May 3, 2007 Issue                                       

©2007 The Chestnut Hill Local

Not large, but definitely in charge
by TOM UTESCHER

COMPACT COMMANDERS Mount St. Joe’s eight varsity coxswains line it up (left to right: Faith Zaki, Meghan Cardell, Jane Mieczkowski, Alicia Elliott, Devon Stewart, Tori O’Malley, Nicole Weinrich, Gina Perri). Behind, to provide perspective, are varsity eight rowers Meg Kehan (left) and Meredith Weber. Coxswain? A coxswain or cockswain was at first the swain (boy servant) in charge of the small cock or cockboat that was kept aboard for the ship’s captain and which was used to row him to and from the ship. The term has been in use in England dating back to at least 1463. With the passing of time the coxswain became the helmsman of any boat, regardless of size. [Naval Historical Center]

In referring to them as “the little cheerleaders,” a former editor of the Local expressed a popular, if uninformed, perception of the responsibilities of the coxswain in the sport of crew.

Found nestled at one end of most sweep-rowing boats (one oar per rower, as opposed to two in the discipline known as sculling), coxswains share with the rowers in their charge a peer relationship that is rarely found elsewhere in athletics. A high school coxswain who has been well-trained and seasoned in competition will possess many of the organizational, managerial, and interpersonal skills necessary to run a small business corporation.

To appreciate the importance of their contributions to a successful rowing program one need look no farther than Mount St. Joseph Academy, whose head coach, Megan Kennedy, was a coxswain at Drexel University.

Last spring, the Mount Magic won three goals medals and one bronze at the prestigious Stotesbury Regatta, three golds and two silvers at the scholastic national championships, and a gold medal at the U.S. Rowing Youth championships. Anyone associated with the Mount program will agree that the quality of the school’s coxswains was a major factor in that achievement. So just what is it that they do?

“I’d say there are three main jobs for the coxswain,” explains MSJ junior Devon Stewart, who has won five national-level gold medals and is a U.S. Junior National Team candidate. “There’s steering, always making sure you’re on a straight course, knowing how to steer with a headwind, crosswind, and tailwind [the cox controls the boat’s rudder by tugging on a cable down at her side]. You’ve really got to stay on top of it with a younger crew, because they may not be pulling evenly.

“Another thing is motivating,” she continues. “I’ll look anywhere, get quotes from books, lines from songs and movies, anything to stir them up. You have to make them forget about the pain they’re going though and focus on what we need to do to reach our goal.”

The third major task, Stewart says, “is strategizing. You need to know what the course is like, you need to know the crews you’re racing against and check them out in previous races if you can. You need to know when to move in the middle of the race, and how to go after the sprint at the end. Also, you keep your ears open for the other coxes’ calls during a race, so you know when they’re making a move.”

“After you send them off the dock on race day, as a coach there’s nothing else you can do,” points out Kennedy. “The coxswain’s in charge now.”

Mount varsity coach Mike McKenna states, “The ultimate test of a coxswain for me is whether or not you can implicitly trust them to do what you would do in a given situation. I watch the races and I try to see as many strokes as I can, but oftentimes you get the most valuable feedback from the coxswain. If they have a good sense of what’s going right and what’s going wrong, it’s invaluable in helping you make adjustments for the next race.”

Most of the Mount St. Joe coxswains started out wanting to be rowers. When younger, a sampling of their athletic activities included playing basketball, hockey, softball, and volleyball, and participating in tri-athlons and in dance. In crew, their height - usually 5’3” or less - often dictated their eventual role.

Senior Jane Mieczkowski, in her second year as the varsity eight cox, recalls her moment of truth as a freshman, when she and a group of other rowers were carrying an eight down the Mount’s boat ramp to the dock and turning it so it was parallel to the river for launching.

“We didn’t know how to turn it so that everyone would fit on the dock,” she said. “The boat was swinging across the dock and I hung on and I fell into the river. That’s when Mr. Glavin [the former freshman coach at the Mount] said ‘How would you like to be a coxswain?’ “

Things worked out well for Mieczkowski, an aspiring nurse who’ll enter Boston College in the fall. In the MSJ freshman eight, lightweight eight (10th grade), and varsity eight, she’s earned three gold medals at the scholastic nationals and two at Stotesbury. Like the other Mount coxswains, she’ll do some off-water training on the ergometer and occasionally go out for a row in her spare time in order to better identify with what her boatmates go through on a daily basis.

Since the Mount program was started in the 1999-2000 academic year, Kennedy’s presence has assured that the coxswains are given their due.

McKenna, a former rower, relates, “The traditional way coaches work with coxswains is basically holler at them until they do the right thing. Megan would tend to moderate my behavior towards the coxswains, and I toned it down after awhile. Now with three coaches who are former coxswains [Stuart Chase and recent addition Joe Blickley are the others], we’re a little more pro-active in training them.”

From the get-go, Kennedy notes, both rowers and coxswains are taught, “In sweep rowing, if you don’t have a coxswain, you don’t go out. One of the first things the girls learn about racing is that when you cross the finish line, the only person who physically needs to be in the boat in order for the race to count is the coxswain. There’s a great video from the 2003 Junior World Championships in Athens, when really high winds swamped one of the U.S. boats and most of the rowers were in the water. They got the cox back in and swam him across the line in order to advance to the next round.”

Coxswains are giving commands as soon as their vessels are lifted off of a trailer or boat rack, since handling a 60-foot-long eight-seater requires a coordinated effort on land, as well as on the water. At the race venue, even when rowers are chilling out prior to competition, the coxswain must already be focused on the race.

Alicia Elliott, an 11th grader who led the JV eight to a gold medal at Stotesbury and a silver at Nationals last year, advises “The main thing is always be prepared. Know your event, your lane assignment, your competition. Make sure your boat is rigged out, and that everything is on-schedule to get to the starting line on time. Know where all your rowers are; if someone’s going off to use the bathroom, you need to know it.”

When racing, she says, “You’ve always got to keep your cool; you have to be the voice of confidence. If a problem comes up, you need to have a plan and execute it. You can’t hesitate and think things over.”

Today’s coxswains are literally “wired” into their boats. Wearing a headset with a microphone, they talk to their rowers through amplified speakers placed along the interior of the shell. It’s all plugged into a compact control module called a “cox box,” an electronic device which is also connected to sensors that measure the speed the boat is traveling and the rate of strokes-per-minute by the rowers.

Later, this information can be downloaded to a computer to analyze how the stroke rating correlates to actual speed through the water, and coxes can tape their own oratory to gauge how their call of the race affected the crew’s performance at various points on the course. Coxswains also learn to rely on post-race feedback from their rowers, particularly the veterans, as to how the boat “felt” to those plying the oars.

“It’s a lot more involved than I originally thought,” says sophomore Nicole Weinrich, cox of the Mount’s gold medal freshman eight at the 2006 Nationals. “With the steering, keeping track of the different splits and the ratings, realizing when there’s something wrong with the stroke and being able to fix it.”

It’s a lot to take in for a beginner, and when Stuart Chase joined the coaching staff in the fall of 2004, he formalized the training of the Mount’s coxswains. He’d performed in that capacity himself, first at Lower Merion High School and then at the University of Pittsburgh and the Penn AC club on Boathouse Row.

“In the winter,” he explains, “the more experienced girls help run our workouts when the rowers are on the ergometers or lifting weights, but things can get monotonous for the beginners. I put a coxswains’ manual in place, and put together an extensive quiz. They don’t get graded on it, but we discuss the results together. Basically, it reinforces the vocabulary, helps them learn all the parts of the boat and become familiar with the courses we race on most often.

“We take it seriously because we believe that properly educated coxswains give you a distinct competitive advantage,” he continues. ”We look at them as leaders on and off the water, and they’re held more accountable than any of the rowers.”

McKenna states, “The chain of command is clear. Generally, the coach speaks through the coxswain to the crew. We’ll talk to individual rowers about a technical or motivational issue, but we don’t give commands to the crew as a group unless it’s an emergency situation.”

The Mount’s boathouse is located in Conshohocken, and in practices along this still relatively uncrowded stretch of the Schuylkill, boats will often train side-by-side, and sometimes as many as five abreast.

“They’re innately comfortable with a boat beside them,” McKenna points out. “That’s important, because coxes who don’t have that experience can get jittery when suddenly they have other boats around in a race.”

After mastering the basics of steering, stroke control, and race strategy, the more experienced coxswains seek out the subtle nuances involved in managing their rowers.

“You pay attention to the details like the quality of their catches (the initial engagement of the oar with the water at the start of a stroke), and their leg speed,” Mieczkowski explains. “You really need to learn about the individual rowers and know their tendencies. I listen to Mr. McKenna all the time and you get to know what he does with different rowers. It might be reminding somebody about something with their technique, or someone may just need to have their name called, to have a little more motivation at a certain point in a race.”

Stewart adds, “You learn to follow the motion of your rowers’ bodies and their oars, and you know when something’s a little off.”

Like many coxes, Stewart insists that her rowers avoid looking around at rival crews during a race.

“It’s ‘eyes in the boat,’ and that begins right at the starting line,” she reveals. “If they look around, they can tend to rush their strokes, and that throws off the rhythm of the boat. I tell them I’ll be their eyes and ears - they need to focus just on what they’re doing. That’s how we win.”

So it is that in crucial races at national regattas, events for which crews have endured countless hours of practice and physical training over a period of months, rowers rely, to a profound degree, on their bond with their coxswains. Mount junior Meg Kehan, a member of Mount St. Joe’s varsity eight crew and a participant in the U.S. Developmental Camp last summer, knows that she and her fellow oarswomen can depend on this almost symbiotic relationship.

“It’s amazing how we have such good coxswains,” she says. “I’ve had different coxes at camps and other places, and they don’t match up to Jane or Devon. We have other really good ones too; it’s becoming a tradition for the Mount. They motivate you the whole time through the toughest practice pieces and the hardest races, and they keep you going when you just want to quit because you’re in so much pain.”

Senior Stephanie Farris, a two-time varsity eight rower who’s headed for Notre Dame, recalls, “When I first started out, I didn’t really understand why the coxswains are necessary, but now I realize how important they are in the chemistry of the boat. We’ll go over our race strategy beforehand – who we’re racing, where we want to make moves, and things like that. When it comes to calling a race, I think the coxswain has to be a special person; it’s something you can’t necessarily teach. You can teach the details, but it’s something inside that makes the really good ones stand out.”

”A great deal of trust is placed in them by the coaches and the rowers,” Coach Chase says, “and I think that’s reflected in the self-confidence of the young ladies who are our coxswains.”

As Weinrich points out, “The skills you use as a coxswain can carry over through your whole life. The things like working with different personalities, taking charge of a situation, problem solving, commitment to achieving a goal. I think the rewards of being a coxswain are far-reaching.”

Mount St. Joseph results at NJ State Rowing Championships on April 28: Gold Medal – JV four, lightweight eight, lightweight four, novice eight “A” boat; Second Place – JV eight, second eight, varsity eight; Third Place – freshman eight, novice eight “B” boat.