9 minute read
A Small Boat Story
from Summer 2023
by Cougar Crew
“If you can learn to row a Pair well it will help you as you try and move up into larger boats.”
—ACRA Live stream commentary
The 8+ dominates competitive rowing to the extent that the rowing community itself recognizes only “8s” and “not-8s”, the not-8s being the Single, Double, Pair, Quad and Four or the “small-boats.” Small-boats are their own events, with their own virtues and their own unique requirements. These are the Cougar Crew small-boat stories from ACRA 2023.
Men’s Straight Pair (M2-)
The Pair, I argue, was invented by someone with a sculling background and a deep loathing for the sweep community. It is patient; the moment you drop your guard, it will bite you. All shells are intrinsically unstable to roll. The Pair is also profoundly unstable to yaw; it wiggles down the course unless the crew applies asymmetric pressure at asymmetric points in the stroke. The only way to create a shell more prone to capsize is to put both oars on the same side. You can’t hide in the Pair.
Trial by fire (noun phrase): 1. A test in which a person is exposed to flames in order to assess their truthfulness, commitment or courage. 2. Any ordeal which tests one’s strength, endurance or resolve. 3. (Idiomatic, by extension): Racing a Pair, especially a Pair that formed 12 days prior.
There is a lot to admire about Phil Busick (24) and Aaron Sangha (25). What struck me most was their admiration for and commitment to each other. We take that for granted in rowing; it is often our norm. Thus we can, at times, forget what a privilege it is to form a friendship worthy of the name. They speak in terms of pride, gratitude, trust and a desire to excel. “I questioned my ability to properly represent the program,” said Busick, having so little time to prepare. It is clear these are their authentic voices, free of affectation and self-interest.
ACRA Heat 2 of the M2- was the first race Busick & Sangha rowed as a crew. They struggled. The C Final was their second. They prevailed. In fact, they showed great poise and discipline, rowing an error-free and laudable race. They learned to accommodate the quirkiness of the Pair. They lived the adage “sink or swim.”
Busick, in stern, worked the toe. Sangha, in bow, called the race. In the time they had to rehearse they developed their own catch-phrases: clipped, single words relevant to overcoming known issues. They reflected at length on the lessons of the Pair: calm is rewarded, tension is punished. See the conundrum? The boat wants to bite you but you must relax.
Summarizing the C Final, Sangha offered this: “Our struggle was getting into the mindset of rowing a Pair. Had we had more time, we could have done better, but it was such a great experience to row it, I can’t be upset.”
Busick and Sangha plan a return to the Pair this fall; they see it as a vehicle into the 1V8+. California native Phil Busick came to rowing as a walk-on, drawn by a chance encounter with an ergometer trial and the open generosity of the crew. He sees his Senior year as an opportunity to prove himself among his peers. Aaron Sangha has two years of eligibility remaining which he will pursue in his home state of Washington.
(HereNow coverage of Phil Busick and Aaron Sangha in the M2C Final picks up at 670m at video time stamp 01:27:42 with WSU in lane three, first on the left in the opening frame. Watch it here: https://tinyurl.com/bdf8vsfu)
Women’s Double Scull (W2x)
WSU Women’s Club entries are identified by an odd suffix: “- Men”; perhaps meant to be translated “not Men” or “without Men.” Read it as you will, the Club Women put forward a Double that earned the podium.
The most remarkable aspect of WSU’s W2x performance was not their nearly impeccable course, nor their poise while being hard-pressed for 1,500m, nor even their Silver medal finish after sculling together less than two months. The most remarkable aspect of this crew is the very fact of their existence. These quiet, endearing, articulate and unassuming athletes rose from a program of roster-depth-four and succeeded, essentially on their own, by the sheer power of their combined will and a deep bond of friendship and mutual respect. Olivia Sloma and Alex Carper are a force of nature.
It would be difficult to find two people more at ease together. Acknowledging and reinforcing one another’s strengths helped forge a fast crew in eight weeks’ time from two women rowing in the same shell. That and their innate talent.
In the Grand Final, Sloma and Carper were called to the line ahead of schedule and linked to the stake boat two startrehearsals short of their planned warmup. This may have contributed to the awkwardness of their first 15 strokes. They shook it off and settled in for the long haul. At 360m the order-of-finish was already decided: Gordon College first, WSU second and UNH a very close third. It was a relentless slugfest for Silver from there to the finish. Carper, in bow, called the race, sharing steering inputs with Sloma at stroke. There was no toe. Watch closely and you may notice a single lapse in heading, caught early and corrected, with great finesse, over the course of several strokes. No ricochet off the buoy line, no mad dash back to center, but rather a disciplined feathering of the heading that ultimately paid dividends. Composure under pressure is a virtue Sloma and Carper learned at WIRAs.
Asked to describe their state of mind after the finish, Carper said “I thought we rowed a mature race. I was happy.” Sloma replied, “I was tired!” A Zen-mind and no mistake. “Yes,” said Carper “as long as we are upright and have a pulse, we are pulling.”
Olivia Sloma is contemplating a move to the Women’s D1 for her Junior and Senior years. I suspect she will excel. Alex Carper will be the 28th Women’s Commodore and will spend her remaining two years of eligibility rowing. No two words focus the mind as sharply as these: everything ends. However, it is a priceless universal of rowing: the boat dissolves but not the crew.
(Coverage of Olivia Sloma and Alex Carper in the W2x picks up at 360m; video time stamp 01:21:37, with WSU in lane 4, third from the top in the opening frame. Watch it here: https://tinyurl. com/5n8zm5mu)
Men’s Single Scull (M1x)
If you row, you may have come to secretly admire the Single. Almost everyone who crews—rows with at least one partner— has innate respect for the athletes who row alone. Competitive rowing is painful; in a crew, you have companions who help you bear the pain. If it is true that you can’t hide in the Pair, it is also true that there is someone else in the boat to blame. And if there is “no crying in Baseball” there is no hiding, no blaming and no escape in the Single.
Suppose you had 20 outings in a Single to your credit. Not 20 this season, 20 in your entire career. Would you have the courage to enter the ACRA? And if you did, where might you expect to finish? For Spokane native Don Kelly, the answers are Yes, and damn-near-first in the Petite Final. It is uncommon to refer to a boat race as a knife fight, but the final 500m of Kelly’s last collegiate competition might qualify. If you don’t see blood in the water at the finish, you may not be paying close enough attention.
Kelly arrived at WSU with a Cross Country background and was handed a copy of The Boys in the Boat. That trajectory carried him through the punishing realities of Covid to Oak Ridge, Tennessee, four years later. Sidelined from sweep rowing by sequential back and wrist injuries, Kelly turned to the Single and found his calling. Struggling in the eight to isolate and interpret the consequences of his actions from a signal containing seven other sources, rowing in isolation gave him the prompt, unambiguous feedback he needed to grow his skill-set and experience.
Leaving the line in the Petite Final with his usual cautious, composed start, he was, as he expected, last in a field of six at 100m, but still bottom-down. It is hard to be in the hunt bottom-up. At 700m four boats, including Kelly, share the lead, line-abreast. Which means he had picked his way through the entire pack; an experience, he said, that he enjoyed. Having shed all but one challenger by 1,500m, he moved to the front only to be overtaken, finishing a commendable second, 1.2 seconds off the lead.
How does a sculler, with a race-to-win attitude, come to terms with a close second? “I had fun,” said Kelly. “In hindsight I can’t see how I might have affected the outcome further given the reality of my situation.”
Graduating with a degree in Kinesiology and currently employed as a personal trainer, Don Kelly is making plans for summer rowing in western Washington and assembling a Quad of hand-picked men. Only the best eights can press a determined M4x that knows how to suffer. One of the dark secrets of rowing.
(Coverage of Don Kelly’s Petite Final in the M1x begins at video time-stamp 01:07:01 with Kelly, in lane 4, second from the left in the opening frame. Watch it here: https://tinyurl.com/5n8zm5mu)
—Mike Klier (75)
ACRA All-Region Teams
On May 19, ACRA posted the following press release:
The American Collegiate Rowing Association proudly announces the All-Region teams and Regional Coaches of the Year. Criteria used were: 2,000 meter testing scores, performance of their crew, career racing results, individual performances and coach recommendation. Selections were made by the ACRA Board of Directors. To be considered for this award, each individual’s team must be an ACRA member and the coach must have submitted the candidate’s name. Congratulations to all those receiving these honors!
In yet another startling measure of the rising stature of WSU rowing, for the ACRA 2023 West Coast Region Men’s Team (eight rowers and a coxswain), WSU had three athletes selected: Carter Mills, Mark Walker-Rittgers and Sean Swett. Cal Irvine had two athletes named; the remaining four were from UC Davis, Orange Coast, UC Santa Barbara and University of Oregon. WSU’s Alex Carper was named to the West Coast Women’s Team. Congratulations, Carter, Mark, Sean and Alex. Press release: https://tinyurl.com/327352kj
