RowingRelated

In light of our recent opinion piece on the chatter surrounding USRowing in the wake of Rio's results, there has been a lot of back-and-forth about what 'coaching' means, and about how that relates to the athletes, and the wider culture of a team. While our position in the opinion piece was founded on the idea that the athletes were 'bought in' and executing the program as laid out by the coaches to the best of their abilities, U.S. national team veteran Mike Gennaro believes that some doubts crept in along the way, creating cracks in the team-wide trust that later became rifts.

The UCSB boathouse (Photo by Culver Lau) Editor's Note: In 2013, Olympian Brad Lewis discussed his time coaching at the University of California, Santa Barbara, in a podcast for a website called Sports Coach Radio. In the interview, which covers a range of coaching-related topics, Lewis attributes the team’s struggles to drunk and hungover athletes, calls the program "the worst in the country, bar none," and states that most students at the university have a medical marijuana card (skip forward to minutes 39-42 for Lewis' thoughts on UCSB). As most readers of RR know, UCSB has long had one of the strongest club rowing programs on the West Coast, and as such we thought there was more to the story than the singular perspective that Lewis offers. Here's a look at the reality behind the fiction. After Brad Lewis wrote one of the best books ever about rowing, Assault On Lake Casitas , he wrote a work of fiction entitled Wanted: Rowing Coach . Although Lewis ...

Conibear Shellhouse, Seattle (Photo: RR) Coaching is difficult. Success depends on the right mixture of soft and hard skills, in many cases unique to a particular group of athletes, program type, or other circumstance. Examples abound across all sports and professions. It’s not uncommon for a successful coach at one program to move to another and not see the same results. Why does that happen? Did they forget how to coach? What makes for success at one program and not at another? These are difficult, if not impossible, questions to answer. What is possible, though, is to better understand the challenge of assuming a new leadership or coaching position. First up, the evaluative and preparatory steps. Know the Level This applies to any new situation, for both veteran and novice coaches alike. Before you can hold athletes, coaches, and programs to a standard of performance, it’s imperative that you understand how that standard relates to success at your level. In rowing, m...

Isis trains along the Putney Embankment, London (Photo: RR) Taken together, coaching team dynamics and dealing with different personalities form a very important aspect of coaching in any team sport, and rowing is certainly no exception.  With so many people from a variety of different backgrounds, high school, collegiate and national teams always contain a large mix of personalities and abilities. Teammates who might have different approaches and different motivations must find a way to work together and have a sense of cohesiveness if they are to succeed. Finding a way to walk the line and balance these differing individuals is the difficult task of the coach.  While a large part of coaching in any sport is taken up with the "Xs and Os" and technical aspects, it is as important, if not more important, to be a great leader. To be a great leader, one must not only have the charisma to teach and inspire, but also the ability to understand and facilitate the creation of team...