Long Training, Sheer Strength, and an Excellent Coach Give Harvard Great Varsities Every Year

What makes a good crew? And why does Harvard consistently have one?

Perhaps to the outsider, rowing seems like a basically simple form of exercise, calling for nothing more than a plethora of muscle, especially between the ears. This viewpoint could not be more wrong. Propelling the $2000 instrument known as a shell through the water with any degree of success calls for more skill and coordination than the casual observer could possibly realize.

For the oarsman's problem is to move his craft not only with power, but in such a way that all motion other than forward and in a straight line is eliminated. it is this process that takes months of training, as well as natural ability. Any number of things can go wrong during a stroke, because every pull involves the use of the entire body in a precise sequence that must not vary if that all-important smoothness is to be maintained.

For instance, at the beginning of each stroke, the oarsman must flip his writs to turn the oar so that it enters the water absolutely perpendicularly. The slightest variation from a 90 degree angle will cause the oar to "knife in" and dig too deeply into the water. When this happens, the handle of the oar is apt to come up suddenly and hit the unsuspecting rower in the stomach, often lifting him unceremoniously out of the boat and depositing him in the river.

This is known among crewmen as "catching a crab," and is generally considered a fate worse than death, especially if it occurs during a race. Many time the effect of knifing in is not so devastating as described above, but even the slightest tendency toward this mistake will unbalance the boat and cause the oarsmen on the opposite side to "wash out," finishing their stroke with oars partly out of the water.

Even if the oars hit the water cleanly, there are still an infinite number of factors for each man to concentrate on. The stroke itself, which is accomplished by a combined pull of the arms, push of the legs, and swing of the body must be achieved with all the power it is possible to muster. At the same time, it must be done as nearly like the other seven men as possible, and above all it must consume exactly the same amount of time.

Even the recovery is no simple matter. The oars must leave the water together, a snap of the wrists must feather them, and the crewmen must slide their bodies forward and their oars back into position again with a smooth, even motion that does not check the run of the shell. If this much is accomplished successfully the whole cycle begins again, and each man must concentrate on doing exactly the same thing in the same way once more--about 300 time in a mile-and-three-quarters race, or about 700 times in the classic four-mile Yale race at New London.

How do you pick the man that can do this best, and once chosen, how do you train him? The job of finding eight men who together will combine the greatest strength with the greatest polish is the toughest job a coach has. It calls for the almost uncanny ability to watch one or two hundred young men tugging away on rowing machines or working on the river, and by merely looking at them and experimenting with various combinations, choosing the best boatload.

Pick and Polish

This is one of the techniques Tom Bolles knows to perfection, and one of the reasons he is the best coach this side of the Mississippi. By the end of Easter vacation, which usually comes only a couple of weeks after the crews first hit the water, he has his varsity picked, out, and he can start perfecting all the minute details of style that must be learned before the first race.

The eight men who occupy the first boat are invariably of similar build broad shouldered and long-limbed. In addition to these criteria, the prospective varsity oar must be endowed with coordination, large quantities of stamina, and equally generous amounts of enthusiasm, patience, and guts. But a man can have all the latter qualifications and still not become an oarsman unless he has the height to give him leverage to generate the needed power.

Weight is not overly important to Tom, although rough weather favors the heavy crew. As for age, Bolles feels that an oarsman hits his physical peak in his early to mid twenties, although the presence of 18-year-old Ted Anderson in this year's shell proves that this rule is like-wise inflexible.

Spring Practising

Given a crew that fits the above pattern, the spring training program is largely a matter of conditioning and perfecting--a job which is accomplished by endless long pulls up and down the river, combined with frequent time trials, starting practises and sprints.

The coach follows his shells back and forth noting faults and weaknesses, and pointing them out with the use of a megaphone. As the opening race approaches. Belles reduces the amount of instruction and lets the crew find its own place and style. Therein lies another reason for Bolles' greatness: he is never a tyrant on form. He allows his oarsmen to retain their own quirks of style rather than insisting on uniformity at the expense of power and smoothness.

Princeton arrived on the Charles with a crew which used a style very similar to Bolles' an ideally matched crew superbly conditioned, and trained to stroke identically. Belles, on the other hand, had a varsity weeks behind the Tigers on practice, with a number five oar who takes absolutely no layback a bow and seven man who both dip their right shoulders before the catch, an da stroke who rows the lowest beat in the east. Yet the Bolles-coached crew won, has gone right on winning since that race, and probably will continue to do so until the season ends. The answer is the optimum combination of power with form.

East Uses Washington Style

As far as the actual rowing style of Harvard crews goes, there is little these days to distinguish it from most competitors. This is because most eastern colleges now employ coaches trained at the University of Washington, if not actual alumni, who have at least profited mightily from the so-called Conibear-Washington technique.

In the old' days when men were men, it was fashionable to take a heave at the oars. Which left the upper body almost parallel with the water. The principle behind this was that a mighty pull more than offset the waste motion and energy involved. Such fine points as not wobbling the boat or making a smooth recovery were ignored.

The Washington system, on the other hand, concentrates on obtaining a powerful pull by getting a long reach at the beginning of the stroke, and finishing with a slight enough layback so that a quick and smooth recovery is possible.

Almost all crews now employ this technique with minor variations. Even Yale, which for the past two years has been rowing at fantastic beats, sometimes going as high as 45, has now changed its strategy in favor of the lower stroke.

Only slight differences mark a Harvard crew's style from that of any other coached by a Washington graduate, Most crews take an even pull all the way through every stroke, ending with a final tug before removing their oars from the water.

Bolles' oarsmen, on the other hand, start each stroke with a gigantic pull which eases off toward the finish, enabling them to finish their stroke smoothly and shoot their hands back into position for the next cycle with a smooth, even motion.

Speed Between Strokes

Not only does this give the shell a long, fast run between strokes, but it lets the crew pause before the catch rather than at the end of the pull, thereby reducing the possibility of catching a crab.

By the first regatta the mechanics of the sport are an almost automatic process. There is still room for improvement of condition and timing, of course, and there will continue to be right down to the Yale race at the end of June.

The race itself will not involve too much that is new. Ideally, it will follow exactly the same pattern as has been practiced for weeks in time-trials. There is not much that can be done in the last hour except to sweat out the starting time.

However, shortly before the race, Coach Bolles will go over the course (with his coxswain if it is a strange river) and analyze weather conditions to determine whether the time that afternoon will be fast or slow. He then talks things over briefly with his stroke. There is not much to say, because the pattern for the race seldom varies from a pre-established form.

No Peptalks

Bolles never exhorts his crews to deeds of greater valor before a race; first, because he is not that kind of man, and second because he knows that any boy who has plugged up and down the river for who chilly months is going to give it everything he's got no matter what he tells him.

Any emotion he may feel is kept well under control, save for an occasional sharp word to a bungling manager, or a blast of choice invective to some motorboat jockey who wanders out on the course just before starting time, kicking up waves in the path of the crews.

The pre-race warmup usually involves some three to four miles of leisurely rowing to loosen up the muscles. It is a delicate process, for the men must reach the starting-line just at the point when they are thoroughly warmed up, and yet not fatigued. And they must time it to get there just before the race begins, so they won't cool off again.

Butterfiles, Breads, Brew

The few minutes before the start is the agonizing time of butterflies in the stomach for oarsmen, a time when most of them regret the foolish impulse that over made them go out for crew in the first place. They think of their roommates lolling on the riverbank miles upstream, with a case of beer on one side and a girl on the other. They think of those newspaper reports about how hot the other crews are this year, and they wonder about those rumors or nine-minute time trials.

It takes several minutes to back all the shells up to the stakeboats (anchored rowboats containing a man who holds the stern of the shell until the start) and once this is accomplished there is more delay while the crewmen pool off their sweaters.

The shells leap away from the stake boats at 40 strokes a minute for the first few hundred yards, and then settle into a longer, lower pace for the long pull through the middle of the race. Here the first variation in strategy appears, as the different strokes set the beat. Bill Curwen, for instance, never takes more than 10 sprinting strokes at the start, and then drops the beat all the way down to 31 for the rest of the race.

Penn, last Saturday, stroked high for almost twice as long, and then gradually tapered off to a 32. Every crew has its own pattern.

Once the shell has settled at its regular pace, the main problem is for every man to concentrate on form, power, and timing. The coxswain maintains the latter rudder handles, saving his voice to tell the stroke what beat he is setting and where his boast stands in relation to the opposition.

But the stroke does not go up or down on the basis of relative position, because a crew rows against the clock until the final half-mile. Bill Curwen, for instance, would never vary more than one stroke from his usual 31 unless his rivals were hull down over the horizon. Months of experimenting have proved that a Harvard crew works best at that rate.

Last Two Tense Minutes

It is not until the last two minutes that the stroke oar alters his stopwatch planning to fit the situation. Then, if he is behind, he stakes everything on a final sprint to the finish. This is the most crucial and exciting part of the race, for the oarsmen are already dead tired, and a higher stroke increases the chance of a mistake.

That is why, in the three races so far this year, the Crimson has ignored the convention of sprinting when they are comfortably in the load. Were they to be pressed, however, the boat would go up to 40 for the final minute, and it is at such times that a crew's ability is really put to the test. It is only the instinctive ability to row well that can put a man through such a test.

Does all this answer the question of why Harvard has great crews? Certainly Coach Bolles' technique and ability had a tremendous amount to do with it. Certainly the presence of an excellent river and the best of equipment is a contributing cause. Perhaps Harvard's reputation as a rowing college helps to perpetuate the string of fine oarsmen that come here.

Crew is a Family Sport

The composition of Harvard's student body also must make a difference, for crewmen are almost all drawn from the ranks of prep school alumni, to whom rowing is a respected and honorable sport, often rich with family tradition.

But beyond all this is the indefinable quality o morale and esprit which Coach Bolles feels is the most important cause of all. It is an esprit which can only come from eight oarsmen, a cox, and a coach who are dogged enough to spend months in the cold wind or broiling sun learning to pull a 12-foot oar through the water with the precision and power to win races on perhaps five Saturday afternoons in a year and to pull just as hard despite the fact that 99 out of 100 people who watch them don't even know their names.