WVU Rowing Q&A
[ a sit down with coach jimmy king ] The team has made great strides under your leadership since you were appointed head coach four years ago. As you prepare for your fifth year with the team, what are some strategies and plans you’ve made to ensure the team continues to be successful? One of the things we’ve talked about this year is that the standards for what we do in workouts, whether on land or on water, have been raised. What used to be considered good is no longer good enough. The change in those standards is a reflection of and a credit to the students on our team and their ongoing efforts to raise the competitiveness of WVU Rowing. Rowing is a sport that has seen growth at the collegiate level in recent years, but it’s still relatively unknown in certain areas. What is this program doing for the sport to help it gain more attention throughout the state and local region? Locally we assist the community rowing club, Monongahela Rowing Association, and the WVU Men’s Crew Club as we can throughout the year. Regionally our fall racing season annually begins in Pittsburgh at the Head of the Ohio so that we maintain a presence in that area. And this year the University of Charleston hosted the inaugural Head of the Kanawha in October. When their head coach, Jim Bucklew, asked if we would attend I eagerly agreed for primarily two reasons: 1) An opportunity to support the efforts of the only other collegiate rowing program in the state; 2) An opportunity for some of our students from that area to race in front of family and friends as well as give our program some exposure within the state other than in Morgantown--and in the shadow of the state capitol no less! Many athletes who join collegiate rowing programs do so having little knowledge of the sport in the beginning. How are you able to show athletes coming out of high school that there is an opportunity for them to continue competing in athletics at the Division I level? Our Associate Head Coach, Tina Griffith, is in charge of our novice squad including recruitment. She does a fantastic job of alerting incoming students about the opportunity to row by means of MIX announcements, setting up a table with video and flyers at the Freshman Picnic and for a week at the rec center to talk with any interested students, and then by holding two interest meetings, one on the downtown campus and one on Evansdale. The students on the varsity squad also help with all oncampus recruiting efforts. What kind of student-athletes are you looking for to help build the program and continue its tradition of success? To begin with, we are definitely in search of the full embodiment of the “student-athlete.” Academic success is continually stressed in our program and quite frankly, the self-discipline and work ethic required for success in one applies to the other as well. And while there are certain physical characteristics that are advantageous in rowing, those do not matter if the work ethic and drive to improve and succeed aren’t present. What are some of the goals the program has set for the future? As one of the younger NCAA sports, rowing has been and continues to evolve under the NCAA umbrella. Whereas in recent times regional regattas have been the regular-season end for teams not advancing to the NCAA championship, conference championships are increasingly occupying that last weekend of regular-season racing in preparation for the implementation of conference automatic qualifiers in 2013. Our obvious goal, regardless of automatic qualifiers (AQs), is to position ourselves to win the conference championship, but to do that we need to continue increasing the depth and competitiveness of our program across the three NCAA crews: 1st Varsity 8+, 2nd Varsity 8+, and Varsity 4+. Our intermediate goals then focus on improving the standing of each of our crews at the conference championship each year as well as our team standing.
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Coach Jimmy King The team has excelled in academics over the past five years, earning All-American, National Scholar Athlete and all-BIG EAST honors to name a few. How do you stress to the team that just as much energy and time needs to be placed into academics as well as athletics? Fortunately with the team we’ve had over the past few years, we haven’t had to go out of our way as coaches to stress that importance. I think the message comes across in the individual talks the coaches have with the students throughout the year regarding everything--training, academics, and life. And to go back to an earlier point, I believe that the success we’re seeing in academics and in rowing isn’t exclusive of one another and isn’t a coincidence. This year’s team will be graduating one of the largest classes of seniors the program has seen with 10. How have they contributed to the team over the past four years, and what are you expecting from them in terms of leadership and performance this season? Some of those seniors began as a novice in either their sophomore or junior years at WVU, so there’s actually a wide range of experience among the senior class. We expect leadership to come from throughout our team regardless of class, but there is a greater expectation placed upon the older members to know how things are to be done, such as certain workouts, and what’s considered acceptable behavior among our team. Considering their time within the program, they are expected to help the younger members learn how to be good Mountaineers. Where performance is concerned, we continually emphasize “improvement”--improvement week to week, month to month, and year to year. As seniors, the coaches expect them to perform at their best relative to their previous years, but because they are seniors and regardless of whether they have been on the team two years or four years, there’s certainly a bit of added desire on both sides. The rowers and coxswains are striving to make their last season the best yet and the coaches certainly want them to achieve their goals so that they leave the program feeling good not only about what they have accomplished individually, but what they have helped our team accomplish collectively.
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