Mike Sullivan
Bair Island Sculling Coach
In the past few weeks on the water, there hasn't been a day when at least one crew rowed on the wrong side of the course that I've seen, and I'm on the water Tues, Wed, Thur, Fri mornings. The biggest problem is usually the Pete's Harbor corner, and some general lack of boatmanship at making the next right turn toward the BIAC yard (boats tend to stray into the south shore). The next problem is often figuring out the turning basin area near green 21.
I don't care to name names, It is scullers, private boats, club boats, BIAC sweep programs, visiting programs - everybody. It would be simpler to name the folks who get it right.
I've been gently and not so gently reminding everybody I see, but I now realize that the problem is so pervasive that I have a sense that rowing on the correct side of the course seems to end up as a 'suggestion' in the culture at BIAC, and not a sense of pride, discipline, responsibility, and professional boatmanship.
Rowing is a simple sport. You sit on a sliding seat and pull on an oar to make the boat go. You take an outstanding crew, put it on an attractive body of water and that crew can make that body of water look even more beautiful. The simplicity of the sport is what makes it so difficult to do well. Disciplining your body to do what a focused mind demands of it is one of the truly rewarding challenges we face as people. It doesn't matter how fast you make your boat go, as long as you are getting the ultimate speed that your particular body can impart to it.
Getting a coach to teach you how to catch properly is great, but it's a waste of their time and yours if you don't attempt to apply it to your rowing on every stroke. This takes focus and concentration every stroke, and that's hard to do. This is what rowing well demands, however, is focus on every stroke.
Part of learning how to focus, is demanding of yourself that you do focus, setting the expectation that every stroke will be the best you can do. If you focus only on the racing strokes, or only on the drills, or only when you feel like it, the 'detached mind' strokes you take will reinforce more bad strokes. Focused rowing both requires and builds pride in a positive feedback loop.
This attitude should pervade all of your rowing, that there are correct ways of doing everything, from carrying boats, getting in and out of them, backing, holding water, steering, and YES, the focus of being in the right place on the rowing course. It's a matter of will, concentration, and pride. Do it all the best you can, whether it be catching, releasing, pulling hard, and maintaining the correct course. One can be a personal mess, a sloppy disaster in their personal lives but should walk into a boathouse and suddenly become well ordered, professional, an elite champion, no matter how fast your shell actually goes relative to others.
Mike Sullivan is irrelevant in the rowing world, I cannot instill this attitude in a single person based on my authority (which I have none). Everything I know I've learned from my betters over the 38 years I've rowed and coached from the beginner recreational to the international level, I didn't make any of this stuff up.
I can only convince BIAC of this by the intrinsic sense it makes. I'll admit, as rowing has grown dramatically, the standards of discipline in boat handling have drastically degraded throughout the country - a sad fallen empire. I see it at every regatta and at many boathouses I visit. If that's the case, then let BIAC at least be a small bastion of professionalism in the maelstrom of mediocrity.
BIAC could well figure out some sort of system where people who skirt or scoff at course rules must abide by some kind of penalty (a ticket? a fine? a time out?) If it takes this sort of system to do this, then I'm probably wasting my time at BIAC. If rowing a boat is like driving a car where most people do what they can get away with trying not to hit other people, then rowing isn't a discipline anymore, it's a pastime.
If you want no more out of rowing than a pastime, BIAC is wonderful and welcome place to do that, it is well set up for that. Please follow the course rules anyway.
If you share this ideal, it is your responsibility as a BIAC member to help set this expectation in the rest of the club. I wouldn't expect everybody to be a boathouse bitch like me, but a word to your cox at the end of the day, or to someone you were sculling with - "hey, we cut that corner, we shouldn't be doing that", will
remind all what the standards of good rowing should be, just like slide control or timing.
|
