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Weigh Enough
It’s called “swing.” Swing is a term that describes a perfectly timed, perfectly balanced racing shell in motion. It is the goal of every crew ever formed in the centuries of the sport’s existence, and it is difficult. Getting eight men to move as one is hard enough. When you put those eight men in a vessel less than 24” wide and 60 feet long, face them backward, tell them to pull on an oar as hard as they can, and continue pulling while discomfort mounts to unendurable levels, the task goes from monumental to just shy of impossible.
There was no good reason that our crew should find anything resembling swing. In September, we had entered the year with a promising crew of over 30 men, fielding four eight-man crews with coxswains – the small man or woman who sits in the back of the boat facing forward; steering, and commanding the cadence and race strategy. The fall season is for learning and refining technique, and above all, establishing your spring racing crew; the real races begin in March and finish in May. It is natural to suffer a certain amount of attrition over the fall; some men will be lost to injury, others to studies, and others just choose to lay down the oar in favor of less demanding activities. That particular year, however, the fall race season was a meat grinder. When I returned from winter break early for camp – our two weeks long, three-a-day training regimen, of the more than 30 rowers that started the year, there were only 12 of us left; nine oarsmen and three coxswains.
We had lost all of our biggest, best, and most experienced rowers. Because size, height in particular is such an advantage, collegiate men’s rowing has separate divisions for lightweight and heavyweight rowers. The average weight of the crew that showed up to camp was only ten pounds over the average required for us to race as lightweights. Yet we were all so lean, there was no chance we could ever reduce our weight below that official cutoff. We were condemned to be a scrawny heavyweight crew pitted against boats of men whose size and power dwarfed our own. Half of us were just a step up from rookies, none of us were the strongest guys from the fall, and all of us knew that if by some reason our numbers dipped under eight men, we would be forced to sit out half of the spring races. The best and most prestigious races are for reserved for eight-man crews. Four-man boats are primarily for training, and four-man racing is usually considered second level racing; for those who can’t make the first and second varsity boat. Here we were, a small, young, sloppy bunch; never more than one injury away from a completely unsatisfactory season of racing fours. This was going to be a building year and that was that.
So Coach hit us extra hard that year at camp. In the course of a 2000 meter race, rowers endure full body, anaerobic exercise for 5-7 minutes, characterized by burning muscles and intense oxygen deprivation. To prepare for this, we started at 5 AM, hitting the weight room for a round of circuit training. One hundred and twenty minutes of the worst pain I’ve ever experienced that ended with the whole team collapsed on the weight room floor in puddles of sweat. Then a massive breakfast, a nap, and off to midday practice on the rowing machines. Lifting in the morning was for power; the ergometers midday were for endurance. Coach would bring us to a pace that sucked the oxygen out of our limbs within seconds, and then hold us there, our bodies on fire, until our vision started tunneling. Then just as we hit the edge of consciousness, he would release us to recover for a few, wholly inadequate minutes, before commanding us back to the machines for another round. After an hour an a half of this torture, we were allowed to drag our wobbly bodies down to the cafeteria for a massive lunch, then off to bed for another nap. We were at the boathouse with oars in the water by 4 PM. Coach diabolically saved practice on the water for the afternoon because the winds would be high, and the water would be rough. When you are deeply fatigued, sore, and uncomfortable, maintaining the relaxed composure that fine rowing demands is incredibly difficult. But, with 1-2 foot chop teasing your oar, slopping into the boat and lurching you off balance as you struggle to stay relaxed and in control; it was nearly impossible. For hours he would drive us up and down the bay, hollering out cadences and corrections, until finally, well after darkness had settled, he let us drag the boat home to the boathouse. Exhausted, we rinsed the boat and oars, showered off, and then gathered for team dinner and near immediate bedtime. The next morning we were at it again with just enough variation to prevent major injury. Sometimes we ran hills and stairs, sometimes we rode stationary bikes, and at the end of camp we drove up to the mountains where we ran up three major trails back-to-back-to-back, climbing an aggregate of five thousand vertical feet over 13 miles of running.
At the end of camp, we were still not pretty rowers, we were still a ragtag bunch, and we were still only nine oarsmen and three coxswains, but we had bonded in the unique way that only pain and adversity can provide, and had become a team. We had all been pushed to the edge of failure, yet had stayed the course, and a new character was beginning to reveal itself. On our few free Saturday nights, we would party hard, and when our song came on at whatever venue we were raiding, regardless of where we were in the building, we would find ourselves together in a circle near the jukebox singing for all we were worth. We were ruthless in our pranks and humor, especially at the expense of one another – whoever woke up first after a late night partying would get a bag of flour and run around to the dorms and apartments of the other guys, hurling flour into their sleeping faces – a fine tradition known as ‘antiquing’. We ate together always and were responsible for several food fights in the cafeteria – one of which ended with police intervention. We were intensely loyal to each other, and adopted the phrase, “Ride or Die” as our motto; whatever we endured, we would endure together. After one particular meal, someone cracked a hilarious, but wholly inappropriate joke. As our slightly ashamed laughter died down, one of the guys remarked, “We’re all going to hell…” Without missing a beat, another piped, “…Then we’ll row on the Styx!” We still had very low expectations for our season to come; we knew we were small and had little chance for success, but we had already walked through fire, and if for no other reason than the bonds of brotherhood, we would pour ourselves with unrestrained passion and effort into the upcoming race season. You cannot put in what God has left out, but as a unit, we would put all that God had given us into task ahead.
As we drew closer to the race season there was less emphasis on pain tolerance and more pinpoint physical race training, and technical refinery. When precariously balanced on a narrow racing vessel, every flaw in the movement of an oarsman is not just a drag on the speed of the boat, but it is a weight and lever against the balance of the boat. Rowers must not only be able to endure intense physical stress but must maintain perfect composure under that stress in order to keep the boat running well. After the hell of camp, coach knew we had character, strength, and endurance; now he had to get us to apply our grit to the water and make that boat go fast and clean over 2000 meters. Endless repetition; we put in stroke after stroke while coach shouted out micro-adjustments over hours and hours on the water, attempting to bring the motion of eight men into one movement. We had moments of clean rowing here and there, but they were always interrupted by a flopped oar, a twitch of movement upsetting our balance, or a deeply dug stroke tweaking the level of the boat; forcing the team to back off power and re-set. But early one Saturday morning in late February, it clicked. When coach called us up to race intensity, the boat almost magically leveled off and stayed there. The cadence became effortless, and all the power of the rowing was translated to speed over the water. The weight of the oars seemed light and the boat sliced through the bay like a knife. Coach stopped bellowing through the bullhorn and withdrew his launch to some 50 yards away to let us feel the swing. The world swirled away, and we locked together in one seamless movement welded by the fires of pain, effort, and sacrifice. The oars entered the water with a gentle splash, followed immediately by a whoosh of breath and movement as we accelerated through the stroke ending with a heavy, hollow ka-chunk, as the oars released out of the water and feathered for the recovery. As we glided silently forward on our rolling seats through the stroke recovery, the only sound was the sweetest tinkling, like a mountain spring; the whisper of the boat cutting through the water. The sun was creeping over the velvety horizon and it felt in that moment as if God Himself looked out on our sacrifice, our effort, and our love for one another, and honored us with this gift.
The subsequent season of racing was a swirl of colors, smells, and heady draughts of success. Against all odds, we turned out to be a very fast crew. Over the course of that season, we set the school record three separate times, won large races, and earned our school’s first invitation to a national regatta. On multiple occasions, we were somewhat mockingly referred to as the San Diego Lightweights by larger crews that we would turn around and beat handily. Collegiate regattas are a beautiful thing. Boats rest in slings over acres of green lawn looking like multi-color caterpillars, with their oarlocks protruding into the narrow pathways between vessels. Everywhere you look, men’s and women’s crews from all over the country are stretching, running, and huddling in preparation for, or recovery from racing. In men’s rowing, there is a time-honored tradition of the losing crews removing the racing jerseys from their backs and handing them to the corresponding oarsmen of the winning crew. It’s not uncommon on the final day of the regatta to see a bunch of shirtless men walking away from eight jubilant oarsmen with medals around their necks and their arms full of jerseys. And always the airhorn and announcer calling the race in progress hums constant, only overwhelmed by the roar of the spectators urging their crews down the home stretch of a particularly hotly contested race. A good crew will race four times over two days in a large regatta; progressing from heats, to round-robin runs, to quarter finals, and finishing with the final or semi-final race. In our pursuit of success, we became creatures armed and bent toward one purpose. We slept when coach said to sleep, we worked out when he said to work out, and we ate when, what, and where he said to eat. In our few free moments over the next several months, we gathered together for beers and laughs, or attempted to do something resembling school work; but in everything, we moved as a seamless unit focused solely on making our boat go as fast as we possibly could.
It was on a calm but rainy May afternoon in Philadelphia that coach interrupted the pattern of our race season rhythm. This was our last race. He told us he could not be prouder of this group of men and encouraged us to enjoy this race for all it was worth. There is a necessary shortsightedness that a finely tuned racing athlete must adopt; never looking too far ahead, but maintaining a relentless focus on the immediate task at hand. It is a mentality that is essential for the highest level of performance. Yet in that moment, as we launched for our final race, a larger perspective began to dawn on every one of us; we were stepping into the last stage of what had been a beautiful, almost miraculous season. But the task at hand loomed large and necessary, and our long, hard road had left us too disciplined and consistent to let sentimentality affect our concentration and effort. That last race was our final record-setting performance, we achieved victory over our arch-rival, and made the national rankings for the first time. But as we crossed the finish line, and the coxs’n called us to ‘Weigh Enough’ – the ancient command to cease rowing and rest – it was as though we were waking from a dream, and the full weight of our accomplishments descended upon us as we slowly drifted down river from the race, still panting from our final effort.
But for all of our racing success, it was the men in the boat that mattered the most. After several minutes of contemplative silence, bow seat oarsman hollered out to the coxs’n, “bring us up to steady state pace; I’m not done rowing with these guys!” As we picked the boat up and gently pushed it forward with our oars, we found again, for one final time, that swing; stable, graceful, and silent, save for the ka-chunk of the oars and the sweet tinkling of the boat cutting through the water. For nearly two hours, we rowed in silence up and down the Schuylkill River, while a light rain patterned out the gentlest of texture on the glassy face of the water; our coach seated on the bank, appreciating and enjoying this melancholy moment with us. It was in silence that we eventually coasted up to the dock, pulled up the boat, and set it in slings. We huddled as a team, shared one more moment of silence, and then after a brief prayer of thanksgiving, someone cracked a joke, and the spell was broken. We drifted back into real life with a chuckle. Sore muscles, blistered hands, and a deep, deep fatigue settled upon us as we de-rigged the boat, showered, and headed off for dinner.
To this day we have never again rowed together as a crew. Were we to someday gather and step into a boat again, I doubt that we could even come close to re-creating that swing we were so blessed to enjoy. But for a brief moment, in the strength of our reckless youth and vigor, we had given freely of ourselves; and in so doing, had stumbled upon a taste of eternity. I would leap at any opportunity to join those men to attempt to find our swing one more time, but if this memory is all I am ever to keep, I count myself blessed to have it.
Published in Group Writing
Excellent writing on a subject I never thought much about. Thanks.
I never realized all the work that goes into rowing.
Question: How are coxswains chosen?
Love this whole essay, but especially the attitude embodied in this line.
This conversation is part of our Group Writing Series under March’s theme of Feats of Strength. We still have the 23rd and 24th if you have a tale (or two) to tell or make taller in the telling. Come sign up, won’t you?
Yep – well done Stubbs.
Thanks for giving us a good look at that world. It’s something I had not known about.
And that–even if you never got to “swing”, would have been both a life-lesson and life-long cherished memory.
My wife and I took swing dance classes. Probably a lot more fun.
Currahee!
Wonderful essay. Thank you for sharing.
You hit on the biggest shortcoming of the essay. I wanted to emphasize the brotherhood of the oarsmen and in so doing short-changed our coxs’ns a bit. Our team was non-scholarship, so only one of our coxs’ns had prior experience; the others were simply recruited by friends who were oarsmen. In a coxs’n you need someone who is capable of steering the boat, understands the mechanics, technique, and balance of the stroke, is able to execute complex commands under pressure, and someone who has the trust of the oarsmen. When you are facing backwards, you rely wholly on their commands to keep you from hitting anything. A coxs’n can be any size, but they are weighed in at the start of every regatta, and those under 120 lbs have to carry ballast to bring them up to that race weight. Carrying more weight is up to the discretion of the coach and crew; sometimes the value of a particular person outweighs the extra pounds you have to carry.
Our crew had three terrific ladies to choose from as our coxs’n. This was one of the sad ironies of how our fall season attrition hit us. We kept all the coxsn’s from the fall, but only had one boatload of oarsmen, which meant that only one coxs’n could race at a time. We swapped them in and out, depending upon the race strategy required for each specific run, and whose style and personality fit what was needed. They were all excellent and every bit a part of the team, and by the end of the season, all three had the distinct pleasure of being tossed into the lake, bay, or river at least once; which is the privilege afforded to winning coxs’ns.
Very nice.
There are a few times in my life, no, several times in my life when I later regretted not going the tougher road. One of them was in college when a few of my fellow Marines in NROTC asked me to join crew. At just over 100 pounds I think they intended me to be a coxswain. I thought it looked fun, like something I would really like to do, but then again there were a lot of reasons not to join. One was my ever suffering grades and my already full plate with engineering, band (marching, concert and jazz), and of course NROTC. That was the big reason.
Another reason was we went to school in northern Indiana and crew in the winter time was miserable. I still can’t even imagine how those guys could keep their toes and fingers from being frostbitten in the frigid waters of South Bend.
In retrospect, I should have quit band to join. Band was something I had already done, I should have tried something new rather than stay in what I was comfortable with.
My hat’s off to you and your crew.
This was very interesting – my only other view of crew was “Boys in The Boat” which my wife recommended strongly and I would also recommend to anyone else.
Very well written. I am amazed that the coxs’n choices were women. When was this? It seems pretty advanced to have women as participants in such a physical (for the rowers) sport. On the other hand, it makes a lot of sense given the requirements.
Our daughter in law was on a hockey scholarship starting her first year at college when a couple of women rowers approached her during freshers’ week and said something like: You’re tall and look strong, would you like to be in the crew team? She said something like: I’m playing hockey. They said: you can row outdoors in the fall and not workout in the gym with the hockey team. She said: I’m in. She rowed for 4 years and 10 years after graduation is closer to her rowing mates than her hockey mates. She hated the erg machines but loved rowing. @skyler you would have loved it. Even the first time the boats go in the water in the spring. She rowed in New England and it was frigid but beautiful. What a great piece to read this day and a half before Spring. Thank you!
“Boys in the Boat” is excellent. Although by 2003 (when my crew raced), Washington was such a massive, hated perennial rowing powerhouse, it took a some good story telling and more than a little suspension of disbelief for me to catch up with the author’s portrayal of them as an underdog worth rooting for in 1936.
I’m not sure when the sport starting allowing/adopting female coxs’ns. Wikipedia tells me that the first time a woman to coxed the Oxford Cambridge race (which is basically the heart of the sport, and has been for over 150 years) was in 1981. I would imagine this date is a pivotal marker somewhere in the middle of a larger movement.
The main reason we had no male coxs’ns was because no men ever tried out. In my four years, I only rowed with a male coxs’n twice: once was a rower that coach threw in because he needed another driver, the other was the assistant coach who wanted to yell at us from inside the boat: neither time was much fun.
This is the one and only recruiting line. The story of how I got picked up is a good one (for another day), but I spent three years at freshman orientation repeating the line quoted above to every tall guy that walked by.
It’s a sad, sad person who enjoys the erg more than the water.
She has my respect. As a San Diego school, we were big softies when it came to weather. We had a reputation of being small, but good technicians; mostly because we had so many more opportunities to take strokes on the water than crews from places with real weather. I definitely remember one year of college (might have been this one), I made it a point to wear flip flops every day of the year. I succeeded; it’s no great challenge when the temperature never goes below 40.
Much like Notre Dame where it never got below -40.
This is how the son of some of my friends was recruited at Wisconsin.
My university (in Louisiana) would host the northern schools over Christmas break…(I was No. 3 in our female Eight)…and it was a blast! We would have a shrimp boil and gumbo night and the rowers from Brown or Purdue or Drake would go nuts over the food! They even liked the food in our cafeteria…ox tail stew anyone? One of my crew mates drove a minivan and we would load up our guests and drive them through our drive-thru daiquiri shop. At the time, my school was just starting out in rowing so it was fantastic to get to train alongside more mature programs. I hated the erg, but bought one later in adulthood to keep in shape. I was in the crew that did the first marathon row, just to see if it could be done. Nothing like the swing!
You haven’t lived until you’ve experienced cracking through the ice at dockside to lower your shell into that recently solid water.
That’s how Cal recruited back in the day–before there was a “women’s crew”. Worked for getting guys who’d never heard of an oar or Oxford. Today, I guess the freshman don’t have to stand in multi-hour long lines just to register. Crew’s loss.
Thanks for such a great post.