Legendary Coach Parker Paces Team, Old Rowing Rivals

Harry Parker has coached men’s crew at Harvard for nearly twice the length of any of his rowers’ lives.

“We call him ‘the father of rowing’,” Harvard captain Mike Skey said. “He’s just been around.”

Both his longevity and his success have established Parker as an institution in the world of Harvard crew.

In his 40 years, Parker’s teams have recorded 15 undefeated seasons and captured 17 EARC Sprints titles. His crews have won six national championships, while prevailing six times in the Cincinnati Regatta, an event long considered to be an unofficial national championship in its own right.

In international competition, Parker’s Crimson squads have excelled, placing first in the 1967 Pan American games, second in that year’s European Championships and sixth at the Mexico City Olympics the following year.

And in his years as coach, Parker’s squads have beaten their Yale counterparts in dual regattas a total of 33 times—including 18 straight victories from 1963-1980. Only on six occasions have his squads fallen to the boys from New Haven.

“There have been far too many outstanding moments for me to pick just one,” Parker said.

His achievements as a coach have made him a legend both at Harvard and in the rowing world at large. However, his first achievements came not from the sidelines, but on the water itself.

“I love competing,” Parker said. “I respond to competitive situations.”

Parker rowed during his undergraduate years at Penn, where he began a lifelong pattern of success in national and global competition.

Racing in the single scull, Parker won back-to-back national championships in 1959 and 1960, as well as at the Pan Am games in ’59. He captured fifth place at the Olympics in Rome the following year.

Parker’s talent, individual success and coaching accomplishments have earned him the unwavering trust of his rowers.

“He’s pretty much revolutionized the sport of rowing,” Skey said. “When we look at him, whatever he says goes. There’s no second-guessing.”

In the same way that Ted Williams evolved over the decades into the ultimate authority on the science of hitting, so too has Parker become the premier expert on the art of rowing. When he speaks of technique, all stop to listen.

“I think that I have a good grasp of what sound rowing is and I work very hard to teach that with varying degrees of success,” Parker said. “But nonetheless, I work very hard to get people to row well.”

In many respects, Parker is like current Los Angeles Lakers’ coach Phil Jackson—subdued and semi-mysterious. Never in-your-face, he is always laid back, allowing his silence to speak volumes and never fully articulating what is on his mind. Even without significant effort on his part, his legendary status motivates his rowers.

“You just want to be the best crew that he’s seen, because he’s seen the best that everyone has to offer in this sport,” Skey said.

Parker’s quiet approach encourages the rowers to make themselves better of their own accord. He won’t yell or ride a rower until he gets results, but if his coaching cannot motivate a rower to perform at his peak, little else will.

“I think that I coach using a lot of positive reinforcement and encouragement,” Parker said. “I don’t ever try to give people an overall assessment of their performance. Basically I ask them to do what they need to do and they do it.”

And Harvard’s rowers need not look far to see the example Parker sets. For all his years, he is still very much an athlete and a competitor, both at heart and in practice.

Parker runs the squad’s grueling triathlon—7500 meters on the rowing ergometer, immediately followed by the 4.2-mile run from Newell Boathouse to Harvard Stadium and capped by the climb up and down each of the stadium’s concrete stairways. He competes right alongside the team, elbowing some of his pupils out of the way as he goes, beating many of them.

“He’s still got it,” Skey said. “He’s still trucking up and down the river in the single. He beats some of the team in our annual triathlon that we do. He goes to Switzerland and does mountain ranges, [and] the Mount Washington cycling race each year with former alumni. He’s just showing that he’s still got it.”

He enters into an annual side bet with his rowers where he races the team’s average time and the losers, by his rules, must undergo a certain unenviable ordeal. In the past, losers have sometimes jumped naked into the Charles.

“Last year, they surprised me—they did so well,” Parker said. “I doubt that’ll happen again.”

This weekend he will be back home on the water, rowing in the men’s veteran singles.

After last year’s sixth-place finish, Parker is seeded eighth in a group of competitors he has raced against for many years.

“I hope to be competitive with the people I’ve been rowing against, off and on, for quite a few years,” Parker said. “I hope to move up one or two slots.”

And given Parker’s competitive nature and determination, there is a good chance he will do just that.