#coxswains

“I remember going down to the shell house to take the boat apart, to take the riggers off, and the German coxswain was there. He couldn't speak any English, and I couldn't speak any German, but we were kind of looking at each other's boat, and pointing at it, and so forth, and then he stopped when we got to our boat, down near where the coxswain sits, and he pointed. He saw that piece of iron bark alongside of me, alongside of the coxswain, that I used to hammer on with the dowels, and he looked at that, and he pointed to the bark and he pointed to the dowel and he said, "Good," "Sur Good." He could hear those knockers clear across the racecourse. We got along fine with the men. No problem at all.”

And I’ve come to realize that - whether I ultimately decide to pursue weight loss or not - the reason why I’ve deliberated on the issue for so long is because of the fact that as a coxswain, I’m not doing any physical work (beyond that of moving the rudder) and so am prone to feeling like dead weight, when in reality, I as a coxswain couldn’t be anything further, as dead weight implies a certain uselessness, and God only knows how crucial a coxswain is to a crew.

But even if I did choose to lose weight, I certainly wouldn’t be cutting it. I have far too much respect for my teammates and coaches - who have lectured me on several occasions on the sin of cutting weight.

About a year ago today, I changed my header on this page to “Out to prove something, NEVER count me out” 

I posted this after my freshman season of college coxing. One in which I saw absolutely no racing, whereas my two freshman counterparts saw at least one opportunity to do so, and so I spent a lot of time in a launch, and finished the season angry and disappointed, hence the phrase.

I promised myself I’d come back the next season and be better than ever, and thats exactly what I did. I came back smarter, more confident, ready to make the changes necessary to allow me to race. 

It wasn’t easy and it wasn’t pretty. I spent the fall racing the 5th 4+ in one race, rather a disappointing start. And so I spent the winter again plotting my comeback. 

This spring was a roller coaster. I was told I was probably the 5th coxswain on the team, again. I was told my weight was a problem, and I had a great deal of learning to do. I decided to take matters into my own  hands, and change that number as much as possible. With the help of a lot of salad (and some self control) I got my weight back into control, and just kept tweaking my game. I was then told that it was a threeway race for the 3v, and I had a good shot. Game on.

My teammates took a vote and I narrowly lost out on the 3v. I was told I would have another opportunity to win it back. I was not. So I worked with the 4v, or the pieces of it, since due to injuries we could only manage a four or so for most of spring. 

I finally broke through and raced the 4v 4+ in a dual with BU, where we promptly got smacked.... and then the next week my coaches told me the 5th ranked coxswain would race in order to “give him a second chance” words that still piss me off now.

He would end up racing that weekend, and lose as well, and the 4v elected me back in...bout time. 

Finally healthy enough to support a 4v 8+ for EARC sprints, which were only a week away, it had to be a fast learning curve. And we came every day to practice with the mentality that we would leave it all out on the water and whatever happened would happen, but lets give it our best shot. 

Come sprints, which saw 25 mph tailwinds and whitecaps the whole way down, we struggled badly in our heat, and found us ranked last and headed to petite finals. Our coaches told us to go out there and give it a shot and oh well.... We got together and decided that this was our last race of the season, we are gonna do a bit better than that, and so we refocused and brought our A game in the petite final.

Crossing the 1000m mark, we still trailed the pack, with Cornel almost a length ahead the next closest boat.

And then I looked over and saw that Cornel was not moving, and rather was just beginning to fade, and so it was game on. In the last 800 meters we flipped the script on Cornel, who in our heat beat us by 14 seconds, and we nosed them out by .5 seconds in our final. Not bad for the last ranked 4v with a week of practice.