June 2024

THE RECRUITING ISSUE

ST E ALT H AT TAC K

Chip Davis PUBLISHER & EDITOR

Chris Pratt ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER

Vinaya Shenoy ADMINISTRATIVE ASSISTANT

Art Carey ASSISTANT EDITOR

Madeline Davis Tully ASSOCIATE EDITOR

CORRESPONDENT

Rich Davis

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS

Andy Anderson | Nancy Clark

Bill Manning | Volker Nolte

Marlene Royle | Hannah Woodruff Steve Aulenback

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High-Tech Cox

Software engineer Emilie Eldracher will make her Paralympic debut with the U.S. PR3 mixed four in Paris.

BY SKYLAR RIVERA

It’s a Jungle Out There

College recruiting has become increasingly cutthroat, but with guidance, high-school rowers and their parents can navigate the process successfully.

BY MADELINE DAVIS TULLY

Casy Galvanek

No one has been involved with the growth of rowing in Florida and the evolution of National Team development schemes in the 21st century like Casey Galvanek.

DEPARTMENTS

25 QUICK CATCHES

News Kevin Sauer Retires After 29 Years at UVa Race Reports Drexel Wins Dad Vails

Sports Science Rapid Recovery Coxing The Science of Seat Racing Best Practices The Learning Imperative Fuel Stop Picking on Processed Foods! Training The Meaning of Winning

BY CHIP DAVIS

FROM THE EDITOR

CHIP DAVIS

Making Rowing Sustainable

As this, the June issue, went to press in mid-May, the NCAA-dominated world of college athletics braced for the settlement of the House vs. NCAA lawsuit. It’s expected to cost universities, which have been collecting record revenues from broadcast deals to show their studentathletes playing football, and to a lesser extent basketball, billions in payments to student-athletes and to reshape how college sports are paid for.

One possible outcome would require $20 million in payments from bigtime football schools like Iowa State, whose athletic director halted plans for a new wrestling facility as well as renovations of the school’s Hilton Coliseum.

“With this lawsuit getting ready to be settled, you just can’t go forward with projects like that,” Iowa State Director of Athletics Jamie Pollard told The Des Moines Register. Other athletic directors have laid off staff already and are preparing for reduced budgets.

The only way our sport can continue to teach those lessons is to figure out how to pay for it.

College rowing programs are well aware of the potential threat to their budgets—and existence. The best, as we report in this issue, are doing something about it already.

No one has won more James Ten Eyck Memorial Trophies, for team points at the IRA National Championship Regatta, than Washington (17). The Huskies recently announced the establishment of their first endowed coaching position—in any sport–in honor of Blake Nordstrom (see page 29), joining the growing crowd of endowed rowing coaches.

UCLA, the reigning men’s ACRA club national champions, has launched a $10-million endowment effort (see page 32)—with more than half already raised or committed—specifically aimed at “permanently establishing the opportunity that we all benefited from—a chance for young men and women to share life-defining experiences through the sport of rowing.”

In honor of two-time NCAA Division I champion coach Kevin Sauer, whose retirement announcement is covered on page 25, University of Virginia rowers—men and women, club and varsity—gave over a million dollars last year to start a rowing endowment.

None of these programs, and the others already endowed, waited for either an NCAA-dependent athletics department or a cash-strapped student-activities budget to cut their funding, or entire program, before taking action to ensure that the opportunities of rowing continue.

And it’s not just the college programs that are taking their financial futures into their own hands. Regatta organizers—including USRowing, the Intercollegiate Rowing Association, and the New England Interscholastic Rowing Association—have sold the exclusive rights to their live video feeds to Overnght, a video-streaming service begun by former college student-athlete Kevin McReynolds

As I wrote in this space last month, the only way to succeed in rowing is to work hard and to work together, and you couldn’t give a young person two better lessons. The only way our sport can continue to teach those lessons is to figure out how to pay for it.

As McReynolds says on page 32, “This is what the sport needs.”

LETTERS

The Oar Is an Instrument

I have always enjoyed reading Volker Nolte’s columns on rowing. His latest, “Square Route,” is very interesting as well. In reviewing his description, I reflected on my own experience. I learned to row at Brown in the mid-1960s under the tutelage of Victor H. Michalson when we still followed what might be called the Conibear style that the legendary Huskies coach used during the late 1930s at the University of Washington.

This included doing what I remember more as a flip catch, which Volker describes ably as a “flick catch.” During my four years as an undergraduate, however, we made a substantial change that involved an earlier roll-up so that our heavy-duty Pocock oars would be seated resolutely in the oarlock before the catch. Watching crews and scullers over the years from then until now,

I’ve seen a good amount of that, especially since the Concept2 oars (and others) are so much lighter, and the diameter of the handle is so much smaller.

In coaching both scullers and sweep rowers over the years, I’ve stressed that the oar is an instrument and, as such, that releasing the blade should not be a wrenching action but a flick of the fingers— both hands for scullers, of course, and the feathering hand for sweeps.

Likewise, the square-up is done by rolling up the oars with the fingers and not so much a lifting action of the wrist. The action is light and delicate because the oar is an instrument and not a club; it requires a deft action to be used effectively, no matter what the stroke rate.

P.S. Thanks for all the great work you do to highlight rowing!

Albin Moser Providence, R.I.

Seattle Pacific University

June 24-28, July 8-12

University of Portland July 21-25

CRABS

In the May issue, we misspelled the name of University of Texas Head Coach Dave O’Neill.

On page 66, the name of Grey Flannel Auctions was also misspelled.

In the feature “Deerfield’s Winning Trifecta,” we failed to recognize the fifthplace finish of New Trier in the men’s youtheight A final at the 2023 USRowing Youth National Championships, making them the top scholastic (non-club) finisher.

Gary Rogers Rowing Center

July 30-Aug 2, August 13-16

Briones Resevoir Boathouse August 6-9

T. Gary Rogers Rowing Center

July 29-August 1, August 5-8

Miami Sculling Machine

Miami Rowing Club’s Andres Hernandez-Ibanez (stroke) and Mariano Martinez (bow), coached by Cesar Herrera, celebrate winning the men’s youth double at the 2024 USRowing Southeast Youth Championships, held May 11 and 12 at Sarasota, Florida’s Nathan Benderson Park..

PHOTO: LISA WORTHY

Made It Together

From May 4 through May 25, high-school and junior crews raced in the 12 championship regattas that award qualification for the 41 events of the USRowing Youth National Championships, June 6 to 9, at Florida’s Nathan Benderson Park..

PHOTO: LISA WORTHY

Double Dragon Dad Vail

The Drexel University varsity women cheer on the Drexel varsity men from the awards dock at the 2024 Jefferson Dad Vail Regatta on the Cooper River, in Pennsauken, N.J., on May 11. Both Dragons varsity crews won their events, and Drexel claimed the overall-points trophy as well. Story, page 28.

PHOTO: COURTESY OF DREXEL ATHLETICS

QUICK CATCHES

UVA’s Esteemed Women’s Coach

Kevin Sauer Retires After 29 Years

A pioneer of collegiate women’s rowing, Kevin Sauer has been one of the sport’s truly nice guys, running his program with family values that endeared him to his team and many others.

Kevin Sauer, the only varsity coach the University of Virginia women have ever known, announced his retirement in May.

One of the best-liked and most successful coaches in rowing, Sauer coached the Cavaliers for 29 years, leading the club program into the NCAA when Virginia elevated women’s rowing to varsity status in 1995.

Under Sauer, Virginia won the NCAA Division I national championship in 2010 and 2012 and trophies (top four) 11 times. The Cavaliers have ruled the Atlantic

Coast Conference, winning 22 of 23 ACC regattas, including the last 13.

“This has been an incredible ride, and I have enjoyed almost every minute,” Sauer said. “I have appreciated all of the great support from administration, staff, assistant coaches, boatmen, parents, and alumni. And, most of all, the student-athletes have been awesome, and I’ll miss that the most.

“I have spent all these years working with those who are fairly fortunate, so in retirement I’d like to spend my time helping those less fortunate and with our church. But, most

Bowden Stepping Down at Oxford

Sean Bowden is stepping down as the chief coach of the Oxford University men after 27 years. Bowden’s 13 Boat Race wins for Oxford—most recently in 2022—combined with his two as head coach of Cambridge in 1993 and 1994, make him the winningest coach in the history of The Boat Race, the world’s first intercollegiate athletic contest, dating to 1829. “I will always remember those great days with the team as amongst the most rewarding and formative that I could imagine,” Bowden said.

importantly, I want to spend more time with my wife, Barb, who has been my rock and biggest supporter.

“My kids and grandchildren are local, which is a true blessing, so I will be more involved in their lives. I know this program will thrive going forward and I cannot wait to watch and support them as well as all UVA athletics. But our immediate emphasis is to finish this season well with ACCs and NCAAs.”

Sauer surpassed 1,000 career varsityeight wins at Virginia during the 2019 season. Under Sauer’s tutelage, 46 studentathletes have earned 62 Pocock Racing Shells All-America honors. A Virginia oarswoman has rowed at each of the last five Olympics.

Sauer is a pioneer of collegiate women’s rowing, one of the coaches who took a program from club status to varsity as the sport was elevated by the NCAA. Even as full-ride scholarships and international

recruiting brought a professional edge to Division I rowing, Sauer remained one of the sport’s truly nice guys, running his program with family values that endeared him to his team and many others.

“The rowing world is losing a gem,” said Princeton head coach Lori Dauphiny. “But I imagine we are not losing Kevin at all. I have never seen him stand still for a moment and I bet he is the same retired. He has always led by example in our sport. He has the ability to do it all and especially at a time when there was little support in our sport. He built a boathouse both metaphorically and physically. He could fix any rowing course blindfolded. And he developed great teams! He is a legend.”

“Kevin Sauer is on the Mount Rushmore of collegiate coaches, and the landscape of NCAA rowing will be vastly different without him,” said Texas coach Dave O’Neill. “Kevin and his teams have been an inspiration and challenge for many

of us, and over the years he’s been a valued mentor, colleague, competitor, and friend.”

Virginia alumnae, friends, and families recognized and honored his contributions to Cavalier rowing by establishing the Kevin Sauer Fund for Excellence in Women’s Rowing in 2023 with an initial collective gift of over a million dollars. The fund began with a $250,000 donation from a former member of the men’s rowing club— Sauer coached both men’s and women’s club crews when he was hired originally to coach the Virginia Rowing Club in the fall of 1988—and included donations from rowers he never coached directly.

“He just cares about people,” said associate head coach Kelsie Chaudoin, who helped organize the fund drive secretly. “He has always put the person before the athlete. He shows his care and concern in his actions every day.”

Drexel Dragons Triumph at Dad Vail Regatta

Drexel won the overall -points championship at the Dad Vail Regatta on May 11 on the Cooper River in Pennsauken, N.J., as both the men’s and women’s varsity eights took home the gold. This is the third consecutive win for Drexel in the men’s varsity eight, making it the first program to achieve that feat in 23 years.

“I couldn’t be more proud of the entire program and their outstanding performance to capture the overall team title,” said Paul Savell, the Dragons’ director of rowing, now in his 17th year.

“Drexel rowing’s triumph at Dad Vails, securing victories in the varsity women’s eight and the men’s varsity eight, varsity four, and third eight, and topping overall team points, is a testament to the relentless dedication, passion, and excellence that define Drexel rowing.”

The Drexel men will continue their season at the IRA National Championship, while the women, after competing at the Coastal Athletic Association Championships, will row at the Henley Royal Regatta this summer.

Georgetown won the Dad Vail Regatta women's-points trophy with seven medals overall across open and lightweight events.

Shoemaker Boathouse Tufts University

Photo © Edua Wilde

Nordstrom Family Endows Head Coach Position at University of Washington

Current head coach Michael Callahan vows to honor the values of the late Blake Nordstrom, the enthusiastic UW rower for whom the endowment is named.

The head coach of men’s rowing will become the first endowed headcoaching position in the history of University of Washington athletics, after a series of gifts from the Nordstrom family honoring the late Blake Nordstrom. Nordstrom rowed at Washington, graduated in 1982, and was a long-time member of the Washington Rowing Stewards. He was co-president of the eponymous retail empire founded by his great-grandfather and a major supporter of UW rowing through fundraising, relationship-building, and strategic direction efforts. He died in 2019 at the age of 58.

“Our children, Alex and Andy, and I are thrilled to support this new endowed position for a program that meant so

much to Blake,” said Molly Nordstrom, Blake Nordstrom’s widow. “He valued crew so highly—the sport itself—and the everlasting bonds he made with his teammates. He wanted everyone to have that; he really considered it one of the great blessings in his life.”

The gifts to establish an endowment come at a time when Olympic-sport programs at universities face uncertainty and potential budget cuts as TV contracts, conference realignments, NIL agreements, and player demands disrupt the funding model of college sports.

Current men’s head coach Michael Callahan will become the first Blake Nordstrom Endowed Head Coach.

“Blake had these sayings he would repeat from time to time, like ‘Leave it

better than you found it’ and ‘Extend yourself,’” Callahan said. “He would quietly share those with the young people down here.

“His name will be a constant reminder to all of us of those values, the lifelong friendships he made here, and the indelible influence he had on all of us. I am so grateful to the Nordstrom family and honored.

“Our goal as coaches is to make sure the lessons of rowing translate across everyone here, that every crew reaches their potential, that every crew finds that ‘swing.’

“Success here is defined not by your wins and losses. It is defined by learning to become a team and then succeeding as a team, and Blake understood every part of that.”

Para Coach Minzner Named 2023 Coach of the Year

The U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee honored Ellen Minzner in May as the 2023 Paralympic Coach of the Year.

“It is an honor to be selected from among the many successful Paralympic coaches in the U.S.,” said Minzner, who coached the silver medal-winning PR3 mixed four with coxswain crews at the 2016 Rio and 2020 Tokyo Paralympic Games.

“It speaks volumes about our program overall and the countless hours and energy that all the Para coaches on our high-

performance team give to create successful crews and to advance the sport as a whole.”

Minzner is the first high-performance USRowing coach to be honored with a USOPC coaching award. For 10 years, she worked at Boston’s Community Rowing, Inc., where she spearheaded initiatives for inclusion and advocacy for people with disabilities, military veterans, and underserved youths.

As USRowing’s director of Para high performance since 2019, and the Para National Team coach for five years before

that, Minzner has overhauled Para talent identification and athlete development, with an emphasis on working with collegiate athletes. At the 2023 World Rowing Championships, her Para crews won silver medals and qualified for Paris in the PR3 mixed coxed four and the PR3 mixed double.

The 2024 Paralympic rowing events run from August 30 through September 1.

QUICK CATCHES

One Place to Watch Rowing

Streaming service Overnght soon will broadcast IRA and USRowing regattas in bid to reach a broader audience.

The streaming service Overnght aims to become the one place for all live rowing video streams. After the April announcement that all the Intercollegiate Rowing Association’s affiliated regattas would be streamed on Overnght, USRowing announced that all USRowing-owned regattas, including youth regionals and nationals, also will be shown on Overnght.

“A few sports are not getting the attention they deserve,” said Overnght founder Kevin McReynolds, a former UCLA studentathlete. “Olympic sports in particular haven’t gotten the love they deserve.”

Overnght charges $9.99 per month or $95 per year to view any of its live video streams of rowing, water polo, gymnastics, swimming, and other sports.

USRowing announced that its first few regattas, including this year’s Youth Nationals, will be free to view during their

live broadcasts until June 20, after which a payment will be required. The IRA National

rowing to a wider audience beyond the racecourse.”

“This represents another step forward in the development of presenting rowing to a wider audience beyond the racecourse.”

—Gary Caldwell

Championship Regatta also will be free to view during its live broadcast, May 31 to June 2.

“I’m really excited about our new partnership,” said IRA Commissioner Gary Caldwell. “This represents another step forward in the development of presenting

Overnght pays event rights holders for the exclusive use of the live video provided by the regatta organizers. These payments “allow regattas to improve their content and improve their experience,” said McReynolds. “And they may not be able to continue to hold their regattas without new revenue. This is what the sport needs.”

Overnght, which began operations in September, showed 75 events last year and will show over 1,000 this year, with plans to stream over 5,000 next year.

“We’re creating a home for rowing, where content lives in one place,” said McReynolds.

UCLA Men’s Rowing Launches $10-Million Campaign

The fundraising effort for the defending club national champion is a chance to “give back to a program that shapes leaders.”

UCLA men’s rowing, the defending ACRA club national champion, has launched a $10-million endowment campaign, with more than half already raised or committed, including a record-setting $2.5-million gift from 1968 UCLA alumnus Bob Newman and his wife, Mary Jo—the largest in the history of UCLA club sports.

The Friends of UCLA Rowing announced that the endowment will be used to increase the club program’s annual budget from $300,000 to $600,000 and to invest in coaching, equipment and technology, and athlete development.

“This campaign isn’t just about rowing,” said Newman. “It’s about continuing a legacy of excellence and leadership that UCLA men’s rowing has fostered since 1933. It’s a chance for us to give back to a program that shapes leaders.”

“Our program is surging in all dimensions,” said Dominic Pardini, president of the Friends of UCLA Rowing. “The boats are fast, the athletes are aspiring leaders, the coaches are top-tier, and the alumni are hyper-engaged.

“We’re becoming the model for a sustainable future of college athletics— independent from conference politics and

100 percent community-supported for the love of the game.”

UCLA men’s rowing, which began in 1933 after the 1932 Los Angeles Olympic Games and is governed by the Friends of UCLA Rowing, welcomes walk-on athletes with no prior rowing experience.

“We believe that this is the future of ‘non-income’—one could say ‘character building’—university sports as we see the evolving landscape of college football and basketball with the massively growing costs on very challenged university budgets,” said UCLA alum and former World Rowing executive director Matt Smith.

HIGH-TECH COX

SOFTWARE ENGINEER EMILIE ELDRACHER WILL MAKE HER PARALYMPIC DEBUT WITH THE U.S. PR3 MIXED FOUR IN PARIS.

STORY BY SKYLAR RIVERA PHOTOS BY LISA WORTHY

Emilie Eldracher navigates the waters of the Charles River daily. She’s mastered the waterway, the bridges, and every turn. Hailing from Andover, Mass., Eldracher built a name for herself on the Charles. Now she’s hoping to cement herself in Paralympic history with the PR3 mixed coxed four.

Eldracher hadn’t planned on becoming a Paralympian. It wasn’t until 2016, at the Royal Canadian Henley Regatta, that she was put into the driver’s seat that would take her to Paris eight years later.

It was the first year the regatta included a race for the PR3 mixed four with coxswain. There were two composite boats, one that was going to Worlds later that year and another that needed a coxswain. Eldracher was at the regatta and volunteered to cox the second PR4+ for the Justin Fryer Trophy.

“From there, I wanted to be involved in any way I could.” Eldracher said.

The path Eldracher pursued took her to Boston and immersed her in technology. In 2018, she joined the openweight women’s rowing team at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she trained under Holly Metcalf, the 2017 Patriot League Coach of the Year, and began working in the MIT Sports Lab.

Eldracher coxed the novice eight her freshman year before taking the reins of the varsity eight for the next three years.

“She has high energy and is astute and driven to be better,” said Metcalf of Eldracher. “Every year, there’s been new growth.

“She’s become more technically sophisticated and efficient in her language. She’s become more savvy about other people, how their minds work, how their emotions connect to rowing, and what she can do to draw them out and get the best out of them.”

Eldracher’s 2020-21 season was canceled because of Covid, which gave her an extra year of NCAA eligibility. Now, as a graduate student, Eldracher has switched teams and coxes MIT’s heavyweight men’s varsity eight, in addition to Olympic training.

While juggling training for Paris, Division I athletics, and academics, Eldracher works as a researcher at MIT’s Sports Lab, where she’s putting artificial intelligence to use in fashion and techniques to improve athletic performance.

Eldracher’s experience as a rower has inspired her to help Para athletes. For

instance, with 3D pose estimation, an iPhone camera, when pointed at a rower, translates movement into an animated stick figure, which through angle analysis, can show how to improve such aspects as the stroke.

“For our U.S. PR3 men’s single sculler, I tracked his handle acceleration using an iPhone camera,” Eldracher said. “I was able to track his wrist joint and get his handle acceleration.

“Once you get handle acceleration, if someone’s on an erg, you know their drag factor. I was able to calculate the force of this Para sculler within two watts of accuracy for the piece he was doing using iPhone footage and 3D pose estimation that was free online.”

With just amateur footage, the possibilities are limitless for understanding angles, force, and power, Eldracher said, and she hopes the technology will be used to help athletes in underfunded programs, such as Olympic sports.

“If I can get 1/100th of a second for an athlete in rowing or another sport and change someone’s life trajectory, I want to do that.” Eldracher said.

Eldracher’s PR3 four with coxswain qualified for the Olympic Games at the 2023 World Championships in Serbia by finishing in the top six (the boat crossed the line in second place to earn silver). After the boat qualified, the fastest lineup was determined at USRowing selection camps.

Ben Washburne, Alex Flynn, Skylar Dahl, Gemma Wollenschlaeger, and Eldracher were selected as the mixed four with coxswain to represent the U.S. in Paris (Aug. 30 to Sept 1). The entire crew will be first-time Paralympians, and they’re aiming to improve on the silver medal won by a similar boat at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

Eldracher, a Taylor Swift fan, believes this pre-Olympics season mirrors the lyrics of her favorite song, “Long Live,” about celebrating the moment and enjoying the present. In her case, Eldracher said, it’s about being grateful for those around her and the opportunity to compete for her country.

“Just extreme gratefulness for my team, for my coach, for the director, who talked about changing lives.” Eldracher said. “They’ve selected us, they’ve given us this opportunity.”

IT’S A JUNGLE OUT THERE

COLLEGE RECRUITING HAS BECOME INCREASINGLY CUTTHROAT, BUT WITH GUIDANCE, PERSPECTIVE, AND CANDOR, HIGH-SCHOOL ROWERS AND THEIR PARENTS CAN NAVIGATE THE PROCESS SUCCESSFULLY.

STORY BY MADELINE DAVIS TULLY

PHOTOS BY LISA WORTHY

Several years ago, as the head women’s rowing coach at Boston University, I got a call from one of my top recruits, a national teamer from a small European powerhouse, several days ahead of her scheduled official visit. The trip was a big deal; we didn’t have a huge budget, so spending the money for an international visit was something we did in only a few cases for recruits we felt really good about. This recruit was technical and tough and fun; she would have made us faster and been a great teammate.

I assumed the call was just a regular checkin about some last-minute details. She appeared on FaceTime from the darkened back seat of her parents’ car as they drove through the countryside on her way home from practice.

Abruptly, awkwardly, she told me that she had committed to another school. Just like that. I was shocked. The coach, from a Pac-12 program, had made her a scholarship offer less than an hour ago, with one catch: The offer expired at the end of the call. She had to make the decision right then and there. She accepted.

There was no logistical need for the coach to do that. It was simply a way to introduce urgency and to intimidate the recruit into making a hasty decision before she could visit another school and think better of it.

I spoke with her and her father at length about what was really happening—that this coach, afraid she would visit my team and find it a better fit, had decided to strong-arm and scare her rather than let her make the decision that was best for her and her future.

They understood but were too afraid of risking that the coach might rescind the offer. She canceled her visit to BU, costing the team nearly $1,000, and went to the other school.

How did that work out? She left the school before the end of her freshman year, quit the sport, and never again competed at Worlds.

After nearly 25 years in the sport, I’ve seen the recruiting process from every angle. I’ve been the overwhelmed high-school senior making every visit possible, uncertain whether I wanted the size and spirit of a large state school or the intimacy of a small DIII college. I’ve been the young assistant coach flying around the globe trying to identify and lock in the next difference-maker for my team. I’ve been the experienced head coach, more patient and also more jaded, trying to outmaneuver increasingly cutthroat opposing coaches while building my own program.

Through all of this, I saw time and again how a lack of honesty and transparency made the whole process much more anxiety-inducing than it needs to be. Sure, there will always be some degree of stress involved for recruits as well

as coaches. This is a big, expensive decision that will impact the next four years of their lives, and beyond.

For coaches, the future success of their teams depends on the accumulated strength of their recruiting classes. But time and again, I’ve seen how the egos and unrestrained competitiveness of some coaches and the inexperience, lack of confidence, and occasional hubris of recruits can make this far more difficult than it needs to be.

When asked to describe the current college-athletics recruiting scene, Becky Munsterer Sabky, a former admissions officer at Dartmouth College and author of Valedictorians at the Gate: Standing Out, Getting In, and Staying Sane While Applying to College, declared, “It’s a jungle out there.”

This is certainly true, but with some guidance, perspective, and candor, high-school rowers and coxswains, and their parents, can navigate the process successfully and land at a university where they are happy and can thrive athletically, academically, and personally.

Start with you.

The success of the entire recruiting process rests on having a solid understanding of its most important player: you. It doesn’t matter which teams made it to nationals last year or which university is on top of the rankings. What matters is that you are able to find the school and team that is the best fit for what you want out of your college experience. This requires honest reflection and the confidence to go for what you want, not necessarily what is expected of you.

“Expectations are important,” said Liz Trond, head coach of the Connecticut Boat Club (CBC) and former coach of the U.S. Junior National Team.

“Do you want to join a sorority, write for the school newspaper, be on the rowing team, go abroad, and take family trips all the time? OK, well then most of the programs in Division I and high Division III are not for you.”

Trond tells her athletes pointedly: “Don’t come to me and say ‘I want to row at Virginia but I’m super-excited to be in a sorority.’”

In the early days of the recruiting process, high schoolers must keep an open mind and look around at their options

with genuine curiosity. Talk to older athletes on your team and those who have graduated about their college searches and current college experiences. Visit every campus you can. Take virtual tours when you can’t. It’s just as important to know what you don’t want as what you do.

Know that there are benefits and disadvantages to every setup. The peaceful idyllic campus may require some extra travel time. The bustling city school may not offer housing all four years. It’s all about priorities.

Claire Ochal, head coach of Harvard-Radcliffe heavyweight rowing, spent five years coaching at Syracuse before coming to Cambridge. The two schools are very different, she says, and each has pros and cons.

“Syracuse is very professional. Athletic departments in the ACC, Big Ten, Big 12 are huge moneymakers for the university,” she said. “At Harvard, it feels a little more homey. It’s not driving the revenue of the institution. But your team isn’t getting on College GameDay every weekend.”

Recruits are hearing this throughout their college search, I hope, but it bears repeating: Choose the school first and the team second. You never know what will happen with your rowing career. You want to make sure that you’re at a school where you can be happy and have a great experience, with or without rowing.

That said, the athletics-recruiting piece of the college search has an undeniable impact on the process, for better or worse.

“The college application process on speed”

With 15 years of experience in college admissions, Sabky knows the college search process.

“Athletics can really be an advantage when you’re applying to colleges,” she said, “but it’s also, in terms of the timeline, a big disadvantage because you have to figure this all out much more quickly than other kids.”

Recruits need to have their testing and transcripts ready earlier and often are committing well before their nonrecruited peers.

For this reason, Sabky recommends reaching out to coaches as early as possible. Current NCAA rules prohibit verbal or written contact between college

coaches and high-school recruits until June 15 or later after sophomore year and in-person contact until Aug. 1 or later of the same year. She advises high schoolers to reach out to all of the coaches of the schools they’re interested in, provide some information about themselves, and ask about how they conduct their recruiting.

Trond goes a step further in advising her junior athletes. She urges them to write direct, specific emails, including their height, weight, and erg score up front, even if they’re not yet up to par with what would be expected at a certain program.

“It’s helpful to say, ‘Listen, I realize this is not Division I standard yet. This is what I’m working on. This is what I could contribute to your school.’ Put it out there,” she advises.

This level of candor and awareness of the process will allow the recruit and coach to have honest conversations from the get-go.

Some of this accelerated timeline is unavoidable, but some of it is being driven by the recruits themselves. Junior-year commitments, relatively unheard of in rowing only a decade ago, are becoming increasingly common at many schools. To be sure, some of this acceleration is coming from college coaches who are motivated to lock up top recruits before other coaches can get to them. But the pressure is just as likely to come from high schoolers themselves who want the security of an early decision and the relief of a concluded process before the beginning of senior year.

Coaches commonly see early decisions being made en masse within one team; once one junior makes his decision early, his teammates are far more likely to follow suit.

“The FOMO is insane,” one collegiate coach of a top-five program said, referring to the “fear of missing out.”

Ultimately, the fundamentals of the process are the same. “You’re students first. You’re going to have to take the SATs. You’re going to have to get recommendations. There are no shortcuts,” Sabky reminded. “So think of this as your college application process on speed.”

The role of parents

Copilot. This is the key responsibility and opportunity for parents in their children’s college recruiting process. Sabky believes no one wants to be or have a helicopter parent, but a backseat parent can be just as detrimental.

“The copilot parent is willing to be there to support the student but not necessarily driving the car,” Sabky said. This necessitates clear communication—between the parent and child as well as between the parent and coach (when appropriate).

“We want [parents] to feel comfortable with us as coaches,” Ochal said. “We want them to feel when their child is going to a place that’s going to be a home away from home for them that they trust the coaching staff to make the right decisions and look out for their child the best way they possibly can.”

Sabky believes there are practical benefits to having parents involved, particularly in important conversations. When discussing admissions, scholarships, timeline, and other complex topics, “it’s good to have other ears in the room” to ensure that everyone walks away with an accurate impression and a firm understanding of dollars and dates.

Crucially, parents should not overstep. It’s common throughout the sport that it’s often parents, more than high schoolers, who are pushing to get into the best college or row for the best team, regardless of fit or satisfaction.

Understandably, high-schoolers will go along with their parents’ wishes. Trond, who has seen this often with her CBC athletes, asked a group of parents about their goals.

“Are parents looking for college admission? Or are they looking for a fouryear, healthy, cool, challenging environment for their daughters?”

The parents’ answer: “Admissions.”

The unfortunate result of such a focus is that aspiring rowers may choose a school because it has the flashiest name, not because it excites them or has the academic program they’re interested in or has a team full of people with whom they fit in well.

Another important topic is money. I’ve seen countless instances when parents kept their kids in the dark about the family’s financial situation, leaving recruits unable to have effective, accurate conversations with coaches. When a coach asks, “Is need-based financial aid a possibility for

your family?” recruits need to have some idea of the answer. Whether financial aid or athletic scholarships are on the table, college-bound rowers ought to have an understanding of their family’s ability to contribute to the cost of their college education and how that works as part of growing into young adulthood.

Said Sabky: “The process should be the child’s, but the conversation about money should be the family’s.”

Getting jerked around

Most of the time, college coaches act with honesty and transparency during the recruiting process, but there are exceptions. Recruiting is a high-stakes fulltime endeavor for them. Their livelihoods depend upon their ability to assemble and develop the best team possible. Coaches are under a lot of pressure, and most—but not all—try to act fairly. As a recruit, you need to keep your wits about you so you can recognize when you’re getting jerked around and decide how much of that you’re willing to take.

This happens most commonly around commitments—the team’s commitment to offer a scholarship, roster spot, and/ or admissions support and the recruit’s commitment to apply to, attend, and row for the school.

Though this can be a high-stress time, the fundamentals of a strong relationship should not fly out the window. Accordingly, be forthright about your interest level. Don’t tell four schools they are all your top choice; coaches talk. Similarly, coaches should be expected to be honest. It’s reasonable for recruits to expect coaches to be clear about their interest level, what standards need to be met, and what factors will affect the timeline. If a coach can’t provide answers, ask yourself why. Sometimes coaches are keeping athletes on the back burner. They’re pursuing their top recruits and temporizing with second-tier recruits in case things don’t work out. Meanwhile, some athletes are doing likewise as they juggle different teams.

Eventually, this can put the whole process in jeopardy. Athletes end up holding out hope for a long shot while letting other great options fall by the wayside. You must decide for yourself how much of this you’re willing to take. Perhaps this is your dream school and you’ll wait forever for the chance to

row there. That’s fine, as long as you understand you may be sacrificing other opportunities.

Oftentimes, though, recruits face the opposite problem: coaches pressing them to make a decision before they’re ready. This is a tactic I saw time and again from some of the most cutthroat recruiters out there. I heard of a Big Ten coach who made a scholarship offer during a football game on an official visit but stipulated that the offer expired when the recruit left the stadium. I know of an instance at an ACC school (and many similar situations in other conferences), where a scholarship offer expired on the date the recruit was scheduled to leave for her next official visit, forcing her either to cancel the visit or to forego the offer. These high-pressure tactics put young people and their families in impossible and wholly unnecessary situations.

As a collegiate head coach, my philosophy was always that I wanted a team full of people who had great options and chose my team. I wanted recruits to take every visit, talk to every coach, so they could feel confident they were choosing the team and school that was the best fit for them.

By denying recruits this ability, coaches are building a team of athletes who were bullied and intimidated into choosing that school. All this does is reveal the lack of confidence the coach has in his own program. If he were sure about the quality of the experience his crew members were having, he’d be comfortable giving recruits the chance to explore their options thoroughly, while certain the best would choose his program.

Another time recruits must demand as much clarity as possible is when discussing their admissibility. Different conferences and schools use different language and processes to determine how likely it is that a recruit will be admitted.

In the Ivy League, for example, the admissions office confers “likely letters” on select prospective students, mostly recruited athletes, indicating the probability of their admission. Member schools have agreed that these letters can be issued only between Oct. 1 to March 15 of senior year after an academic preread process that cannot begin before July 1 before senior year. It’s not unheard of, however, for a coach to imply to a recruit that he or she is likely to be admitted in May of junior year. This may be nothing

more than an educated guess, and it’s considerably different from the assurance offered by an actual letter from the admissions office.

Conversations about admissions at many schools can be complex. Some coaches have direct communication with a representative in the admissions office who can give specific, personalized feedback on a recruit’s academics as early as junior year, advising which grades need to be improved and which classes to take senior year.

At other schools, coaches who have no relationship with the admissions office are compelled to offer their own best assessment, which can be highly variable and subject to their own biases. Whether because of unclear communication or intentionally misleading information, recruits are often left more, or less, certain of their admissibility than they should be. Therefore, it’s imperative that you ask direct, probing questions about this consequential topic. This is not a place for any ambiguity, intentional or otherwise.

In situations like these, you must ask yourself: If a coach is going to treat me like this during the recruiting process, when she’s trying to impress me and win me to her team, how will she treat me when I’m on the team and things are challenging? If a coach is going to tell a recruit he is definitely admissible, when he has no direct indication from admissions confirming that, how can he be trusted to be honest throughout the rest of the athlete’s career? If a coach is going to bully an athlete into committing before she’s ready, how is she going to behave when that same athlete is struggling to adapt to the pressures of collegiate rowing?

Taming the “Jungle”

To be sure, the college recruiting process is filled with nerves and uncertainty, long shots and tough calls. It is also, likely, the only time in your life that your love of and dedication to the sport of rowing will provide real, tangible benefits.

You may be able to get into a college that otherwise wouldn’t accept you. You may receive an athletic scholarship, worth up to $360,000 over four years. At the very least, you will have the opportunity to speak with coaches and current studentathletes to get a realistic understanding of life at their institution, an experience not available to the average applicant. You may

get feedback, or a decision, from admissions long before your peers. So do your best to enjoy the process. It’s truly a once-in-alifetime experience.

Counsels Sabky: “Be authentic, be thorough, and be ready to make these decisions a little bit faster—and to get good news a little bit earlier.”

Thanks for asking!

Some actual good questions

College coaches and rowers are used to being asked the same boring, superficial questions by most recruits. While you do need to cover the fundamentals, if you can find the answer on the university’s website, you shouldn’t ask the coach. You can set yourself apart from the rest of the recruiting class, while learning valuable information about a team, by asking thoughtful, specific questions. Experienced college and junior coaches recommend these:

• Tell me about a challenging conversation you’ve had with an athlete.

• What does it look like for the team when things are going well? What does it look like when things are going poorly?

• How do you work on team values regularly?

• What type of people are successful on your team?

• What outside resources do you bring in to support team development (culture, sports psych, nutrition, etc.)?

• How are injuries handled? How are athletic training and sports medicine involved in that process?

• What academic challenges do your rowers commonly face and what resources do they have to address them?

CASEY GALVANEK THE INTERVIEW

THE MAN INVOLVED WITH ROWING FROM ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS TO THE OLYMPIC TEAM IN SARASOTA COUNTY SAYS THERE ARE PLENTY OF WAYS TO GET INVOLVED, OPPORTUNITIES TO ROW, AND PATHWAYS TO THE NATIONAL TEAM.

No one has been involved more directly with the growth of rowing in Florida and the evolution of USRowing National Team development schemes in the 21st century than Casey Galvanek.

The Sarasota Crew CEO, president, and head coach has worn many hats and held numerous titles in his 20 plus years of coaching on every level, from learn-to-row to his current side hustle of selecting and preparing the U.S. men’s Olympic eight, while also leading one of the largest and most successful rowing clubs in America.

Rowing News: What’s it been like going from meeting a local need with Sarasota Crew in 2002, and winning that first state championship in a four, to becoming one of the largest and most successful rowing programs in the country in just 20 years?

When I came on board, there was a strong group of parents and a head coach, Tom Tiffany, who felt the need to expand opportunities for the families in Sarasota. When I arrived, they’d already been successful, but I decided, “Hey, we need to communicate individual athletes’ needs

more than a lot of team needs.”

And so we took that individual-athlete approach and expanded upon it. A lot of people were willing to try it, and it helped expand outreach into the community. The turning point was when a parent said, “If you’re looking for a program that’s looking out for the best interest of your child, then what Sarasota Crew is offering is the thing to do.” When I heard that, I thought, “Man, we’re really doing something special.”

Year after year, we grew and grew. At one point before Covid, we had 400 middleschool and high-school athletes. And then we added elementary schools and masters. So we have a big spread of age groups and approaches we need to tend to properly.

While that’s a difficult task, the approach of individual improvement has been the thing, and it’s been exciting to be part of it. We’ve had some great assistant coaches come through. People have taken the reins at our program and made it incredibly successful and then gone on to other programs and helped them be successful. So we’ve been lucky. We have great families, great kids, and great people who want to be part of it and help those kids and families.

Rowing News: Florida’s Sarasota County has gone from having small regattas on a flooded borrow pit to the best regatta course in the world at Nathan Benderson Park, at which Sarasota Crew now manages programs. What has it been like to be part of the development of the national home for our sport?

It’s been incredible. Nathan Benderson Park has turned into something far beyond the original prospects and ideas. Randy Benderson, well, Nathan Benderson at first, but Randy Benderson now, really pushed it, and the county was very supportive.

There’s been an incredible partnership with what is now the Nathan Benderson Park Conservancy, Benderson Development, and the county. They’ve cut through the red tape and said, “Hey, look, this would be best.”

If the county couldn’t provide it, Benderson would provide what was needed, and the county would provide their share, whether organizationally or bureaucratically or financially. It’s worked out really well, and they’ve all been very supportive. We [Sarasota Crew] currently have three locations, and it’s been incredible to see

behind the scenes just how much they want to be involved in helping the community.

Portions of our programming will now be centered at the park. Our outreach program will be at the park instead of our Osprey location, which cuts down on travel by over half and is an example of something that will benefit the community.

We have years of running a program. They have years of helping the community. Every time we say, “Hey, do you know if we could do this for the community?” they say, “OK, great, show us how you’re going to do it. We’ll support you.” It’s exciting to work with a group of people who are ready and willing to charge forward.

Rowing News: A great thing about rowing, and one of USRowing’s greatest accomplishments, is that we have a recognized unified national championship for youth rowing, which seems to be making a permanent home in Sarasota. How did that happen?

The unified nature of Youth Nationals now is terrific. When Chris Chase created an additional national championship in Saratoga for rowers under 15 and 17, there were two separate youth championship regattas. As part of his effort to grow rowing, he worked with USRowing to create a more nationally recognized event.

When the regatta was handed over to USRowing, with its tremendous outreach, it grew pretty large. For one year, it was in New Jersey as a separate event. When USRowing asked rowing programs,

“What would help you attend?” they said, “Bringing it together as one event.”

Yes, there have been hiccups, but now it’s an incredibly large regatta that has huge attendance, from 13-year-olds to 20-yearolds. There’s an energy I’ve never seen before at a regatta. It’s exciting for our kids, especially the young kids, to hang around and watch the older kids race, and it’s an awesome experience for the athletes from top to bottom.

They’ve done a terrific job of making sure that things run smoothly. They make corrections when they can fix them or figure out how to make things better. It really has helped us grow again after Covid. I hope other programs around the country are realizing the same thing and that more of their members and participants are able to attend.

Rich [Cacioppo, USRowing’s executive director] has done a good job of making sure people are paying attention to the details and trying to make things better. It’s definitely appreciated.

Rowing News: How has National Team development in America changed in the 21st century?

In the time I’ve been involved, we’ve seen a broad spectrum of approaches, beginning with tying it into more than just the erg, such as talking about development on the local level and reaching out to local coaches about what’s expected and what USRowing is looking for in terms of athlete participation.

A big step was creating the Olympic Development Program, which was really a U17 program before it became ODP, and now the Pathways program expands on that. Pathways was established to make sure coaches were using the same language, so athletes would understand the expectations and also so coaches would understand what we’re looking for.

The road has been rocky, and not everybody has bought in, but Josy [Verdonkschot, USRowing’s chief of high performance] has expanded the program, and Brett Gorman of Pathways is spreading the word about ways people can get involved. The effort has grown, especially over the past four years when Chris [Chase] was in charge of making sure the membership understood the opportunities and his department improved communication with athletes and their parents.

A big part of the process is letting people know they have opportunities and making the process so clear and defined that people understand it. It’s exciting to see a broader spectrum of people getting involved or get people involved who didn’t think they could be involved before. That’s how USRowing has spent most of its energy— making sure they’re reaching people who may not have known they could do things, that there’s opportunity.

Rowing News: So what don’t people— coaches, parents, old rowers—know or get about 21st-century elite rowing?

Twenty-first century rowing is about long-term investment. The key is athletic maturity and how developed you are as a rower. It’s not your energy level or your expectations. It’s where you are currently.

You can be an all-star junior athlete, but just because you’re amazing already does not mean that in two years you’re going to be an Olympic athlete. If you’re an amazing youth athlete, that’s a great start, but sometimes it still means you’re eight years out from the Olympics.

With social media and access to so much information, people assume they can jump the line. But the 21st century is about patience and going back to true development.

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TRAINING

Rapid Recovery

If the recovery is carried out skillfully, you can feel it in the boat; it seems light, fluid, and effortless. You need expend no extra energy, and you lose the least amount of speed.

The main aim of rowing is to row as fast as possible. Whether you’re racing, training, or rowing for pleasure, you want your effort to be rewarded with a nice run of the boat. And during the recovery, you want to lose as little speed as possible.

No doubt about it: You lose speed in the recovery phase. It’s a law of nature you can’t circumvent because there’s no propulsion during this sequence of the stroke. Yes, you accelerate the boat to top speed, but actually that’s not beneficial. Reason: It’s not the boat that matters but the total center of mass, which includes the boat, the oars, and you, and during the recovery, only resistance forces act on the total center of mass.

The boat’s speed increases because you pull on your foot stretchers and move the boat forward briefly relative to the overall center of gravity. By pulling on the foot stretchers, you transfer some of your energy to the boat, and these two partial masses moving relative to each other and the overall center of gravity generate speed.

A moment later, however, you slow down relative to the boat by pushing on the foot stretchers, thus reducing the boat’s speed significantly. All these movements are necessary, of course, because you must return to the catch position to begin propelling the overall center of gravity forward again.

The increase in the boat’s speed during the recovery is short-lived and is

accompanied by a corresponding increase in water resistance, which hampers the forward movement of the overall system and increases with the square of the velocity. In other words, a high boat speed results in a lot of drag forces that slow down the overall system.

Negative drag forces can be minimized by keeping the boat’s peak velocity low. You can do this in three ways:

1) Pull the foot stretcher with a lot of feeling and avoid abrupt movements.

2) Pull the foot stretcher in this way for as long as possible.

3) Push on the foot stretcher quickly toward the end of the recovery to minimize boat deceleration.

While this can lead to a so-called “big

SPORT SCIENCE

TRAINING

check” of the boat (which some still believe is bad), several studies have shown that what matters is not the size of the check—i.e., the amount of the boat’s deceleration—but how long it lasts.

That’s why it’s crucial for us rowers to master the recovery. A skillful recovery begins, first and foremost, with keeping the boat balanced. This alone is difficult, especially in small boats. It then requires a high degree of coordination of your joint movements, which must be executed with dexterity, followed by a rapid reverse movement that involves enormously complex precision in squaring your blades, positioning your hands correctly as they enter the water, keeping your center of gravity on a horizontal path while simultaneously pushing off quickly from the foot stretchers. Accomplishing this complex movement is hard enough for one rower; in a team boat, the challenge of orchestrating it together is even greater.

If the recovery is carried out skillfully, you can feel it in the boat; it seems light, fluid, and effortless. You need expend no extra energy, and you lose the least amount of speed during this period when all that’s acting on the overall system are resistance forces.

The validity of these principles is demonstrated by an old invention. In the early 1980s, the sliding rigger was introduced and proved its superiority by winning three consecutive world championships in the men’s single sculls before it was banned by World Rowing (then called FISA). A boat equipped with a sliding rigger had a fixed seat, while the rigger, foot stretcher, and oarlocks formed a single unit that the rower moved on slides to engage his legs during the stroke.

The advantage of this system was that there was no movement between a rower’s center of mass and that of the boat. This meant that the speed of the overall center of mass was the same, more or less, as that of the boat and the rower. Notably, boat speed during the recovery did not increase, which reduced the water resistance of the boat significantly and conferred a distinct competitive edge. VOLKER NOLTE

The Science of Seat Racing

For coxswains, this high-pressure selection ritual offers plentiful opportunities to prove the Louis Pasteur adage that chance favors the prepared mind.

Almost every rower and coxswain has heard the call “Pull the boats together and switch!”

Seat racing is one of the highest-pressure situations coxswains can find themselves in during practice, and it’s important to be prepared to perform on these days. There can be a lot on the line, including the final seats for a championship regatta.

Regardless of how your coach runs selection, your primary job as the coxswain is to race the boat well and ensure that the pieces are fair. It’s crucial that you steer well, adhere to rates, and assist with accurate data collection. The basics are straightforward: Know the plan. If your coach expects the same rates for each piece, know what rate variance, if any, is acceptable. The importance of holding rate cannot be understated; if the boat is over or under rate, the data collected may not be valid. Make sure you are clear on the calls to start and stop. Practice some of the CoxBox and SpeedCoach functions during lower-stakes practices so you can

act quickly and leave your hands on the steering as much as possible when the time comes.

If pieces are being timed simultaneously by your coach and by your GPS, clarify whether you are stopping on the coach’s call or running the piece until the GPS has ended. Just as on race day, you never want to stop before the line.

If your team allows coxing during seat racing, it’s a great opportunity to practice your race-day calls. Speak with your coach beforehand to establish the level of similarity he or she is looking for between pieces. It’s important to know if you have full authority to race the piece at your discretion.

For silent seat racing, you have a terrific opportunity to observe how the boat moves and the way different rowers on the team influence the feel and pace of the shell. It’s also a good time to focus on your steering.

If you’re on a buoyed course, you can practice precisely where you like to look to keep the boat straight between the lines. If you’re not on a buoyed course,

watch the way your tiny adjustments affect the boat. Assess your line and any stationary points of reference as you go within a piece, and once you’ve crossed the finish line, you can even turn your head to check your wake to see how your steering looks. If you have your steering dialed in, you have the gift of a day simply to observe the rowing and develop your boat feel.

There’s also the matter of your own seat racing. If you’re part of a program that does coxswain seat races, you already know that you need to seize the chance when it comes. As is the case for rowers, you may get only one switch to demonstrate your abilities in a particular crew.

If you’re switched on the water, take a deep breath and get yourself and your equipment situated. If there’s time, take a moment and speak to your stroke or bow seat to get a pulse on the boat and what they’ve been working on.

Most important, trust yourself and don’t let the pressure of the moment get to you. You earned yourself the opportunity.

HANNAH WOODRUFF

The Learning Imperative

Staying on top means continually acquiring new knowledge, no matter the source.

Most American rowing coaches learned experientially rather than in the classroom. They rowed themselves and coach much like they were coached. They have experientially acquired their “performance anchors.” These are the things they do and core beliefs they hold that anchor their concept of the rowing stroke, training, relationships with athletes, and psychology. But just like a mountain climber, the best coaches constantly establish new, higher anchors, by learning current best practices. In doing so they advance their coaching effectiveness and climb higher up the competitive mountain.

The easiest way to learn and grow is by reading. There are dozens of books and websites available. USRowing has some excellent material online, as does this magazine. The cost is low, and the quality good enough that you don’t need to pick the absolute best article; you’ll learn something valuable from nearly all of them. Almost as easy is learning by observing carefully. Select some fast scullers or crews and watch them online. Break down the stroke and identify what they’re doing. Relate it back to what your athletes do currently. By both reading and observing, you’ll learn best doing it with a colleague and discussing it.

Colleagues and coaching peers are incredible, readily available resources. Make the effort to ride along with other coaches. Almost all coaches will welcome you. You don’t need to ride along with a higher-level coach to learn something. It’s terrific if you’re a high-school coach and can hop in the

launch with a college coach, but embrace the value of riding along and listening to your peers. There are learning opportunities right in your own boathouse, and they are the ones most often neglected.

Similarly, observe coaches from other sports conducting practices. Go to a swimming or track practice and see how others coach ‘race sports’. Go to a basketball or soccer practice and watch how a ‘game sport’ is coached. Track the amount of time spent on conditioning compared to skills, the percentage of positive feedback versus correction, the number of times the coach addresses an individual compared to a group. If you watch successful coaches, you’ll find methods you can use to increase your success.

Conferences and formal coachingeducation programs are guided-learning opportunities. The curriculum will teach you something, and the conversations you engage in outside of the sessions can enlighten you. Just being surrounded by your peers for a weekend can lead to renewed enthusiasm and substantial learning. Yes, there is a cost, but these events are both recreation and “recreating” yourself as a coach.

All of this is “extra.” It takes time and effort on top of what you’re already doing. This is why many don’t do it. It’s also why those who do move ahead of those who do not. If you think you know it all—or more accurately, if you behave like you know it all—then you are a moment away from defeat. There is no standing still in our rowing world.

BILL MANNING

Stop Picking on Processed Foods!

It’s possible to get 90 percent of your calories from ultraprocessed food and still consume a quality diet.

In today’s food culture, we’ve demonized certain types of foods, such as those with abundant carbs, fat, salt, and sugar. The latest demon is ultraprocessed foods. No doubt you’ve seen the headlines:

Ultra-Processed Foods Linked to Heart Disease, Diabetes, Mental Disorders and Early Death, Study Finds

Eating Processed Foods Tied to Shorter Life

You Should Stop Eating Ultra-Processed Foods

Such fear-mongering headlines induce many athletes to steer clear of ultraprocessed foods (UPFs). While that may be a wise choice nutritionally, the term ultra-processed foods gets tossed around way too loosely.

Clickbait headlines often fail to offer a balanced overview. Sports drinks, gels, protein bars, as well as frozen meals, storebought bread, and vanilla yogurt (all UPFs), can be helpful additions to a busy (and budget-minded) athlete’s food plan. Will these foods really ruin your health?

Let’s look beyond the headlines so you can understand what UPFs are and what they’re not, based on information presented by registered dietitian Liz Ward recently at the annual meeting of the Massachusetts Academy of Nutrition & Dietetics.

What is an ultra-processed food?

Foods are categorized by the NOVA (not an acronym) system based on how they’ve been processed. There are four categories, none of which takes into consideration nutritional value:

FUEL

Group 1. Unprocessed or Minimally Processed Foods—fresh and frozen fruits and vegetables, plain meat, oats, coffee, pasta.

Group 2. Processed Culinary Ingredients (oils, fats, salt, and sugar)—many foods from Group 1 but in a different form: olive oil vs. olives, white sugar vs. sugar cane, maple syrup vs. sap, butter vs. cream. Again, no mention of nutritional value.

Group 3. Processed Foods—home-cooked and commercially made food with salt, sugar, oil, plus preservatives to extend the shelf life in foods from Groups 1 and 2. Examples include many foods thought to be good for us: smoked salmon, canned beans, canned tuna, and fresh cheeses.

Group 4. Ultra-Processed Foods— “industrial formulations” with fat, oil, sugar, starch, flavor enhancers, colors, and food additives. This group includes sports and energy drinks, cookies, baked chips, candy, as well as chocolate milk (excellent for recovery after a hard workout); tofu and salted nuts (protein for vegetarians); and packaged whole-grain bread.

Many UPFs are nutrient-rich and positive choices for athletes. Hence, you want to think about nutrient density more than NOVA classifications!

What does the science say about ultra-processed foods?

While click-bait headlines proclaim UPFs are linked to heart disease, diabetes, brain health, and early death, the science is less definitive. Most UPF research looks at what people eat and may overlook other factors that affect health: stress, economic status, exercise, and lifestyle. Research indicates ultra-processed foods such as breakfast cereal and sweetened yogurt can and do have health benefits.

To date, only one well-controlled study has compared the impact of two weeks of eating a UPF diet (80 percent of calories) to a diet with minimally processed foods but nutritionally similar foods (in terms of carbs, protein, fat, and fiber). The results suggest the subjects ate more calories and gained two pounds during the two-week UPF diet and lost two pounds during the two-week minimally processed food trial.

Does this mean the media can declare rightfully that UPFs are fattening? No. Research done under highly controlled conditions differs from the “real life” eating patterns of athletes (which could deliver fewer calories from UPFs easily since 60 to 67 percent of calories come from UPFs in the typical U.S. diet). Plus, two weeks is a short trial.

Is processing the problem or is something else the culprit?

• Emulsifiers (cellulose gum, polysorbate 80) have been linked to negative changes in rats in the gut microbiome. Stay tuned for human studies.

• PFAs (polyfluoroalkyl chemicals) are endocrine-disrupting substances that resist grease, oil, and water. They are found in food packaging such as shiny wrappers on energy bars, grease-resistant microwave popcorn bags, and paper take-out food containers. In February, PFAs were banned in U.S. food packaging, but has the metabolic damage been done already?

• Is hyper-palatability the problem? Foods made with sugar and fat are more pleasing than sugar-free and fat-free foods—and even sugar and fat itself. Chocolate, for example, offers an appealing mix of sugar and fat that makes it very easy to overeat.

Food for thought

Before demonizing all UPFs, we need to look at the whole picture. We know that chronic health issues are linked to eating patterns that lack fiber from fruits, vegetables, whole grains, beans, legumes,

and nuts. We also know that eating excess calories of salt, added sugars, and certain kinds of fat commonly found in UPFs can harm health. But despite popular belief, it’s possible to choose a food plan that’s 90 percent UPFs and still consume a quality diet. It’s your overall dietary pattern—what, when, why, and how much you eat—and not just UPFs that determines your health.

We need to figure out why some people eat too many addictive UPFs, such as salty snacks and sweets. We’d also like NOVA to add a category for nutrient-dense processed foods to mitigate the demonization of all UPFs. Sausages and hot dogs should not be in the same category as tofu and peanut butter!

When making your nutritional game plan, there’s little doubt that munching on Group 1 nuts and fruits (instead of prewrapped bars) and spending more time cooking homemade foods with fresh locally grown Group 1 foods will be the ultimate winning diet.

But convenience is a key reason people reach for UPFs. So keep your pantry stocked with minimally processed foods so you can assemble a quick meal conveniently (whole grain bread + all-natural peanut butter + banana + yogurt; rye crackers + canned tuna + cherry tomatoes + cheese).

As always, you want to eat more of the best and less of the rest, keeping balance and moderation in mind.

Sports nutritionist NANCY CLARK, M.S., R.D., counsels both casual and competitive athletes in the Boston area (Newton; 617-795-1875). Her best-selling Nancy Clark’s Sports Nutrition Guidebook can help you eat to win. For more information, visit NancyClarkRD.com.

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COACH DEVELOPMENT

More Than Wins and Losses

For those who have been at the top, it may be surprising how quickly that feeling passes and how it feels a lot more like relief than jubilation.

Wins and losses are not the measure of a coach but merely one fleeting accounting of the competitive landscape. When coaches are clear about why they’re coaching, they can tally up their wins, and losses, in order to achieve lasting, repeatable, sustainable victory.

The peak of spring season may not feel like the time to contemplate such heady ideas but it is, in fact, the most important time to be doing just that. If not now, when freshly singed by the fire of competition, when else will you be able to look yourself squarely in the eye and assess, truly assess, your reasons for coaching? When emotions are heightened and nerves are frayed, we have a clearer view into our own hearts and have a better chance of reading what’s written there.

Wins and losses are fleeting. I’ve won national championships and been back

on the recruiting trail mere hours later. I’ve suffered heartbreaking losses and found quick solace in the resiliency and perspective of young people. As hooks on which to hang your self-worth, both states are too evanescent. And, crucially, others get a say in your race results; the enemy gets a vote.

For a long and fulfilling career, coaches must identify what it is that lights their fire, regardless of outside factors. I hope we’d all agree that there isn’t just one coach or team, the national champion, that has had a successful year. And for those who have been at the top, it may be surprising how quickly that feeling passes and how it feels a lot more like relief than jubilation. So we need to take the next step of defining what it is exactly that we’re working so hard to achieve each year.

None of this is to imply that achieving competitiveness means sacrificing lasting

success. Quite the contrary: Competitive excellence follows from leaders who are clear about their values and priorities, who are sure of themselves and why they do what they do.

Time can teach you a lot, but not everything and not without your active participation. Be curious about yourself. Elevate the expectations and aspirations you have for yourself and others. Do the work to find your own victories and build a career, and life, that allows you to be victorious as often as possible. You are more than your wins and losses.

So, as you reach the end of your spring season, I challenge you to find what gave you energy and joy this year, what kept you motivated, engaged, and creative. Write that down clearly and succinctly. Put it somewhere you can see it and work to have more of that next year. Start there.

MADELINE DAVIS TULLY

BOSTON

Massachusetts, USA

Thursday, Dec. 12 to Saturday, Dec 14, 2024

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Washington, USA

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DOCTOR ROWING CON’T FROM PAGE 66 >>>

The bottom line is that coxswains want to feel they’re making a contribution. Get your squad together and help them by talking about what you’d like to hear. A good exercise is to have them record themselves. Ask them to do some selfcriticism. And then point out what you like and what needs improvement. The solution here is not one or the other but helping your cox to become better. And if this doesn’t work, try sculling or a straight four.

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ANDY ANDERSON

Thinking Outside The Cox

Coxswains want to feel they’re making a contribution. Get your squad together and help them by talking about what you’d like to hear and what needs improvement.

Dear Doctor Rowing,

Some guys in our boat have been talking about coxswains. Specifically, what is worse, a coxswain who talks too much or one who is largely silent?

As you can probably tell, our team has one of each kind, and our coach wants feedback. I don’t know whom to support.

How to choose?

Why not speak with each coxswain and try to help him or her become the kind of ‘swain you want in your boat?

Let me answer you by asking another question: Which is worse, an oarsman who catches crabs or one who doesn’t pull very hard?

By focusing on the negative, you may be overlooking some of the good points of each cox. You may think that I am being a Pollyanna, but why not speak with each coxswain and try to help him or her become the kind of ‘swain you want in your boat?

The silent cox probably doesn’t know what to say or may be intimidated by you guys. Reach out and take some steps toward friendship. Suggest things that you’d like to hear. I tell my coxswains to get to know the people in their boats. What motivates them?

The coxswain who speaks on every single stroke risks being ignored. A steady stream of “Drive it” or “Finish strong” every stroke, while probably good advice, gets old. When something really important needs to be said, like “Up two” or “We need to settle; bring it down on the next stroke,” there’s a good chance that the rowers won’t hear it. Rowers need to think about what they are doing. Too much chatter is distracting.

While we’re on the subject of coxswains talking, let me remind you to stay positive. I’ve had coxswains try out “You’re losing. Pull harder!” and “My grandmother can pull harder than you can” (appropriate only if Carie Graves was your grandmother).

Be judicious about counting. There’s nothing worse than hearing “7, 8, 9, 10 down, 50 to go.” Calling and counting out strokes should be for special-focus moves, not something that you do all through a race. Rather than point out the obvious—the boat is down to port—try to offer suggestions to help with the balance. Pay attention when the coach addresses issues. And then repeat the coach’s suggestions. Don’t be afraid of being a parrot; that’s how a coxswain learns.

Although many rowers focus justifiably on what coxswains say, of greater importance is how they steer. I like to remind coxswains that “no one else can steer.” And here we have another “which is more important” issue—a coxswain who steers very aggressive lines and may hit buoys once in a while or one who is more conservative. Yes, I’m also talking about coming into the dock for a landing. Not all races are run on a straight-as-an-arrow course. Small and sometimes big turns find their way into many racecourses. It may not be a rules violation to have your blades on the other side of buoys, as in the Head of the Charles, but hit just one and the risk is much greater than the potential gain. Don’t try to be a hero, coxswains. If you do this all the time without a problem, I guess I’d say go for it, but know that you could become the goat—and I don’t mean the GOAT.

PHOTO: LISA WORTHY