ergs.  We rented a site for winter erging. We bought better equipment so that every workout did not start with, “Matt, my xxxx  is broken.”.  We upped our launches to 9 and bought new outboard motors.  We added summer rowing and learn-to-rows.  We talked at community group meetings and visited high school cafeterias (when allowed) to recruit.  We worked hard at increasing public awareness.

It all seemed to be paying off. This was to be the year that we broke into the medals in an eights event at Youths.  This was the year.

But, alas, we did not have it in us to cap the 3-day event with a medal around their necks.  We certainly thought we were fast enough, but recognized that NAC and Marin would be serious competitors.  We knew Everett would be tough. We rowed against Canisius at Governor’s Cup and beat them handily (albeit on an unfair course due to wind) but still had lots of respect for their team– their erg scores beat ours by quite a margin at winter erg competitions.  Our times in practice were very fast, doing 1350m repeats at a faster pace then St. Joe’s posted times for the 1500.   We went through a nice taper with our speeds improving even more.  We felt ready.

So what happened?  I don’t know, but I’ve asked myself lots of questions.

Did we over-train?  Perhaps, but a frequent question I ask of my two varsity boats is, “How do you feel?  Achy?  Trouble sleeping?  Problem with appetite? Problem paying attention at school?  Feeling too tired?”  I gauge the workouts to their answers.  I am accustomed to the guys always having some low level achiness but without the other symptoms of over-training.  Achiness in the legs is a chronic symptom at the varsity level of Westerville Crew.  I am going to research this more.  Overtraining is like socking away hard earned money in a 401(k) only to see its value drop with the stock market.  Damn hard to earn and real easy to lose.

Were we over-confident?  I don’t think so.  We have tremendous  respect for the West Coast teams.  Beating Canisius early in the season was a confidence builder, but we were also reminded that the wind caused so much unfairness that their B boat also beat their A boat.  It was a hollow win.

Did we improve over a year?  We did, at least I believe we did.  We seldom have killer erg scores, but we do work hard on stroke work– we do lots of film review and are fanatical about good form.  It’s our weapon against our competitors because our erg scores seldom match crews we often beat.  The kids definitely improved their strokework, but they improved their erg scores as well.

What to do?  We arrived home from Nationals on Sunday evening and started Learn To Row on Monday evening.  We have nearly 40 kids participating.  We are heartened by the fact that we are attracting kids from a greater geographical area than ever before, including kids from Licking Valley, New Albany, Olentangy, Big Walnut, Worthington, Westerville, Gahanna, Granville, and other school systems.  Secretly I harbor the feeling that awareness for the sport was increased by Blake Haxton, the Upper Arlington rower who lost both legs to necrotizing faciitis.  Blake is a front-row-gunner, a first-rate kid who has shown unsual courage and strength.  That inspires parents to get their kids involved in the same activity that was said to give Blake the strength to endure this deadly disease.

Our mantra has always been no cuts, no tryouts, row every kid in every regatta.  I’m reluctant to part with those underpinnings of our club.  While we do have some rowers who cherish more the social aspect of  Westerville Crew than its work ethic, I am still reluctant to cut kids.  After coaching a group of JV men last night, I am reminded that there are some rowers who have little (ok, no) chance of making it into the varsity men’s first eight.  We will relegate those kids who have insufficient stamina, timing, or work ethic to small boats.  I hate to see the timing of an eight, for example, harmed daily by a single rower who just seems incapable of catching on time.

We will go back to our basic workout pattern of 1 and 2 years ago.  We changed it somewhat this year by doing more sprint work.  The reason was simply that the wind conditions were worse this spring than any previous year.  We had a full week of workouts in which we could row the entire week on the main body of water.  We used our alternate site- a protected 1000m cove in which we only do sprints.  The sprint workouts hurt us, I believe, sapping us of the strength we typically have for a hellish sprint to finish up our 2k races.  This spring we saw diminished final-sprint capability.

Also this year, we started our “workout” earlier.   Last year and earlier, for the first 12k, we would do drills and slow rowing.  At the turn before the final 12k, we would start what we term, “The workout” (the hard pieces).  We started the hard pieces earlier this year but took longer active rest breaks.  We will go back to the old format.  It seemed more successful.

We are playing with the notion of attracting athletes to Westerville Crew, perhaps through some reward system for recruits who meet a certain height or aerobic status.  We have never really recruited athletes but instead, we “create them”.  Even our recruits who attend Stanford and Cal Berkeley started out as overweight kids.  I cannot remember that last time we had an already identified, really competitive athlete join Westerville Crew.  No, instead we often get the kids who failed at another sport or, even more frequently, never did another sport.  They were attracted to rowing because there is no legacy of starting at age 4, attending summer camps over the years, being identified early by a middle school gym teacher, etc, etc.  In the end, you can only improve aerobic status so much; there is a genetic ceiling that will be reached if you work long and hard enough.  I’d like to get kids with a higher genetic ceiling.

We will institute some new software and new practices this winter during our erging.  First, we will require a heart rate monitor with a coded transmitter of every varsity member.  After a thorough Internet search this week, I found an affordable model with the requisite coded transmitter– something we need with 45 ergs in a smallish area– to prevent crossing signals.  The software is yet to be written but my brother and I will do that this summer.  Every workout will be either split or heartrate based, each with a goal and actual performance.  The coxes will be more involved by recording at least some results each night on every rower. The system will grade and graph each rower.  They will be ranked and assigned an erg based on that ranking each night.  That way, the kids more interested in the social aspect of crew will become segregated from this kids who are their to improve.  Every kid will see their progress.  My interest in finding those who have met their genetic potential, or better, those who have not.

One item that will not change is that we row from a secluded site, 1000 feet down a dirt road, with boat racks erected in a sandy area 600 feet from the water.  It’s a beautiful site…but one without a boathouse.  I still cannot muster the desire the build a boathouse.  I don’t think it would make us faster.

The musings of a high school coach…….

I have a real job as owner/CEO of a medical software company.  We have users in about 30 states.  We have an good growth rate.   Our users are physicians, a rather demanding group.  They keep me busy…..real busy.  I’m in the office 7 days a week, at least until regatta season starts.  That’s when I get Saturdays off and just another reason I love regattas.  My point:  coaching is not my profession; it’s my release from the workaday world.  It’s my stress reliever.  It’s my passion.  It’s what I look forward too as the small hand inches toward 4:00 p.m.

The constraints of my business impose a burden on coaching.  I must coach as effectively as I can in the time allotted.  I don’t have a second chance.  Worse, I coach 3 eights of high school kids.  I have no assistants.  None have rowed prior to joining Westerville Crew.  They don’t automatically bring a bag of tools with them, such as a great work ethic, emotional well-being,  a feeling of duty in achieving rowing greatness, or even a sense responsibility in doing their part to make a boat faster.  Some, by their upbringing, are convinced that the rowers in front and behind them are THE ones responsible for loss of power maybe 4 minutes into a piece, loss of set, inattentiveness to detail, rushing, and a host of other complaints.  I’ve got the job of creating a sense of ownership, not only at a personal level for each kid in each boat, but at a boat and team level.

This sense of ownership is, I believe, the most important aspect in making boat speed.

Sure, it’s hard for me to argue with all those coaches who live and die by seat racing, and there are plenty of successful coaches who will replace a kid in a boat due to a 1/4 bow deck  lead in a seat race……….as fast as they’d flick a bougar.  That’s not for me.  I don’t seat race.  More to the point, our lightweight men’s eight was fourth at Youth Nationals last year. Our heavy men’s eight did well in petite finals.  I could have made the light eight faster by cannabolizing the heavy eight, taking two faster lights out of the heavy boat and putting them into the light eight.  Sure, we might have medaled, but it’s not my nature.  Only one graduated out of that light eight. They’ll have a chance to do better this year.  But it’s their boat, it’s their responsibility to achieve.  They truly have ownership of that boat; they are empowered. My job is to provide guidance and coaching.

Guidance comes in the form of understanding physiology– what workouts do we do today, tomorrow, next week, next month.  How do we peak at the right time? How do we achieve maximum physical fitness in the kids of each boat?  I enjoy that part of coaching.  Each day I hand a plastic laminated card to each coxswain of my boats and my wife’s (the varsity women’s coach).   It details each piece, rest intervals, rating, and whether the piece starts with a “start”, for example.  I like the plastic laminated cards (which I construct at the office)– their preparation gives me a chance to record what workout we do each day, to  think about tiredness, about water conditions, about what physiologic improvement we are trying to muster today.

My other job is to provide coaching.  Let me preface it by saying that I have spent days in the launches of some very good coaches– NCAA top 3 and men’s IRA champions.  I marvel at how they very often talk about the boat…..the boat…the boat.  As a far less experienced high school coach, I privately sat thinking that rowers in those boats were thinking the same thing my high school rowers think– “Coach must be talking about 4 seat and 6 seat, but certainly not about my seat, 5 seat.”  That inclination at the high school level is pronounced– “Coach can’t be talking about ME!”.  My tact is very different– I hardly ever talk about the boat.  Instead, I go from bow to stern and talk about individuals.  And usually I get hung up with bow for minutes on end, trying to fix this or that hitch in his stroke.  I’d love the luxury of talking about “The boat”, but I can never get over the details of each rower.

When I leave the dock, I pull the trigger on my megaphone and  pretty much have it pulled for the 2 hours that we’re on the water.  So I keep an extra 8-pack of batteries in my coaching bag. Being on the water with the kids is my opportunity to pick out defects in their stroke and let them know those problems which require fixing.  It’s also a time to congratulate them for their successes in slaying another dragon.  My paradigm is to pick out a fault, bring it to the rower’s attention, and provide some guidance in fixing it.  That rower is often my center of attention until they show some improvement in the problem.  When they do, I go to the next rower.

Coaching is, by nature, iterative.   My suspicion born out of lots of coaching is that secretly each rower believes that he had it right before I made any comment, that it was a small problem (if any problem at all) and that if he reverts back to his old way, I really won’t notice.  By this time, I’m coaching another rower.  Sure enough, looking back to that rower most often reveals that he reverted.  Convincing a rower that his hitch in the stroke is important to fix is a significant part of coaching.  I’ve tried humor, many-different-ways-of-explaining-the-same-thing, yelling, cajoling, and mimicking the error.  All provide some help.  It’s still a slow process, one that makes me wonder when I can just sit and marvel at their great form.  I hope by Nationals!

My twin brother and I are close.  We rowed the pair and double together in competition, but more importantly, until our married lives tore us asunder, we were pretty much joined at the hip…..not unusual for twins. Bruce (my twin) used to coach for Westerville Crew.  He can no longer do that due to back pain with neurological involvement. Even the bumps of hitting wake in the launch would cause him to grit his teeth and shed a tear or two.  On Friday evenings, we usually sit on his front porch smoking good cigars and talking about the things that interest us most-  rowing and the financial markets.  During these musings, we talked about a paradigm shift in coaching.  How could I become more effective as a coach and how could he participate in it now that he can’t go out in a launch.  Those musings led to his building software that  would allow very rapid “coaching of a film”.  That is, a web site where rowing videos could be uploaded, easily coached, and then viewed by the rowers of each boat in the comfort of their home…..any time….with a simple Internet connection.  Called CoachMeSports.com, Bruce brought it online a few weeks ago, just in time for our first day on the water.

True to his predictions, it has allowed me to quickly review films after workout and post these to the Internet.  Our kids review them when convenient.  In a unmistakable way, each is able to see his lack of rotation, or late body over, or rowing into it, or any of dozens of other faults we talk about in every day of practice.  The kids have bought off on it in a big way.  The most frequent comment is, “Matt, you were right about my…..”.  Jeez, how many times would I have had to say it without supporting videos?  Whether it will enable us to be a faster team, I do not yet know.  It certainly seems to accelerate the process of accepting a fault…..the first step in fixing it.

I’ll keep you updated…………..the little hand is approaching 4:00.

While this might not a learning experience for you old salts, a parent-sailor taught me something I should have known years ago.

It’s called “scope”. Think of the scope rule as “The greater the scope, the greater the holding power of an anchor.” While perhaps not entirely accurate, it’s a good rule.

Scope is the length of the anchor line divided by its depth. 5 to 1 is good; 7 to 1 is better. 1 to 1 is horrible.

When we started our club, some dad who had no idea of scope, built the usual “lots of concrete in a box” type anchor. It weighed so much, we just pushed it off the edge of our dock and it sunk straight down below the dock. Any wind and wave action would pick up the anchor (despite its 60 lbs) and the dock would blow into the shore. For years it failed. We just added more weight and it would fail less often, but be hard as heck to move as the water receded in our lake.

A father and sailor came along and took our smallest anchor (maybe 8-10 lbs) and challenged me that he could have it hold far better than the 60+ lb anchor we used. He took maybe 100 feet of rope for maybe 12 feet of depth and deposited the anchor some 90 feet from the end of the dock. Dang thing held against gale force winds. He showed me another trick. Extend a line out from the first anchor about 20 feet to a second anchor and it will hold even better.

Because the anchor line is so close to the surface near the dock, we took a simple 5lb weight with a hole in the center from our weight set. We tied a 5 ft rope on that and connect the other end to the dock. Through the hold-in-the-center of the weight, we run the anchor line so that the weight pulls the anchor line down to a greater depth near the dock….just so a skeg won’t catch on it.

Last night we had the remnants of the Midwest storm that produced so many tornadoes in Illinois……..50 mph winds for us…..and I know the docks didn’t move…..don’t have to worry anymore with the proper scope.

Tears were welling in my eyes as I ran toward the finish line at full speed. Perhaps my age of 55 years slowed me or the tears blurred my view, but I missed the finish. I cried out to their parents, “How did the boys do?” Most of the parents screamed out reassuringly, “Third. They got third.” At least one parent hesitated and solemnly announced a fourth place finish.

By this time, six 60-foot long racing shells had floated to a stop. Some rowers were groaning in pain while others were prostrate, collapsed across the seats and decking of their boats. We were at the United States Rowing Association’s Youth National Championships and it was an early June evening. It was their third race in two days, but this race determined whether they would advance to the Grand Finals the following day.

Several of my rowers looked toward shore, hoping for a sign that they were in the top three. I felt their anxiety. The Grand Finals is the most coveted race, the one that determines the top six high school rowing teams in the United States. Three teams from this semi-final heat would advance to the Grand Finals and three would take lesser spots in the Petite Finals. I silently prayed as I waited for the officials to review the photo finish.

As a busy ER physician a dozen years ago, I had neither the time nor energy to become involved in my community. That all changed when burnout dealt its hand and I retired from medicine. My newfound freedom invigorated me. When my son expressed a desire to join a rowing team, I got involved — way involved. Looking back, it was a paradigm shift that extended long past his high school years.

Back then, a half-dozen interested parents had an idea for forming a rowing club. The rules would be simple. Any kid with an interest could join. There would be no tryouts or cuts. It would be family oriented with lots of parent involvement. By avoiding a high school affiliation, any student in the northeast sector of Columbus could join. To keep costs low, it would be an all-volunteer organization.

It was a great dream conjured up in the library of Westerville North High School, but had any of us known the hardships of fighting the City of Columbus for a piece of land, in raising money to finance racing shells, in finding coaches or a warm place for the indoor winter workouts, Westerville Crew would not exist today. But our ignorance was our strength.

Based on my meager rowing experience to date, I became head coach while another father became president. His choice was more studied than mine – his term would last only one year, but mine as a head coach would last much longer.

I was quickly overcome by the logistics of a rowing team. Fielding a volleyball team requires a net and some balls while launching a rowing team requires a full compliment of 60-foot long rowing shells, high tech carbon-fiber oars, safety launches with motors, and even a special trailer to haul it all to a regatta. Rowing’s label as a rich man’s sport was well deserved.

For some obstacles, there was an elegant solution. Used rowing shells, even with plenty of nicks and dents, cost more than $10,000; a new one runs $24,000 and more. To solve the financial burden, I donated a limited production SVO Mustang that I had in storage. Its features — turbocharged, fuel-injected, Hurst shifter, unidirectional tires, air-to-air intercooler— were the traits of a race car and would tempt every testosterone fueled teenager to give up his hard-earned cash for a Westerville Crew raffle ticket. The money rolled in.

Other obstacles had no elegant solution. The City of Columbus owns all land touching Hoover Reservoir but they had no place in more than 50 miles of shore for a high school rowing team despite my begging, pleading, cajoling, and pestering. Persistence paid off when we finally landed a spot on what we thought was private land. Only years later did we learn it was actually owned by Columbus. A battle ensued over yearly payments to secure the spot long-term, a battle that we ultimately lost despite our all-volunteer service.

Some problems were unexpected. A contingent of Catholic families wanted no competitions scheduled on the Sabbath. After an emergency medicine career of being scheduled for any hour of any day, 365 days per year, pleading inability to participate for religious reasons seemed, well, selfish. Fortunately, absolution was granted when a large group of New England Catholic high schools held a regatta on Easter Sunday.

Even catastrophes found us. Using a borrowed shell trailer to attend our first regatta, I was unaware that the 60-foot geometry of the racing shells extended past the curb on a turn. I sheared off five feet of the bow end of our two best shells while exiting a gas station. Using my best medical skills, I splinted them with eight foot pieces of lumber until we could get more definitive care.

If that didn’t put a damper on our first season, a howling wind estimated to be in excess of 50 mph blew over our boat rack, toppling it down an embankment on Hoover. The boats became a twisted, splintered mess. Some of the kids cried on arrival to practice. Fortunately, crews from Upper Arlington and OSU stepped in to help with temporary equipment while we hoped for mercy from our insurer.

Despite the travails we were destined to endure, a tonic of relief arrived unexpectedly several years later. My novice boys were earning more and more medals and so, on a lark, I entered them into the college division at the largest Midwest regatta. “It’s not fair.”, the kids told me. “These guys are huge!” pointing to their towering adversaries on the dock. When they won the event, one Big Ten coach joked to me, “My guys complained that they were beat by a bunch of 12-year olds from Westerville.” Our lot in life was improving.

My varsity men rowed back to the dock and carried their 200 pound shell back up to a grassy area, placing it gingerly into slings. They were quiet as we huddled up, encircled by a huge group of parents and other team members. The stroke of the boat offered, “Matt, it was the best row of our lives. It was flawless. We couldn’t have gone faster.”

As I reassured them of how proud I was that they earned a berth at Nationals and competed against the best teams in the US, my wife Trish handed me a digital photo of the finish. They boys studied my face as I reviewed the photo. I put on my most dour look, slowly scanned their eyes, and then smiled broadly. “We did it. We’re in Grand Finals!”, as I raised the photo for all to see. Cheers erupted and hugs abounded.

Westerville Crew went on to win sixth place in the U.S. in the varsity men’s eight, fifth in the varsity women’s lightweight eight, and fourteenth in the men’s lightweight eight. Our summer Learn-to-Row has produced another crop of kids anxious to climb the ladder to success, more than a dozen college coaches have made recruitment calls, another round of graduating seniors have received scholarships, and Trish and I once again marvel in the great organization that we have the privilege of being part of.

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