Go Abby!

Lewis & Clark 2005 Alum Abby Broughton, stroking the US National Team lightweight quad, made the life magazine photo website. . . cool! Best of luck to her at Worlds.

Had a great time today putting our new wakeless launch in the water and taking it for it's first drive; also an excellent time talking to lots of folks interested in novice rowing this fall. Great crowd & I'm getting really fired up to get started.

Good rowing is beautiful to watch. . .

The Lowe is Dead. Long Live the Lowe.

The Lowe is the launch pictured above, driven by her most recent faithful attendant, our ever-patient volenteer coach Jim, who for the last two years has bailed out the gallons of water that leaked in before practice every morning.

She was purchased March 22nd, 1991 with the help of a grant from the Beaver Crew Association.**

She was used (abused) faithfully by Lewis & Clark Crew for 18 years.

Traded in today for a value of $100 (One Hundred) for the trailer and $0 (Zero) for the boat, bound for the recycling yard.

Let us all stand and salute a life well lived.

On a more outstanding note-- the freshman have arrived and campus is hopping! I know among the crowd exist future standouts and stalwart teammates, waiting to discover the sport. I'm excited to meet them and very excited to get out on the water!

**- Bonus content after receiving the following from Peter, L&C Alum, coach, and general all around supporter of our program for many years;

"I remember when Charlie Brown first drove the new Lowe downriver to the old boathouse after launching it at Willamette Park. Our previous launches had 9.9 and 15hp motors.

He left the thing at full throttle, until he almost hit the dock, and Charlie had that wide toothy, cheesy grin going, which is the expression I most like to remember. . ."

Peter

Week One

Are folks getting tired of these sunrise photos from the river? You can tell me. I won't mind. Personally I'm pretty blown away every time; I feel amazingly lucky to get to spend my mornings taking in scenes like this one.

Big week coming up-- the Freshman arrive Wednesday, those that aren't already on campus for fall sports or out doing Breakaway Adventures. I'm getting geared up to meet all these folks and more importantly to work on enticing them to get fired up about rowing. I also saw several of our returning athletes last week, getting me equally fired up about getting out on the water with those guys.

Although classes don't start until next Monday this is the first week of fall to me. Another cycle begins.

Use the Difficulty

Great quote from a non-rowing source;

“I was rehearsing a play, and there was a scene that went on before me, then I had to come in the door. They rehearsed the scene, and one of the actors had thrown a chair at the other one. It landed right in front of the door where I came in. I opened the door and then rather lamely, I said to the producer who was sitting out in the stalls, “Well, look, I can’t get in. There’s a chair in my way.” He said, “Well, use the difficulty.” So I said “What do you mean, use the difficulty?” He said “Well, if it’s a drama, pick it up and smash it. If it’s a comedy, fall over it.” This was a line for me for life: Always use the difficulty.”

Michael Caine, interviewed by NPR’s Terry Gross, from her book All I did was ask

This applies so much to what we do; difficulties abound in every situation. People get sick or injured, weather is bad, equipment gets broken. It's about management to reduce the difficulties but it's also about recognizing the opportunities to challenge ourselves and stretch beyond what we think is possible.

Confronting and managing adveristy on a daily basis is tremendous preparation for race days where it's very rare for everything to go exactly to plan.

A brief public service announcement to all of our current and future rowers.

When it comes to the requisite paperwork (physical, van clearance, NCAA forms, whatnot) we need to get done, PLEASE just do it. Trust me when I say I know it's a pain, hassle, whatnot. Believe me even more when I say I think I hate it more then you do. I'd very much like to get it all done so we can get back to things like the post below this one.

Now back to your regular scheduled programing.

River Dawn

One of the best parts about coaching is getting to be out on the river as the sun rises in the morning. Here's three shots from this morning's practice with the Lake Oswego Masters.

Mending holes in boats.

Just got back from the boathouse. The original hole-- referenced a couple posts back-- is now mostly patched. The repair process proceeds in a few steps.

First we identified a crack in the hull of the boat. Where did it come from? Who knows-- we hit a log, or it's a stress crack from trailering, or the athletes hit the boat carrying it, or whatnot. Things happen and boats get broken.

You don't want to patch over the skin of the boat, so the first step is to take a Dremel and grind away the top layer; this produced the hole. What you see below that is the honeycomb core of the boat. Then we take a piece of carbon fiber, lay it over the hole, and wet it out thoroughly with epoxy resin. This hardens overnight and ties the two sides of the crack together. Here's what it looked like when I got to the boathouse this morning.



I went after it with the sander and knocked everything down to reasonably level. It's very difficult to get the carbon truly flush with the hull so we need one more layer to fair out the surface-- bondo works very well for this.



We slop the stuff on heavy; you can always take it off later. After this hardens overnight I'll be back on Monday to sand it down to a smooth surface. After patching the four I was working on I hit the Hudson pair hard with the sander, smoothing down a variety of patches we made yesterday.



Once the bondo is smooth the boat is ready to row but looks aweful; we'll use rubbing compound to clean and smooth the hull and then paint once we've got a warm day. In the end this process yeilds a fix almost as good as new (strucuturally just as strong, maybe just a bit heavier).

There's a lot of satisfaction to making a broken boat whole. Thanks go to Lincoln who's done a lot of the work so far this summer and helped me improve my skills quite a bit.

Good blogpost by our basketball coach, Juli Fulks, on why everyone loves Portland. . .

And so we do.

Holes in Boats

We've been making them.





Got to get down to the core before it can be fixed.

Establishing a Technical Model

I've been searching for a basic technical model to show athletes as we start the fall season-- a "row like this" sort of thing. I think the above works pretty well for this purpose. I like the basic, easy flow of this stroke, as well as the strong hang in the first half of the drive. There's nothing rushed or complex about good rowing; each stroke flows effortlessly into the next.

Thoughts roundup Wednesday

Good post this morning on Vern Gambetta's blog-- he's an athletic development coach and author who's thinking often meshes with mine. Check it out.

I attended a wedding this weekend for an athlete I coached from raw novice up through four years of highly successful college rowing. As I caught up with her and with all her teammates from those years I reflected on how often their efforts inspired me to give better efforts as a coach. The best teams have that synergy of trust-- the coach trusting in the athletes desire to improve while the athletes trust in the coaches desire to help them succeed.

After a couple of years of staying away I finally gave into Facebook. As of now, I'm not "freinding" current athletes. Why? Mostly to keep a sense of professional distance, I think. That said, it's been a lot of fun catching up with alumni and old freinds, which I think is the main point of the service.

We had the Division of Student Life retreat downtown yesterday. While it put me a little behind on work I was greatful to meet many of the other staff members who contriubte to the student expereince here at Lewis & Clark and to consider ways to enhance what we do by working with all of them.

It rained this morning while I was coaching at Lake Oswego. . . I'd forgotten what that was like.

Nice practice this morning with the Lake Oswego masters group. It was a study in contrast with two boats out-- an eight and a single. I captured a few shots of the fantastic water with my new camera.



With the single everything I worked on involved slowing down, working the basic sensitivity of balance and the finer points of bladework. Because the single is such a responsive boat the main challenge is to get the sculler to take a risk-- challenge themselves to be a little longer, a little sharper even if it's a little more unstable.



With the eight the work was all focused on connection and creating a dynamic acceleration through the drive. In the eight the sensations each rower feels are more muted. By using drills such as feet out and pair add in I tried to give each athlete the sense of the effect they were having on the run of the boat. We made some breakthroughs today and the balance and run was much improved at the end of the day.

Wisdom from Alumni

The athletic department is working to set up some profiles of alumni student-athletes, a "where are they now" kind of effort. Our own Lucinda Boyce (3-seat in the 2006 conference champion WV4 above) made the cut and had the following words of wisdom for current student-athletes:

"Play a sport. Even if you're terrible. Get on a team, there is nothing like it in life and you're missing out if you're not a part of something like it. And, pick a major you think you know nothing about, take a few classes, get to know the teachers, and see what hooks."

I also especially liked this quote from former track athlete Kirk Reynolds:

"Devote more time to your athletics. At a place like L&C, you will always have academics as your top priority, as it should be. The challenge is to make athletics be co-curricular with your studies rather than extra-curricular. It is possible to do both equally well. Most Division-III athletes use academics as a cop-out excuse to avoid achieving all they can in their athletic realm. Have courage, and do both well."