During New Student Orientation, the crew team brings a boat to Copley Lawn and propositions freshmen passing by, handing out pamphlets and answering questions. Most of the freshmen have never seen a crew boat, let alone rowed, yet they are courted aggressively. It comes off as an odd combination of social fraternity and varsity sport: You would never see the soccer team filling their back four with random students on Copley Lawn.
Head Coach of the varsity heavyweight men’s team Tony Johnson explained, “The nature of our sport is different from most sports in that you can learn the sport in college and do well.” With an Olympic silver medal in pairs rowing and 20 years of coaching experience at Yale, Johnson knows what he is talking about.
Now in his 17th year at Georgetown, Johnson explained that in novice recruiting, “Our attitude is like a sales job. We say: come see it, talk to students who have rowed.”
Crew is also different from many other sports at Georgetown in that it is co-ed. Although there are technically four different programs, both men and women’s lightweight and heavyweight, the teams often intermingle at social events. Alison Carter (COL ‘10), who was a coxswain last year but recently quit, said, “If you are on the crew team, your social life consists of the crew team—there is a lot of crew-cest, too.” Carter enjoyed the social aspect of the team, though, and thought it helped draw new students.
Of the 85 to 90 freshmen that came out to row this year, 12 men and 12 women had rowed before. Johnson said that the numbers of experienced rowers who come out for the team are roughly between 20 and 30 percent annually. “But,” Johnson added, “success does take work.”
And this is where it falls apart. Georgetown has no trouble drawing athletes to crew, but keeping these rowers is another matter. Women’s varsity heavyweight coach Jimmy King explains, “The program’s greatest strength is Georgetown itself.” Overlooking the Potomac, Georgetown, with its athletic student body, seems the perfect setting for a strong crew team. “However,” King continues, “there is a lot to do here, a lot of competition. There are often talented athletes who have chosen to take another route.”
Maggie Steele (COL ‘07) is one of those athletes. The high school recruit quit after returning from her junior year abroad in Dublin, Ireland. She now works in the emergency room at nearby Sibley Hospital and does bioethics research. “If I didn’t get serious about school work and focus on academics, when would I?” she asked.
Steele recently joined the Triathlon Club and said guiltily, “I probably shouldn’t quit crew and then join another sport, but I am grateful now to have the chance to try something new.”
Former women’s novice heavyweight coach Jessica Ko Beck understands that with so many novice athletes, turnover is a way of life. However, crew is often treated as a club, something fun to try out. She believes that crew is not taken seriously enough at Georgetown and that the program doesn’t provide enough incentive for athletes to stay.
“Crew at Georgetown has become a big joke. It’s one of the 100 things to do on the Hilltop: join crew and then quit,” Ko Beck lamented. These jokes may seem harmless, but her complaints have merit. “My first year I started with 100 people and finished with 20. Last year I had something like 26 and ended with nine rowers.”
Coach King confirmed the drop. “This year, I feel like we put in one of the biggest efforts yet into recruiting,” he said, explaining that a pamphlet was sent out to every new freshman. “But on the women’s side, numbers have been less than what we’ve seen.” However, he said that at a recent conference, other crew programs’ coaches complained about the same trend.
Many students were uncomfortable with the way the coaching staff pressured them to continue with the team, even though most ultimately leave. Steele recalls Ko Beck saying numerous times that if you quit crew, you fail at life. And Carter confirmed this pressure, saying, “When someone quits crew, she is considered a traitor, and you are automatically supposed to hate them.”
Despite yearly fluctuation, all teams do relatively well. Last year’s varsity lightweight women’s crew team had its best finish in the program’s history, taking second at the Intercollegiate Rowing Association (IRA) championships. “They had things so right. They were sharp,” Johnson said of the team in their final race. The team’s fate this year is questionable, however. Some rowers graduated, some are abroad, and some simply quit the team. With such unpredictability, Jimmy explained, “It’s too early to tell,” and asked, “How do you gauge success?”
Men’s lightweight crew has been consistently strong, despite a disappointing finish last season. Patrick Sheridan (COL ‘07) believes it is hard to compete against other teams with much larger programs. “Having said all that, we still compete with these schools year after year and are able to beat some of them,” Sheridan said. He continued, “If we want to get to that next level, where Georgetown lightweight crew is dominant every year, and that is very realistic, there need to be some changes.”
Training, however, is not one of the problems. Current crew members estimate that they spend 20 to 30 hours per week training in 10 to 12 practices. In the fall, practice time is split between the water, the weight room and the erg (indoor rowing machine). In the winter, workouts are strictly indoors, except for a training trip over holiday break, when budget permits. Finally, in the spring the boats are back on the water, and the teams travel almost every weekend from March through April. Sheridan estimated team members would put in over one million meters on the erg alone this year. This time commitment could seem like a lot for someone who has never rowed before.
While no one seems to doubt the sheer talent and dedication of the athletes, many disagree about what changes it will take to turn Georgetown crew into a powerhouse. Ko Beck disagreed with Sheridan, saying, “It is not the boathouse and it is not funding.” Having rowed in college at Columbia, she has seen her fair share of rowing, and complained, “My husband and I coached at Georgetown, and I have never seen a program run so poorly.”
Ryan agreed on some level with Ko Beck. The club she rowed for in high school rowed out of a trailer yet competed at Nationals three years straight. When asked why Georgetown does not compete consistently, she said, “I have been asking myself that for four years. Performance-wise, they have such talented rowers.”
Ko Beck again brought up her ‘07 novice heavyweight team to highlight her point. “I worked hard with my freshmen and we won medals, but yet, as they proceeded to row on the varsity level they come in last. How is that possible? Coaching.”
Carter, a coxswain under Ko Beck, said that Ko Beck’s abrasive coaching style was the reason she and many of her teammates quit. “I think the coaches had a lot to do with it for me, but it was a mixture of a lot of things,” she said, and added that the loss of talented rowers is the reason for the team’s inconsistency. “The Varsity heavyweight crew could do really well if my entire team hadn’t quit.”
According to Carter’s descriptions of the atmosphere last season, women’s crew sounded more like a soap opera than an athletic program. “There is so much drama on crew; it’s so catty,” she complained. She felt a palpable tension between Ko Beck and King, claiming their coaching styles were very different. “There was a lot of tension,” Carter said. “Jess and Jimmy [Ko Beck and King] did not get along, and we all knew it; we all knew everything.” She thinks it is good for the program that Ko Beck did not return this year.
Ryan still gives Ko Beck credit for her work, though. She admitted, “We had so much talent, but Jess was a really good coach, so I wouldn’t say we just got lucky.” However, Ryan, a high school recruit, as well as rowers from her team, did not go on to row for varsity. Steele followed the next year, cutting the number of recruited rowers from her year in half. In the next year’s class, both of the recruited women rowers on women’s heavyweight quit before their sophomore year. Last year, another women’s heavyweight recruit quit.
Carter thinks it is obvious why crew loses so many athletes. “We get no money, no boathouse, no respect.” She asked, “Why would you work your ass off for something like that?”
After all, rowers put in significant amount of time and money into their training and traveling with the team. Also, crew is a very expensive sport. Training, clothing and travel are largely out-of-pocket costs for students.
Although transportation and meals are supposedly provided when traveling to races, the money is often insufficient, and students must supplement the small food stipend. Michael McGrath (SFS ‘07), the lightweight men’s captain, says funding is the program’s greatest weakness. “The teams need more money to pay for travel, coaches, new equipment and racing.” For example, last year on the annual spring break training trip, the female athletes were only given $7 per day to spend on food.
Ko Beck praised Athletic Director Bernard Muir, who took over last year, for paying attention to all sports, not just the most popular ones. Many believe he will bring positive changes to the crew program. He said, “Georgetown has 27 sports, the newest addition being softball, and our main goal is to provide the best experience possible for all 700- plus student athletes. Crew fits in there, but they are all important.”
Muir recently began mapping out a five year plan for the crew program’s budget, saying the Athletic Department is trying to be more strategic across the board. “In terms of budget, crew can talk about their needs, but not one of their programs will ever say. ‘I have enough’,” Muir explained. Luckily, the crew program receives significant financial help from the Georgetown Rowing Association (GRA), crew’s alumni association. Until last year, team captains managed the funds from GRA.
The athletic department used to fund Crew Ball, an annual formal party for the all the crew teams. James Machulak (SFS ‘07) explained, “The real event of Crew Ball happens at people’s houses before hand, segregated by team. It involved a lot of drinking and what not, but it was a formal, so we looked nicer.” Last year the athletic department did not hold the function. “There was so much scandal on the crew team,” Carter said. “Why would the athletic department pay for a giant orgy?”
Many ex-rowers worried the money might have been spent on kegs rather than team supplies. Ko Beck agreed. “I do think a lot of the money went to parties,” she said, but her primary concern was that “as coaches we buy things and had to go to students. And students shouldn’t have to have that responsibility.” It turns out that the NCAA agreed with Ko Beck; having students manage the funds was a violation of collegiate rules.
Now, the funding goes directly through the athletic department. Muir said of this change, “We rely heavily on the support of the GRA and now we are working on a partnership to see how we can get things done collectively.”
This money could be better spent on new training equipment. While other teams work out at McDonough Gymnasium, crew athletes use the erg machines at the boathouse. Ryan said, “The conditions are embarrassing at the boathouse.” Instead of top of the line weight machines, rowers often lifted cans filled with cement. And the problems are not only aesthetic; the machines were not well-kept and became hazardous to the athletes’ health. Several athletes got staph infections from the erg machines, and one even had to take time off from practice because her arm was so severely infected.
Steele expressed deep frustration with the boathouse, saying it was difficult to train in an overcrowded facility without heat or showers, especially when she saw the beautiful boathouses of the teams against which Georgetown competes. “Their ergs are up to date,” she said. “They don’t share their facilities with high schools.” Steele admits that with the new boathouse, it would have been much harder to quit the team.
When Steele came to Georgetown, she thought that Thompson’s Boathouse, the team’s current training site, would be a temporary facility. “I was told the new boathouse would be completed, and we would be moved into it by January 2005,” Steele said, referring to the program’s recruitment pitch. “It is clear to us now that we shouldn’t think about it,” she added, ”’cause it is never going to happen.”
Ryan is also doubtful that the boathouse will come any time soon. “Why would anyone want to raise money for a team that is not improving?” she asked. “They will give it to basketball where when something is not going well, they get a new coach, they do something about it. That is [Division] I athletics.”
Ko Beck agreed, explaining that Crew is too often ignored, and success is not demanded.She said, “The Athletic Director should expect performance. He should put the coaches in the hot seat and fire them if they don’t perform.”
Stacy Schwartz (COL ‘10) is a freshman novice on the team Ko Beck once coached. “I never expected that, with no prior experience, I would be able to join a varsity team; I also didn’t expect to have so much fun,” she said. She got involved because the team had been so persistent in recruiting and admits she only went to the first meeting because she was bored that evening. But, she is glad she went and says, “The program embraces new, inexperienced rowers and encourages them to stick with it and improve.”
As each rower stressed, the novice recruits are the lifeblood of the program. McGrath said, “Novices bring an incredible amount of enthusiasm to the team, and often turn out to be our best rowers.” Now, more than halfway through the semester, Schwartz says she can’t think of any weaknesses in the program. With an endless supply of strong novice recruits, Georgetown now must find a way to keep these strong rowers as they become senior athletes and the crew program looks to the future.
