Winter 2024

PULLHARD

CELEBRATING OUR COACHES

TABLE OF CONTENTS

From the

Power-10 Accelerates Dramatically

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Going to press is a rewarding challenge, made possible only by the alert intelligence of many collaborators. Thank you, all!

Editor: Rich Ray

Design and layout: Kathleen Randall

Copyeditor: Kari Ranten

Stories, interviews, photos, graphics, proofreading, fact-checking, wise counsel:

Dave Arnold

Shawn Bagnall

Peter Brevick

Steven Collet

Sherry & Darwin Cook

Tammy Crawford

Andi Day

An ad hoc committee of the Cougar Crew Alumni Association has spent a year thinking about our coaches and the first tangible result is in your hands. Like you, I have had a lifetime of mentors and teachers. Each in their own way helped shape who I am. My first and second rowing coaches are still great friends. Please join us at Cougar Crew Days in Pullman to celebrate our coaches, 73 and counting. Give yours a handshake, hug or high-five.

Our first half-century saw some remarkable achievements, but it was not without its bitter lees. We all know the name of Cristy Cay Cook. Thanks to the unparalleled generosity of her parents and sister, in this issue we remember her clearly. The love and generosity with which her grieving family responded to their loss show depths of honor and decency few among us will ever equal.

You will meet in these pages Peter Mallory, our keynote speaker at this year’s Cougar Crew Days March 16. Mallory’s resume includes, among other startling line-items, honorary membership on the board of directors of the River and Rowing Museum in Henley-on-Thames. He is the author of The Sport of Rowing. It is a monster of a book: four volumes, more than 2,500 pages. Your average reader might ask how a subject so obscure could possibly justify such a massive book. But very few readers row boats. Fewer yet can possibly imagine that unearthly sensation when a boat begins to swing.

In the 6th century BC, Heraclitus wrote: “It is impossible to step into the same river twice.” Despite its overuse, I like his epigram “The only constant in life is change.” Since our last issue, the Pacific-12 Conference has disappeared. Higher Ed everywhere is facing serious financial difficulties. The breakwater sheltering our docks has suffered an algae bloom of mythological dimensions so intense it cut fall 2023 water time in half. Our first-ever full-on recruiting effort has produced two recruits. One of our earliest racing eights was found on sale in Colorado and now hangs on display in the Student Recreation Center. The Power-10 Campaign has doubled in size.

Patience and sheer tenacity have seen us through it all. We trust this issue will persuade the doubters, if any. Per aspera ad astra. Through difficulties to the stars.

—Rich Ray (80)

Dave Emigh

Doug Engle

Dave Herrick

John Holtman

Ernie Iseminger

Mo Carrick Kelley

Mike Klier

Tammy Lindberg

Peter Mallory

Len Mills

Kristi Norelius

Josh Proctor

Kari Ranten

Ken Struckmeyer

COVER PHOTOS: CLOCKWISE FROM UPPER LEFT: COACHES PETER BREVICK, DAVID HERRICK, TAMMY CRAWFORD, KEN STRUCKMEYER.

A Retired Coach Looks at Collegiate Club Rowing

A few of us early 1970s alumni were chatting in the Marriott lobby this past Cougar Crew Days when someone said Cougar Crew just isn’t the same as it was when we were rowing. You are exactly right I said! Because men’s collegiate rowing just isn’t the same as it was either. And that’s because we rowed in the good old days! None of us will admit to anything about the good old days because that might imply we are old. I say we are not old until we can’t make it back to Pullman for Cougar Crew Days. That’s old. When were the good old days? I propose they ended with the advent of plastic/carbon fiber shells and oars, and electronic Cox-Boxes. Somewhere in the late 70s or early 80s.

College Rowing in the Seventies

The first WSU race was the 1972 Corvallis Regatta. Washington and California (then as now) were the strongest West Coast programs. Cal and UW always had new equipment, but we all rowed cedar-skinned Pocock shells with heavy spruce Pocock oars, and the coxswains all barked into little cardboard megaphones mounted on their heads. Most riggers were impossible to adjust. Older boats had brass oarlocks and “putty-knife” blades.

High school rowers were almost non-existent. UW Coach Dick Erickson liked to say: Give me a boatload of 6’4” high school “most inspirational” players and team captains. I’ll teach them how to row and we will win.

Every school racing similarly rudimentary equipment and boating crews their current coaches taught to row: if that isn’t a plausible description of the good old days then what is?

Lightweight Rowing

Lightweights were a big part of collegiate rowing in the good old days. WSU’s lights were among the best. They were loud, proud, and fast. I’m pleased to report those 1970s WSU lights are still loud and proud. West Coast lightweight rowing, except for an occasional lightweight fours race, has vanished. There was no Lightweight 8 race on the West Coast or at ACRAs in 2023.

The IRA

The Intercollegiate Rowing Association (IRA) was established in 1895. In 2003, Harvard and Yale formally agreed to race at the IRA regatta. That finally made the IRA the “Official Men’s National Rowing Championship.” Varsity and club rowing programs were both allowed to race in the IRA at that time. When the varsity Rutgers crew was cut after the 2007 season, the Rutgers Athletic Director said that it didn’t matter because they could still participate in the IRA as a club. The remaining varsity IRA teams reacted in self-defense by excluding clubs.

The ACRA

As a result the American Collegiate Rowing Association (ACRA) was established. The first ACRA National Championships were held in 2008. WSU first raced in 2010 and has participated ever since. Inadvertently, excluding clubs from the IRA actually strengthened collegiate club rowing. The good, large clubs were, for the first time, able to focus their entire efforts on winning the ACRA Team National Championship. The racing format focuses on sweep events, but sculling events are also on the schedule. Thus, the smaller university club teams can focus on winning a specific event. A “big tent” was created that is large enough for all club teams. ACRA is now the largest US collegiate regatta in terms of entries and participants.

The creation of ACRA was a blessing for WSU Crew. For the first time in forty years, we had a realistically attainable goal we could strive to achieve. We were competing with peer University Club teams with similar resources. No longer was our season-ending championship a combination of varsity and club teams.

As one of the top club programs in the country, WSU is committed to winning the ACRA National Team Championships. Team points are awarded for each event. WSU has committed to annually enter as many crews as possible. This gives every athlete on the squad a way to contribute to the objective of a team championship. It generally requires five eights (and perhaps a four or two) to compete for the ACRA National Team Championship.

The State of the IRA

It has been fifty years since the WSU Rowing Club was established. The resource gap between the top IRA schools and the

Dave Emigh on making sense of it all continued on page 22

Roll Call of the Illustrious

THE COUGAR CREW COACHING ROSTER

After a tedious parsing of old records and a barrage of emails we celebrate our list of 73 coaches and counting

Coaches are the lifeblood, moving spirit, sine qua non of all sporting teams. Whether they are volunteers eager to teach something they love, or professionals hired to sustain a legacy or build one from scratch, they often exert outsized impact on the development of individuals and teams.

“Anything you’re good at” said Bertrand Russell, “contributes to happiness.” The satisfaction that comes from mastering a sport is a universal and lasting reward. For endurance athletes, maximizing cardio is the great, good thing—none of this is easy, and it’s almost impossible without a coach and stopwatch.

“It’s good for you; it builds character!” was the phrase Coach Struckmeyer used during my rowing career, typically when we faced some difficult situation or decision. In all good comedy, a hard kernel of truth sustains the gag line.

Cougar Crew Days 2024 will be a celebration of our coaches and a collective recognition of their accomplishments. There are many score of them, mostly volunteer or nominally compensated. We all know what they did for us. This is a chance to show them we seriously appreciate it. And if we’ve missed someone, let us know.

—Doug Engle (79)

HEAD COACHES

Bob Orr

Men’s Head Coach 1971-1973

Ken Struckmeyer

Men’s Head Coach 1973-Fall 1993

Anne Marie Dousset

Women’s Head Coach 1974-1975

Ron Neal (74)

Women’s Head Coach 1975-1976

Doug Kee (75)

Women’s Head Coach 1976-1977

Steve Porter (77)

Women’s Head Coach 1977-1978

Gene Dowers (76)

Women’s Head Coach 1978-1982, 1985-1986

Rich Ray (80)

Women’s Head Coach 1982-1984

Bob Appleyard (75)

Women’s Head Coach 1984-1985

Piotr Rylski

Women’s Head Coach 1986-1987

Thad O’Dell (87)

Women’s Head Coach 1987-1988

Jess O’Dell (88)

Women’s Head Coach 1988-1990

Tammy Crawford (84)

Women’s Head Coach WSU Athletics 1990-2002

Gene Dowers (76)

Men’s Head Coach Spring 1993

Ernie Iseminger (91)

Men’s Head Coach 1993-1998

Hugh Dodd

Men’s Head Coach 1998-2000

Shawn Bagnall (99)

Men’s Head Coach 2000-2002

Michelle Arganbright

Men’s Head Coach 2002-2004

Jane LaRiviere

Women’s Head Coach WSU Athletics 2002-Present

Arthur Ericsson

Men’s Head Coach 2004-2017

Emily Kohl

Women’s Head Coach 2009-2010

Arthur Ericsson, Julia Gamache, Dan Thayer

Women’s Co-Coaches 2010-2011

Dan Thayer (01)

Women’s Head Coach 2011-2014

Giles Dakin-White (16)

Women’s Head Coach 2014-2016

Dave Kempsell (18)

Women’s Head Coach 2016-2017

Peter Brevick (06)

Men’s Head Coach 2017-Present

Hugo Moon (19)

Women’s Head Coach 2017-2019

Milos Aleksic

Women’s Head Coach 2019-2022

NOVICE & ASSISTANT COACHES

Ken Abbey

Men’s Assistant Coach 1971-1973

Dave Pratt

Men’s Novice Coach 1971-1973

Vance Smith

Men’s Novice Coach 1974-1975

Dave Emigh (75)

Men’s Novice Coach 1975-1980

Brad Sleeper

Men’s Assistant Novice Coach 1979-1980

Tim Malkow (79)

Men’s Novice Coach 1980-1981

Susie Reavis

Women’s Novice Coach (1980-1981)

John Holtman (81)

Men’s Novice Coach 1981-1983

Neal Sullivan

Women’s Novice Coach (1981-1982)

Bob Appleyard (75)

Men’s Assistant Coach 1982-1986

Kash Van Cleef (84)

Men’s Novice Coach 1983-1985

Gene Dowers (75)

Women’s Novice Coach (1984-1985)

Tammy Crawford (84)

Women’s Novice Coach (1985-1986)

Rob MacDougall (84)

Men’s Novice Coach 1986-1987

Mike McQuaid (87)

Men’s Novice Coach 1987-1988

Andi Day (91)

Women’s Assistant Coach WSU Athletics 1990-1991

Jodi Rutter Winchell (90)

Women’s Novice Coach WSU Athletics 1990-2000

Marc Washer

Men’s Novice Coach 1989-1990

Ernie Iseminger (91)

Men’s Novice Coach 1990-1993

Carlene Anders (86)

Women’s Assistant Coach WSU Athletics 1992-1993

Simon Nash (86)

Men’s Novice Coach 1993-1994

Glenn Putryae

Men’s Novice Coach 1994-1997

Jesse Wolfe (98)

Men’s Novice Coach 1997-1998

Shawn Bagnall (99)

Men’s Novice Coach 1998-2000

Ashton Lo (Amy Armstrong)

Men’s Novice Coach 2000-2001

Lucas Olona (00)

Men’s Novice Coach 2001-2002

Ryan Herrington (01)

Men’s Novice Coach 2002-2003

Ginny Bradley

Men’s Novice Coach 2003-2005

Mike Dostal

Men’s Novice Coach 2005-2006

Dan Thayer (01)

Men’s Novice Coach 2006-2008

Julia Gamache

Men’s Novice Coach 2008-2011

Peter Brevick (06)

Men’s Novice Coach 2011-2012

Giles Dakin-White (16)

Men’s Novice Coach 2012-2014

Dave Herrick (14)

Men’s Assistant Varsity Coach 2014-2015

Alec Hurley (17)

Men’s Assistant Varsity Coach 2015-2017

Woody Stark (18)

Assistant Coach 2017-2018

Donovan Labriola

Assistant Coach 2018-2019

Devon McCornack (19)

Graduate Assistant Coach 2019-2021

Daniella DuToit (UMass 19)

Graduate Assistant Coach 2021-Present

John Michael Najarian (20)

Graduate Assistant Coach 2022-2023

Bjorn Elliott (21)

Men’s Novice Coach 2023-Present

BEYOND THE SNAKE

Brad Sleeper (76)

Founded East Channel Crew, Bellevue Boy’s & Girls Club; Overlake School Head Coach (Redmond, WA) 1979-1985

Dave Emigh (75)

Oregon State (OSU) Program Director, Men’s and Women’s Rowing; Head Coach, Men’s Varsity 1982-1994

John Holtman (81)

OSU Freshman Coach, Stanford Interim Assistant Coach, Mt. Baker Rowing 1985-1988

Tammy Crawford (84)

UW Women’s Novice Assistant Coach; US Rowing Junior Women’s Coach; Mt. Baker Rowing Masters Coach; US Women’s Senior B 8+ Coach 1986-1992

Tim Malkow (79)

Program Director, Mt. Baker Rowing 1987-1990

Robert McDougall (84)

University of Washington Summer Assistant Coach; Masters Coach in Japan, University of Iowa Men’s Club Coach 1987-2018

Murray Etherington (83)

Mt. Baker Rowing Master’s Coach 1989-1990

Gene Dowers (75)

Gonzaga Women’s Head Coach 1990-1992

Carleen Anders (86)

Gonzaga Women’s Assistant Coach 1990-1992

David Reeder (88)

Phillips Academy Andover (MA) Assistant Coach; Mt. Baker Rowing Assistant Coach; Northfield Mt. Herman School, Gill, MA Head Coach 1990Present

Kent McCleary (90)

Wenatchee Row & Paddle Club Sculling Coach; Renton Rowing Center, Master’s and Youth Coach; Chair, Board of Directors 1991-Present

Doug van Gelder (91)

University of Puget Sound Novice Coach; Inglemoor High School (Kenmore, WA) Head Coach 1993-Present

Andi Day (91)

Anchorage Rowing Association, Founding Board Member and Program Manager; LWRC Youth and Masters Coach; Pocock Rowing Center Junior Women’s Coach 1997-2010

Marietta (“Ed”) Hall (91)

Kenai Crewsers (Seward, AK), Head Coach; Anchorage Rowing Association, Founding Board Member, Board President and Head Coach 19972020

Shawn Bagnall (99)

Gonzaga Freshman Coach and Recruiting Coordinator; Syracuse University Freshman Coach and Recruiting Coordinator; US Navy Lightweight Head Coach 2002-Present

Peter Brevick (06)

OKC Riversport (Oklahoma City, OK), Girls Assistant Coach; US National Team Men’s Light Pair Coach; OKC Riversport Men’s Novice Coach; OKC Riversport Men’s Varsity Coach 2014-2017

Jake Brisson (16)

South Kitsap High School (Port Orchard, WA), Head Coach; Pocock Rowing Club 2016-2022

Dave Herrick (14)

Pennsylvania Athletic Club (Penn AC)(Philadelphia, PA) Summer High Performance Juniors Assistant and Head Coach; University of Virginia (Charlottesville, VA) Graduate Assistant Coach; OSU Women’s Novice Coach; US Navy Lightweight Assistant Coach 2016-Present

Sidney Cross (17)

College of William & Mary (Williamsburg, VA) Women’s Coach; Williamsburg Boat Club (Williamsburg, VA) Women’s Coach 2019-2021

Nichole Martin (11)

Seattle University Rowing Head Coach 2012-Present

Karl Huhta (06)

Loyola Marymount (Los Angeles, CA), Director of Rowing and Women’s Head Coach 2019-2022

Ashley Vu (16)

Texas Christian University (Fort Worth, TX) Women’s Coach 2021-Present

Dave Arnold (88)

Founder and Board President Tri-Cities Rowing Association (Richland, WA) 2022-Present

Dave Curran (87)

Founder and Board Member Tri-Cities Rowing Association 2022-Present

COACHES TALK COACHING AND LIFE

Four Cougar coaches share thoughts on the rewards, challenges and impact that coaching has had on their lives and their athletes. A stroke/cox team discuss the sometimes amusing learning curve transactions between athletes and coaches.

KEN STRUCKMEYER IT WASN’T A CAKEWALK

Sitting in Miss Benson’s 10th grade algebra class at East High School in Madison, Wisconsin, I would often look out the window and think that when I grew up, I would like to be a professor. Sometimes, I would see the Wisconsin crews rowing on Lake Monona and think: What a beautiful sight. That looks like fun.

While I was standing in the registration line at Wisconsin as a Freshman, Head Coach Norm Sonju and his assistants cruised by, surveying their prospects. They invited me to the boathouse and I was hooked. I rowed four years. My senior year I raced in one JV event at the Eastern Sprints. We finished last. My only trip to the IRAs came in my senior year. I got to serve as the assistant truck driver, taking the shells to Syracuse, New York.

If someone told me then that I would return to Madison in six years to watch a varsity crew I had coached take first at the Midwest Sprints and three years later in Syracuse watch another

varsity crew I had coached do the same thing at IRAs, I would have told them to have their head examined.

I completed my undergraduate degree and spent nine months in Nigeria working on my Masters Degree. While there, I contracted malaria and lost ninety pounds. I survived. I finished my degree and had job interviews for faculty positions at Purdue and Washington State. With offers from both places I moved to Pullman. I was 25 years old.

That first fall, I saw a mimeograph poster announcing a meeting for the WSU crew to be held one evening in the CUB. I went out of sheer curiosity. After the meeting, Ken Abbey and Dave Pratt approached me and suggested I take up the sport. I informed them I rowed four years at Wisconsin and was a newhire on the Landscape Architecture faculty. They informed me I was an assistant coach. Being a coach was something I had never contemplated. It sounded kind of nice. That was the fall of 1971.

That first year, I was teaching three courses a semester and would occasionally go to the river for practice. The next year I went more often. That spring, Coach Bob Orr received his Ph.D. and left for the west side. After a three-minute national search, I was named Head Coach.

The main tenets for the program were settled in discussions with Bob Orr, Ken Abbey and Dave Pratt in my second year of involvement. First, we would train as a varsity team. Second, we were going to be competitive. Third, we were going to do everything with class. Fourth, we would strive for academic excellence. These objectives summarized my rowing years. The values, the attitudes, the habits required to satisfy them were critical in all that I accomplished in school and were key to my survival in Nigeria.

The physical and mental tools I gained through rowing were values I might not have gained anywhere else. They were values I wanted in instill in the Washington State program.

In The Amateurs, David Halberstam described the Cougar Crew of those days: “the program was new, the coach was inexperienced, and the team always lost.” The students who came down to the river every day had another perspective. I certainly wasn’t a great athlete, but my rowing experience taught me that with enough diligent, well-focused effort, our innate capacities and resilience can far exceed conventional expectations.

COACH STRUCKMEYER, CENTER DOCK IN THE LETTER JACKET; BOB ORR IN OVERALLS, 1972. PHOTO: LEN MILLS

The many nights I returned to the boathouse to make repairs to the timeworn, weatherbeaten shells were worth it, because the oarsmen were always there the next day, eager and ready to go out again. I wasn’t paid a dime for my twenty years of work, but that didn’t matter. The beauty of the shells on the river, the effort and aspirations of the athletes were always inspiring. It wasn’t exactly a cake walk, but we survived.

—Ken Struckmeyer (UW Madison, 68)

KRISTI NORELIUS & M0 CARRICK KELLEY A STROKE/COX DIALOG

Kristi: Fifty years ago, I was the most unlikely candidate to write about coaches’ influence on athletes. I reached out to my first coxswain to bounce around ideas and memories of my experiences with coaches I’ve encountered.

Mo: You stepped onto the WSU crew dock never having participated in any sport. On your journey from novice to Olympic gold medalist you have probably experienced every type of coach. Our first women’s crew coaches (Anne Marie Dousset, Ron Neal, Gene Dowers, Doug Kee, Steve Porter) were not experienced coaches when they took us on, but they had knowledge of rowing from the athlete’s perspective. They were influential because they were passionate about rowing, eager to have us experience that passion. I tried to emulate this in my own coaching experiences.

Kristi: Your description of these early Cougar coaches is spot on. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was truly impacted by witnessing the passion, commitment, and sacrifice of those who were

immersing themselves in developing the WSU rowing program.

I consider you one of my first coaches, along with Ron Neal. Ron launched me into rowing. He created a safe place to be a beginner, teaching the basics, creating a community, and helping us grow. I would absolutely add you to the list of people who modeled what it means to open one’s heart for the greater good. The collective work of those in coaching roles, along with other critical advocates, created the bones of the program and sent a message to the rest of us that we mattered; that the work we were doing on the water, in the weight room, on the stairs was worth something. That message was fuel to me. It also provided an inspirational template that I have utilized in both community and workplace advocacy projects throughout my life.

Mo: Ken Struckmeyer comes to mind—having “heart for the greater good.” In our conversations, you listed many attributes of great coaches. One was to “give the athletes a sense of ownership and to provide leadership opportunities within the team.” Struckmeyer and his staff definitely did this. A sense of humor was on your list. Ron and Gene hit that mark! These attributes stayed with me throughout my teaching/coaching career. What other coaching characteristics helped move you from novice to champion?

Kristi: Technical expertise, establishing predictable structure, clear communication, a love of teaching. These are all key characteristics. But, early in my rowing career, I mostly needed a very patient coach who provided technical information in bite-sized chunks. I had limited understanding of how to effectively utilize my gangly body. I was lucky to have coaches who generally were skilled at “reading” athletes and meeting us where we were in terms of athletic skill and mindset.

I also needed a coach who could convey what I needed most— kinesthetic images. I assimilated information best by learning the sense of movement, not just by hearing verbal instruction of how to move. A coach would say, “You’ll know you made a good catch when you hear the perfect ploop,” or “I want you to row so hard your ancestors can feel it!” or “The catch and release are ends of a conveyor belt,” or “You have a lot of potential. I just don’t know if it’s for rowing or roller derby.” The creativity and humor in these statements not only helped me to viscerally understand, but they were wrapped in the coach’s intuition that success occurs in a climate of shared humanity and playfulness.

Mo: As my first stroke oar, you were unbelievably hardworking. Your journey to gold medalist, competing with worldclass athletes, required immense self-drive. In what way did coaches promote that?

Kristi: A coach must find that sweet spot, straddling between high expectations and giving athletes the autonomy to struggle. This breeds confidence and self-motivation. When I was given a menu of different approaches to off-season cardio workouts, I became curious about how my heart rate varied between running, swimming, cross-country skiing, or jumping rope. I experimented with my tolerance for discomfort and my relationship with pain. I used what I learned when I got back in the boat.

When I was given tools and parameters, plus the opportunity to play with ideas, it was as if I was handed keys to a spaceship. I

SPRING, 1976. PULLMAN. CHINOOK PHOTO! BACK ROW L-R: FELLY BERGANO, CHRIS CARSTENS, ROBIN YOUNG, MARTHA (WITT) SLEEPER, DAWN MAGUIRE; MIDDLE ROW: JEAN (“SNAKE ACTION”) PATTERSON, KARI (BURINGRUD) RANTEN, KRISTI NORELIUS, MAUREEN (“MO” CARRICK) KELLEY; FRONT ROW: CYNDI JOHNSON, PEGGY STAEHELI.

believe this is what helped me in sport and in my life—helped me to peer with imagination over the edge of unlikely and into the universe of possibilities

—Kristi Norelius (77) and Maureen (“Mo” Carrick) Kelley (78)

Kristi learned to row on the Snake. At LWRC and UW, she rowed on two national title collegiate crews. In 1980 she was an Olympic sculling team spare and earned silver medals at three World Championships. Kristi finished her career in the six seat of the US gold medal eight at the 1984 Games in Los Angeles. Mo was a four-year coxswain (1974–1978) and was on the WSU varsity track team in 1974. Her BA was English/Education, with a Coaching minor. She coached 20 years high school and club volleyball, track, and soccer.

GENE DOWERS RECOLLECTIONS OF AN ALMOST ACCIDENTAL COACH

I was “one of those guys.” A link in a succession of men who followed Anne Marie Dousset at the helm of Women’s Cougar Crew. Unlike most of the others, I was not at the end of my degree program. I had “stopped out” for a year and a half after resigning a Navy ROTC scholarship, worked, lived at home, and came back with enough money to finish school.

Before I left, I had decided that I wanted to coach the Women’s Crew. I wasn’t going to have any eligibility left to compete and my grades wouldn’t have let me anyway. I changed my major to Physical Education, added the Coaching minor, and dove in.

Like those other guys, I had plenty of enthusiasm and a bunch of my own ideas. A lot of that worked with the new members and some of it seriously grated on a few of the returnees. Ken Struckmeyer graced me with patience I might not have deserved. Like

every other Cougar Crew, we worked through it. I grew up a lot. I felt that the Women’s Crew needed some of the consistency that Struck provided for the men. I promised the freshmen that I would be around for four years. Of course, I didn’t have any idea how I was going to do that, but it needed to be done. It was a blessing to be able to accomplish that four-year goal and then return to the Women’s Crew for two more years a couple of years later. My final stint with Cougar Crew was with those nine rowers and two coxswains who just wouldn’t quit the Men’s Varsity program at the close of Coach Struckmeyer’s tenure. It is still the only time in 45 years of coaching that I have worked with a team of guys.

Much later, when I started a junior volleyball club, it was stunningly apparent how easy I had it as a coach in Cougar Crew. I never had to worry about a coaching launch or how the shells were going to get to a regatta or whether the bills were going to get paid or a hundred other things I found that I got to do as a new club director. Thank you, Ken.

I had a hand in putting a couple of rowing shells into the Women’s Crew inventory. One was a pleasure. During my time away from school, I loaned the women the balance of the purchase price of the Ron Neal. It was a beautiful cedar 4+, built specifically for rowers of our size. I loved that boat and often wonder where. it ended up.

The other was a memorial, ordered with a broken heart, humbled by the generosity of grieving parents. The Cristy Cay Cook was a women-specific eight with about everything special that you could get in a shell at that time. When Cristy died in a car accident returning from practice, her Mom and Dad made sure that she would be remembered. Their donation was a testament to the effect that Cougar Crew had on both of their daughters.

Not that those of us who were there could forget. Too young and inexperienced then, I came to understand my responsibility, as her coach, for that tragedy later on. In looking back, the Cook’s request that I have the honor of scattering Cristy’s ashes off the end of the dock at the Boyer boathouse cemented that duty in me.

What I knew then was that Cristy brightened our days. I did not know her well. But in the midst of attending to all of those rowers and coxswains, I couldn’t help but notice her work and her joy and the way she loved her friends. Though my memories of her are not deeply personal, they are deep, because she was such an integral part of the atmosphere of that fall.

There were a couple of hundred people who impacted my life through Cougar Crew. Looking back, old coaches are tempted to think “if I only knew then what I know now,” with perhaps some regret for not having been able to give their early crews everything that later athletes got. But coaches are just like athletes, we’re all novices at some point. In Cougar Crew, a 21-year-old, like me, could be a PAC-10 Head Coach in their rookie year in the trade. We all grow.

The men I rowed with, the coaches I worked with, and the women I coached are some of my fondest memories. Some of those memories are also some of my most determinant life lessons. Looking back on how much Cougar Crew steered my evolution gives me a much more powerful grasp of my responsibility

COACH GENE DOWERS IN HIS ELEMENT, BOYER PARK, c. 1978.

with the people I work with now. We all move the world around us whether we mean to, or know it, or not.

After coaching Cougar Crew, my wife and I spent two years coaching the women’s crew at Gonzaga. I cannot imagine any other experience that could make me appreciate Cougar Crew more. There were plenty of good times and we won some races and Carlene and I changed that women’s program to its core. But I longed for the freedom, autonomy, creativity, and family of coaching at WSU.

After rowing, I took up coaching high school volleyball. 23 years in tiny Pateros, overlapping with 21 years in the club that I founded and continue to direct and coach. After a bunch of trips to State and a few trophies for the school, the piece of high school coaching that makes me smile most are the twelve women that I coached who became coaches. I owe it all to being given the chance to be “one of those guys” with Women’s Cougar Crew. —Gene Dowers (76)

Gene Dowers coxed on the Men’s side from Fall 1974 through Fall 1976. He assumed Head Coaching duties for the Women in Fall 1978 and continued through Spring 1982. After two years of graduate work in Exercise Physiology and Athletic Administration, Gene returned to coaching the Women, Fall 1984 through Spring 1986. From Fall 1990 through Spring 1992, he was the Head Coach of Gonzaga University Women’s Crew and in Spring 1993, returned to Pullman for a half-season as the Men’s Varsity Coach. In a dramatic paradigm shift, Dowers accepted an offer as Head Coach of the Pateros High School Volleyball team in 1995, retiring in 2017. He is also Founder, Director and Coach of the Confluence Volleyball Club (2003 to the present).

MAY, 1986. LAKE NATOMA, CA. “THE GROUP THAT CHANGED MY LIFE FOREVER.” FRONT ROW L-R: KELLY MELTON, STACY GOSNEY, JODI RUTTER, MAUREEN FLURY, VICKI JACKSON, TRACY (T.J.), KRISTA WATSON. MIDDLE ROW: BRENDA C., SHARI SCHNEIDER, ANGIE NEUMARKEL, BRENDA RISCH, JULIE KLATT, MARY FARREL, CHRISTINE, TAMMIE RUSSELL, KATIE MCMENAMIN. BACK ROW: STACY JENKINS, TRACY VADSET, PAM WARE, JANELLE HUME, SHELLA LYNCH, LOUISE, PATTI VAN PATTON.

TAMMY CRAWFORD

COACHING IS TEACHING; TEACHING IS COACHING

As seen in the erg room, March 2023

Neither of my careers, coach nor professor, were planned. Both happened because I was in the right place at the right time, and I followed my heart, little knowing what was ahead.

I am a person who wants to help people. I usually put the concerns of others ahead of my own. I think this is a trait shared by teachers. We tend to be altruistic. I like creating opportunities for young people to acquire skills and knowledge or to learn something about themselves.

I planned to become a high school biology teacher and coach basketball. My coaches (basketball and tennis in high school, and rowing in college) were either students or teachers in addition to coaches; they had other full-time obligations. It had not occurred to me that coaching could be a real job. My parents never did quite figure it out. They always asked “Is that all you do? Do you teach as well?” Answer: “Yes, I teach. I teach rowing. Coaching is teaching.”

What Moved Me

I never cared for race day. I liked planning, organizing, leading, and teaching. I believed if I did those well, the athletes would take responsibility for the competition piece of the puzzle. Still, it was hard to watch months of dedicated effort culminate in a single race. I rejected the idea that a race result defined us. I took satisfaction and pride in watching the Cougs race well, but racing well

Peter Brevick

Current Head Coach

Bob Orr First Head Coach (1970)

Ken Struckmeyer

Longest tenure as Head Coach

and winning are neither guaranteed nor causally related.

What I found most rewarding was a sense of contributing to an athlete’s personal growth; to see improvements in self-confidence, poise, decision-making, problem-solving, responsibility, communication skills, and sometimes physical transformations. All these were more important to me than race outcomes. Success can spur the growth of any athlete and I aspired to win as much as the next coach, but race results were not what moved me.

When I reconnect with former athletes, we seldom talk results. We cherish friends and experiences; remember the best and worst Rent-A-Rower placements, working concession stands at football games, van rides to and from the river, pushing the vans on the road toward Granite Point as a cross-training exercise, running the grade or steam plant hill or stadium stairs because the wind was howling. I have heard hair-raising roommate stories and road trip drama about which, as a coach, I had no clue.

Rolling With the Punches

The first year of transition from club to varsity was a bumpy one. I was somewhat oblivious to most of the turmoil. I was a 28-yearold at the helm of one of the first programs in NCAA history to offer rowing scholarships and we had an operating budget the likes of which Cougar Crew had never seen. I put my head down and focused on what I could control. I had a great support team in my husband Roger, Jodi Rutter, and Doug Winchell. We have a lifetime of stories: the four of us digging holes to install pull-up bars on the banks of the Snake in the August heat and rock-hard dirt, painting oars, repairing oar handles, installing the racecourse, driving the boat trailer.

Race results? A blur. I had to consult the records to recall the highest V8 finish was third at Pac-10s and fifth at Nationals. The Jayvees had program-defining victories, beating the Huskies several times, and earning gold and bronze at Nationals. Jodi led the novice to numerous Pac-10 victories and top finishes. The results don’t define my coaching career. What I treasure are the people—athletes, families, friends; lots of mutual support, laughter, and hard work. The results were thrilling or disappointing in the moment. What sticks with me is deep satisfaction from strong bonds with the people I was privileged to work with.

The Curtain Falls

Two factors ended my coaching career: recruiting and family. Especially the time the former took away from the latter. Quite literally, I turned in my resignation when coaching became a job. It struck me as deeply ironic that when I announced my retirement, the AD offered more money. I was doing something I loved; money was not the motivator.

Coaching was all-consuming. I woke up thinking about weather, lineups, workouts; how to help one athlete become stronger mentally, how to help another improve their stroke, what on-campus service to suggest to someone with a substance abuse problem, or what counselor to recommend to an athlete who was pregnant or another who had been assaulted. I embraced it all. What I did not care for was recruiting.

Recruiting has become intensely competitive and ugly. Instead of celebrating their own programs, coaches trash others. I

preferred to attract athletes on the merits of our program and school. Collegiate rowing is exceptional because athletes without experience can begin as novices and excel, but scholarships have steadily raised the bar, making it increasingly difficult to place a V8 in the top six nationally. Lower-level eights remain broadly competitive with or without an experienced oar, but to race with the best in the country, V8s need experienced rowers. Not a boatful of elite-level rowers, but enough to complement the talent and athleticism of those new to the sport. Predictably, top-level rowers are lured by incentives unseen at Land Grant schools in eastern Washington. And so, the resources and time demanded by recruiting led me to step away from an otherwise satisfying career.

I did not obsess over results, but the athletes cared a lot. When I was an athlete, results were equally important to me. So as a coach, I felt the heavy pull of the recruitment riptide, but I wasn’t very tempted to swim those turbulent waters. I loved coaching. I did not love recruiting.

The Crystal Ball

I cannot really speak to the future of rowing. I enjoy following the WSU teams and the rowers who take my classes, but I do not follow the rowing scene generally: the technology, the statistics, the politics. That may have been a factor in my career change.

Recent decades have seen a tectonic shift in collegiate sports generally. Money changes everything. Traditionally, coaches and athletic administrators came from the field of education. Most were involved out of love for a particular sport and because they were interested in developing young people holistically. Athletics were understood as enhancing the educational experience. Athletics is now a business and business decisions are rarely made with the interests of employees or athletes in mind. As evidenced in conference realignment.

Today’s coaches juggle more challenges than securing victories, sadly including serious concern for student-athlete mental health and overall well-being. The loss of one of our own, QB Tyler Hilinski, should be a clarion wake-up call. Program resources generally are shrinking due to declining enrollment and the cost of education is off-the-charts. Many non-scholarship athletes are forced to work during the academic year to help pay for school and limit debt.

All that said, rowing will endure. The first sport in the history of intercollegiate athletics rests on values and pride that run deep. As evidenced by Cougar Crew.

—Tammy (Boggs) Crawford, Ph.D. (85), (07)

Tammy rowed for WSU 1980-84, serving as Commodore her first three years. She returned to Pullman after graduating and spent one year as Women’s Novice coach under Head Coach Gene Dowers. In the fall of 1986, she relocated to Seattle, dividing her day coaching Masters rowing at Mt. Baker Rowing and Sailing Center, and as a Volunteer/Intern Coach for the Husky Women, then under Bob Ernst. One thing led to another, including Summers in 1987 and 1988 as an Under-18 Development Coach for

the National Team; 1988-1990 as UW Women’s Assistant Coach; a trip to France in 1990 for the World Championships with the US U-18 W4+; and Summer 1991 in Indianapolis as Development Coach with the U-23 National Team. In 1990, she was hired by the Athletic Department as the first Women’s Rowing Coach at WSU. She retired in 2002 to complete a PhD in Higher Education.

in 2021, a title they tied for in 2022. They had won the Dean’s Award, the highest team GPA on the Yard, three years running among the 35 varsity sports at Navy. The USNA Class of 2020 and 2022 Valedictorians were Navy Lights. This was a group of exceedingly high performers and it was not lost on me that I needed to keep this ball moving. In short, I learned; how to work with a new athlete population, how to run selection across competitive athletes with very tight margins, how to be more thoughtful around messaging, become a better leader, and more.

I’m happy to say that the Navy Lights brought me back into the fold of coaching. Going into the summer of 2022 I was burnt out on all the tasks and management necessary to run a team in a challenging work environment that simultaneously did not let me coach too frequently due to a small roster. I was doing all the work without the fun part, which is working directly with athletes.

DAVID HERRICK JUST IN FROM THE YARD; THOUGHTS ON COACHING

I am in my second year at Navy and only now I feel like I have a handle on the place. The USNA is such a vastly different and unique institution that there are few comparisons I can make outside of the other Service Academies. The way this place runs is based on nearly 200 years of tradition; the language itself used in day-to-day life feels alien to me as a civilian entering a space made up of primarily active-duty service members.

I landed in Annapolis within a week of the academic year starting, and my attempt to understand all the information presented to me was akin to trying to drink from a firehose. Lucky for me, I had a group of recently graduated individuals, now commissioned Marine Corps and Naval Officers, to help me manage the approximately 3.5 eights worth of Plebes (freshmen), the majority of whom had never rowed before.

I leapt in with both feet and did my best not to drown. Between managing training loads, learning the massive waterway, dodging boaters and wakes, starting to recruit high school athletes, and learning how to work with my new boss, Shawn Bagnall (99), it’s safe to say I had much to manage. I will admit I had a certain amount of anxiety coming in; I felt the weight of responsibility to uphold the work that had been done before my arrival.

For context, the N150’s (Navy Lights) were National Champions

Dream versus Reality

For those who have stepped away from rowing, or have never been behind the megaphone for an extended amount of time, professional coaching has changed in scope and responsibility. There was perhaps a time when duties were confined to the launch, pre/post race talks, and trailer driving, but if that was the case, those years are long gone. I would say 75-80% of my job is done outside the view of the public or of my athletes. I work (or have worked) on training plans, social media, travel logistics, snack orders/pickups, the year-round recruitment of high school athletes, NCAA compliance paperwork, athlete meetings, rigging/ de-rigging/cleaning boats, launch maintenance, boat repair, painting oars, alumni communications, selection/boat preparation, course maintenance/repair, and even running races. The duties are many while time is short.

Rowing is subject to almost identical NCAA regulations as revenue sports without the support staff to match. The grim reality is that there has been a shift in coaching post-pandemic where people are leaving the profession to find new chapters in their lives, and the reasons are almost always outside the launch. Some want to make more money, others want more free time to enjoy outside interests or spend with family, or start a family. Many are bogged down in the Sisyphean grind of recruiting, often with fewer resources than direct competitors.

The shift toward athlete-centered approaches by athletic departments has been an excellent move forward in terms of athlete well-being, but can often come at the risk of a career when a coach takes a misstep in the eyes of the team they are serving. Athletes are simultaneously the client and the product of athletics, which means coaches are usually first up to be replaced. In short, the challenges are many and the rewards are often few and far between. Reading all of that, one could reasonably ask “why on earth bother?”

WAWAWAI, APRIL 2014. BATTLING CHOP, FAWLEY CUP DUAL, 750 METERS TO GO. RESULT: WSU BY A LENGTH. COX: ASHLEY VOMUND (16); STROKE: JOHN GEHRING (15); SEVEN: CURTIS TREIBER (15); SIX: DAVID HERRICK (14); FIVE: MAX VAUGHN (15); FOUR: ALEX WEATBROOK (15); THREE: WILLIAM MIEDEMA (14); TWO: JOHN DORSCHER (16); BOW: ZACH JENSEN (16). PHOTO: ARTHUR ERICSSON.

Gratitude Changes the Brain

In essence, we have the ability to help change lives for the better. As coaches, we are charged with the responsibility of caring for these athletes, these people, as they go through the challenging, even painful, process of figuring out who they are and who they want to become. While on paper our goal is to collect wins (unfortunately, often a line-item on our contracts), at the end of the day we are in the business of building better people. Typically, we never see the fruits of our efforts while athletes are under our care. However, there are rare moments that bloom and can breathe life back into a tired soul. Moments that make our jobs worth it. In my nine years and change I’ve had three, maybe four, such moments that have stuck with me. I’ll share two.

The first is the most recent, a young man named Ross who was part of my first Plebe class at Navy. A short distance swimmer out of Colorado, he came to the Academy with no prior rowing experience. He is without question the most tactile athlete I have worked with to date. He had a tremendous understanding of his body and how to organize himself so that he was able to pick up the stroke with incredible speed. While not the biggest or strongest athlete (even by lightweight standards) by the end of the year he was hanging every gram of his being off the handle and beating athletes 10+ seconds faster than him by 2k in seat races. Soft spoken and earnest, he dove into the work and never complained. He found himself sitting 2-seat in our 3V8 for the Eastern Sprints, our conference championship.

This crew had changed a lot, exchanging many people with the 4V8 over the course of the spring. By the Eastern Sprints, however, they found their groove and executed wonderfully to win a bronze medal. As we were de-rigging I found myself standing next to him and I couldn’t help but ask, “Did you ever think you would walk away with a conference medal in your first year of rowing?” There was a pause that hung in the air and he responded “No. Thanks for believing in me.” It was a quiet moment between us, but one I’ll hold onto.

The second is a woman, Evan, who was part of my last class at Oregon State. This group was the most athletic I had worked with while in Corvallis and she quickly proved to be a standout.

A water polo player and swimmer out of Bend, she turned out to be the most physically talented athlete I have directly worked with. I knew there was something there when, as a swimmer, she ran a 6:03 mile along the golf course to finish at the boathouse. She would go on to be a sub-7:00 novice (Erg score comparable to a sub-6:10 heavyweight male athlete) and sporadically appear in the V4 during the racing season. She finished the 2022 season in the 3V8 at PAC-12s and was brought as a spare to the NCAA championships so she could see what the top level looked like. Safe to say it worked.

Fast forward a year and Evan made the US U23 8+ that would win gold at the World Championships in Plovdiv, Bulgaria. I was immensely proud to be part of her process. The moment that I did not expect was when I was forwarded an article by Row2k where in an interview she credited me for setting her on her path. I was deeply touched. I did not expect to receive praise in such a public forum. I have that article saved for when tough days appear.

To paraphrase the legendary Harvard coach Harry Parker, I consider myself a teacher. While the format is quite narrow, simply trying to make boats go fast, the lessons that are carried outside the boat hold tremendous value. I do my best to not present myself as an omniscient figure, I simply have the benefit of being in the sport longer than those whom I’m teaching; I work to help them avoid my mistakes and manage their own. The hours are long, yes, and while the rewards are usually intangible, the teaching/learning process in rowing has a lasting impact on athletes and coaches alike. Coaches can change lives, and I count myself extraordinarily fortunate that I have managed to turn that opportunity into my job.

—David Herrick, M.Ed. (14)

DAVID HERRICK REFLECTS ON HIS BOSS AND FELLOW COUG SHAWN BAGNALL:

Shawn Bagnall (99) was a stabilizing anchor when Cougar Crew was adrift in turbulent waters. He served as Commodore his Junior year, 1997-98 and, with a year of eligibility left, agreed to begin coaching WSU’s freshmen in his senior year, 1998-99. Bagnall replaced Glenn Putyrae, who had been hired by Gonzaga. Just before the Fall season began, Head Coach Ernie Iseminger was hired by Oberlin, and Bagnall found himself serving as interim Head Coach until February of 1999, when Hugh Dodd was hired. When Dodd moved on in 2000, Bagnall became Head Coach, serving until 2002, when he was hired by Gonzaga. Shawn served as Freshman Coach and Recruiting Coordinator for the Bulldogs for eight years, helping the team to numerous program highs, including their first bid to the IRA in the Freshman 8+ in 2006. In 2010, he was hired by one of the legendary rowing powers in the country, Syracuse University.

At Syracuse, Bagnall filled the same position as he held at Gonzaga: Freshman Coach and Recruiting Coordinator. At the

EVAN PARK (CENTER) LEARNED TO ROW UNDER DAVID HERRICK AT OSU IN 2021-22. FOLLOWING HER SECOND SEASON IN CORVALLIS, SHE WAS CHOSEN FOR THE US U-23 EIGHT THAT WON GOLD AT THE U-23 WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS IN PLOVDIV, BULGARIA IN JULY 2023.

PHOTO: USROWING

SHAWN BAGNALL ON THE WATER WITH NAVY LIGHTS. BAGNALL COACHED

AT WSU 1998–2002.

2011 Eastern Sprints, his Frosh 8+ placed fourth in the Petite Final (ninth in a field of 17) and assisted the V8+ to a fifth place finish. In 2012, again with critical additions from his freshman classes, the Orange Varsity 8+ placed fifth at the IRA, the program’s best in 22 years. Check those results here: https://shorturl.at/bhkD0 and here: https://shorturl.at/hpLP5

In 2013, Bagnall accepted an offer as Head Coach of the Navy Lightweights and set about rebuilding the program. Under his eye, the N150’s have grown from a squad typically fielding two 8+s to regularly supporting six to seven. The Midshipmen have won multiple EARC and IRA medals across different boat classes. Highlights include sweeping the IRA in 2021 (Light V8+, Light 2V8+ and Light V4+), and tying Columbia at 51 points for the Men’s Lightweight Points Trophy in 2022 with national championships in the Light 2V8+ and Light V4+ respectively. Results here: https://shorturl.at/ltu17 and here: https://shorturl.at/qEUX4

—David Herrick, M.Ed. (14)

Pull Hard Editor Emeritus David Herrick rowed under Coach Arthur Ericsson, earning a BS in Psychology (2014). He began coaching as Assistant to Ericsson and continued as a Graduate Assistant at University of Virginia, earning an M.Ed. in Exercise Physiology (2019). Hired by OSU Women’s Crew in Corvallis (2019-2022), he is currently Assistant Coach and Recruiting Coordinator, Lightweight Men, US Naval Academy, Annapolis. Herrick coached five seasons at Penn Athletic Club’s summer high performance junior program, two as Head Coach, in Philadelphia (2016-2022)

From the Commodore

I have been on this team for the past four years and each year I am surprised at how much the team grows. My freshman and sophomore year, we had less than twenty athletes. Both last year and this year we reached around fifty athletes. It is very gratifying to see the hard work paying off in terms of team size. Another way this team has grown is through its depth and speed. I have seen us drop at least thirty seconds off the first varsity eight’s 2k time in just two years. What is even more impressive is that I have seen our second varsity eight and novice eights start to close the gap on the first varsity eight. This is a result of the coaches’ hard work and dedication to the team. I am very proud of the work we have done this winter and I am excited to demonstrate it in races.

—Steven Collet (24)

TEAM OFFICERS 2023–2024

Steven Collet, Men’s Commodore

Alexandrea Carper, Women’s Commodore

Kyle Hole, Men’s Vice Commodore

Sophia Pessolano, Women’s Vice Commodore

Benjamin Smolinski, Treasurer

Cooper Page, UREC Liaison

Carter Mills, Recruiting Coordinator

Ezra Klinghoffer, Publisher

Frank Coddington, Webmaster

See a full team roster and photos at: cougarcrew.com/roster

SPRING RACING

March 15 Class Day, Wawawai Landing

April 6 Covered Bridge Regatta, Dexter Lake, Lowell, OR

April 20 Fawley Cup, Silver Lake, Spokane

April 27-28 WIRA Championships, Lake Natoma, Rancho Cordova, CA

May 17-19 ACRA National Championships, Melton Lake, Oak Ridge, TN

by Mike Klier

Head Race, Cox’ns Race

Scudding clouds beneath a solid overcast of monochrome gray. Wind, cold and driving rain in quantities sufficient to give pause to the stupid and to the courageous. White caps everywhere except in the wind-shadow of the Montlake Cut. This is November in Seattle, and it is not a day to hold a regatta.

If the Head of The Lake (HOTL) had been held on Saturday, November 4, it would have been ugly. But it wasn’t. Bow marker 001, the Open 8+ “Washington ‘A’”, left the line on-time at 8:00am Sunday, November 5, and everything but the overcast was gone.

In 1588, Spain launched an armada of 137 ships-of-war against England, an event that rightfully earned a place in history for its audacity and its sheer power of numbers. The Spanish have nothing on the Head of The Lake. Four-hundred-forty-eight bow numbers were issued for the 2023 event. Excluding the 20 boats that scratched, 428 shells, from singles to eights, were launched and recovered in 4 hours’ time. If 137 vessels constitute an Armada, the HOTL launched an Armada every 80 minutes. Eight full-time dock-masters dutifully directed traffic into and out of the three double-sided docks at Conibear. On occasion boats were stacked 16 deep into the bay waiting for permission to dock. It looked like a quiet pond replete with serene water striders but it had the anxious feel of JFK with jets stacked in formation to the horizon.

A straight run at 2000m may be faster in an uncoxed boat, and the trend in rowing at the elite level may be away from cox’d events, but a Head Race is still a cox’ns race and the cox’d boat

will optimize its performance or not to the degree the cox is on their game. In practice everything is about the rowers; what they are to do and to think; what they are to eat and to drink; how they are to train and rest.

In a race, rowers do one thing and one thing only: they row. Everything else, from picking up the bow-number to securing the hull to the trailer, falls to the cox’n, as it should. In a Head Race, that “everything” is extensive and includes the pre-race preparation of tactics, real-time assessment of conditions of wind and water, precise navigation, and manipulation of the crew psychology. For the rower, a Head Race is a race of the body and of the spirit. For the cox, it is a race of the mind.

The four members of the Cougar Crew who coxed the HOTL have a lot in common. Determination, integrity, commitment to service, a pronounced desire to succeed, a quiet and palpable resolve.

Remarkable as well are the traits in common each of them so conspicuously lack: arrogance and an externally manifested aggressiveness. There was a time when an aggressive cox’n was considered a competitive cox’n. A race is a hunt; as a cox’n you seek the competitive death of your opponent. Those who are methodical, analytical and coldly calculating will always fare better than those who are mentally and emotionally inclined toward overt aggressiveness. In the end, aggressiveness is just a poor use of resources.

RACING PHOTOS: JOHN HOLTMAN

WSU Cox’ns at Head of the Lake

Sophia Pessolano

A quick look back. In the Spring of 1972, there were ashtrays in every dining hall on campus, the iPhone existed 35 years into the future and the men of Oregon were forced to forfeit their position in every regatta for which they had violated the standing regulations—forfeit all of those events in which they had raced with a woman at cox.

The Cougar Crew has a long history, dating to 1972, of welcoming women into the program. The first WSU cox to defeat a Husky crew was a woman. Today, Sophia Pessolano is extending that 51-year legacy of an unflinching commitment to merit into the present era.

There is an obvious question to ask of women in her position: Why men’s club rowing? Why not embrace the prestige of University recognition in the Women’s D1 and enjoy the financial benefits of sponsorship by the Department of Athletics? “With the men,” she replied, “it’s more of a family. Everybody has each other’s back.”

Asked to clarify, she responded:

“With Cougar Crew, I saw more of the love and passion for the sport and the backup from the alumni, whereas when I worked with the D1 women rowers they were all chosen for the team because of previous experience, so I was already way behind. I felt I was bringing them down, whereas on Cougar Crew everyone was new so I could learn and grow my skills with the help of other novices on the team.”

Sophia came to coxing her Freshman year with no prior experience in the sport and a lets-see-what-this-is-about sense of curiosity. She was immediately taken by the fact her diminutive height was seen as an asset. “I have never enjoyed a sport this much,” she said.

Due to the extremes of weather the day prior, none of the cox’ns had an opportunity to make a practice run over the entire course. Thus for Sophia, in her second year with the program and her first at HOTL, everything was something of a surprise. She expressed great satisfaction regarding her performance in the last, and most demanding, turn—an increasing radius-of-curvature heading-change to Port of nearly 180 degrees with a straight shot to the finish at the exit.

A Sophomore Animal-Science/Pre-Vet major, she spoke openly regarding her uncertainty about the challenges of sustaining the demands of coxing in combination with her heavy study load. I support my hope that she stays the course with this observation: the WSU M1V8 that raced to a second place finish in the 1974 Western Sprints included men who graduated with degrees in Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Chemical Engineering, Dentistry and Physics. One of those was Paul Enquist.

Sophia Pessollano coxed the 3V8+ to a seventh in a field of eight in the Mens Collegiate 3V 8+ event; a very respectable showing for a boat with six novice oarsmen. Details of her race here: https://shorturl.at/celvX

John Jin

“The reason I joined rowing is because all my brothers and friends did it [in] high school.” That may be the reason John Jin came to rowing, but he became a cox’n in order to evolve his leadership skills. Now in his second year with the Cougar Crew, John spent the summer refining his abilities at the Los Angles Rowing Club coxing for a friend, a friend who helped him drop some of his “bad habits.” As he learned over the summer, it is one thing to spot an error, it is something else entirely to know how to communicate what is needed to remedy that error.

With so many of his shipmates moving on or graduating at the end of next season, John may be tapped to fill the role of First Varsity cox’n. I think that responsibility will be in good hands. It will be a lot to take on, a lot, but John appears to be equipped with an asset that will serve him well: a robust sense of humor. John seems perpetually on the verge of laughter, as if he is in possession of the supreme secret of life and is amused that it has escaped our notice.

That comment belies a dedication to his job that becomes evident with each new conversation. He is focused, open to new ideas and at ease with himself. To his credit, he makes daily entries in his logbook, noting elements of his own performance that merit improvement and, apparently, keeping a running rowing-biography of every oarsman in his boat. Meticulous notes pay dividends in the form of reminders of what should be addressed in the next day’s practice and the lessons learned from previous races.

“At first I was pretty nervous since this is my first time to actually cox a race here” he said reflecting on his performance after the event. “Once I locked in [I determined that] I would

THE NAVIGATORS, AFTER THE RACE. L-R: SAM HARDESTY, M1V4; SOPHIA PESSOLANO, M3V8; JOHN JIN, M2V8 AND ANDREW WELSH, M1V8. PHOTO: MIKE KLIER

keep myself safe, my crew safe and do my best.” John felt most challenged by the demands of determining the best point at which to enter each of the three turns. This is always a challenge. An intuitive sense of “where” comes with practice which, given the weather, was something denied his crew. “The boat was a little frantic on the rhythm [in the early stages of the race]. I think I did a good job to help the boat calm down, stay long and stay relaxed.”

John Jin took his boat to fifth of seven in the Mens Collegiate JV 8+ event. Results here: https://shorturl.at/rvFR1

Sam Hardesty

It is not surprising that Sam Hardesty trains with his crew, that he is teaching himself to row in order that he might better understand what he asks of his men, that he puts the integrity of the boat ahead of his personal interests and that he sees his role as a cox’n as one primarily of leadership. It is not surprising because next Spring, after Sam graduates with a degree in Forestry, he will be commissioned a Second Lieutenant in the US Marine Corps. In the Corps, an officer eats only after his men have been fed.

With a background in sailing and an interest in things nautical, Sam came to rowing as a walk-on, and to coxing late in his academic career. He reflects upon that with some regret; he has taken to coxing, has embraced it for all it is worth, recognizes the responsibilities that come with the territory as an opportunity for growth and so can appreciate the consequences of the rapidly approaching end of his collegiate opportunities. “I wish I had gotten into the sport a little bit sooner and especially coxing. I enjoy the responsibility and the leadership role that comes with it.” There is one odd thing; Sam is six feet tall and is just about the last person in a line-up you would point to and say… “cox.”

Height is irrelevant as long as you can make weight. One exception is the challenge of squeezing into the forward deck of a bow-coxed four. It’s a tight fit under the best of circumstances. Still, that is what he did at the HOTL. His stroke, Evan Thornton, complimented his performance: “He steered a great course.” Which is no mean feat. With three long, sweeping turns and straight-runs through varying conditions there are many opportunities to go long, pick up a navigation error, or pitch your crew off-balance with a heavy hand on the rudder.

Thoughtful and well-spoken, Sam appreciates that coxing is a state of mind.

Q: “What is it you find compelling about coxing?”

A: “It is a very rewarding experience for me to help make the boat go faster; to help each individual member on the team get better at what they are doing.”

Q: “What is your solution for an off day in the boat?”

A: “Calm down the guys who are having a rough time. [I] rely on that camaraderie we have built over the season to bring the boat back to where we need to be focused. Sometimes they are thinking about how the other rowers are rowing more than they should be.”

“There is a lot of mutual respect” among the men, Sam noted. Coxing “is a lot of catering to the crew’s needs.” The cox’n serves the boat. Sam gets that.

Sam Hardesty coxed his M1V4+ to fourth in a field of five in the Champ Men’s 4+ event. Split-times and overall performance here: https://shorturl.at/jnuMO

Andrew Welsh

With role models and those with prior experience lost to graduation and attrition, Andrew Welsh was thrown into the deep end of necessity. “Pull left to go-left; now go race…” He has come a long way in less than two years; he had to.

To keep an edge on his hard-won skill set, he coxed for Commencement Bay Rowing Club (CBRB) last summer. “It would have been a long break without getting back in a boat. Even the last two-week period where we weren’t able to row on the water [due to an algae bloom] was bad for the cox’ns because we hadn’t steered, we hadn’t done anything” prior to this race. He has taken up sculling and sweep rowing, a necessity for a good cox; it brings perspective and teaches humility.

Andrew coxed a masterful last race at the 2022 ACRAs, helping the first varsity to their fastest 2000m of the season in a nailbiting come-from-behind finish for second in the Petite Final.

SOME OF THE 448 CREWS THAT PARTICIPATED IN THE 2023 HEAD OF THE LAKE REGATTA. PHOTO: JOHN HOLTMAN

SAM HARDESTY UP FRONT FOR THE M1V4. L-R: KYLE HOLE, BENJAMIN SMOLINSKI, EZRA KLINGOFFER, EVAN THORNTON PHOTO: JOHN HOLTMAN

There was not a boat in the field of six that was not staggered by the realization that a crew that was last five minutes prior to the finish would have taken it all if the course had been 50m longer. It was a smart, calculated, courageous performance.

He is a rarity in a program of mostly inexperienced walk-ons; his mother crewed with the WSU Women’s D1, having rowed in high school. Her experience inspired him to take on the challenge

for himself after being drawn in by a static exhibit of an 8+ on campus. In a pleasant irony, his mom returned to rowing as he began his career coxing; they are both members of CBRC.

Q: “Do you feel coxing [as opposed to rowing] was a good choice for you?”

A: “I think so.”

Q: “You would rather cox than row?”

A: “Yeah, otherwise I would have ended up in bow or something…”

Q: “There’s nothing wrong with the bow seat!”

A: “(Laughing) There’s nothing wrong with it, but I think I made a good decision…”

Although he has eligibility remaining, this is Andrew’s last year of rowing. He will be moving to another campus next school year to pursue a career in Nursing. Even if that takes him to the WSU campus in Spokane, he will be a long way from our water.

What do you say to someone who willingly gives up participation in an endeavor that speaks so strongly to so many of us— gives up a role in that which they seem clearly destined to excel— in exchange for a career of selflessness?

“You’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din.”

Andrew Welsh and the First Varsity finished third in a field of five in the Men’s Collegiate/Open 8+ Ben Porter Cup event, taking 19 seconds off last year’s time relative to Washington ‘A’. Results here: https://shorturl.at/brtIO

—Mike Klier (75)

ANDREW WELSH COXING THE FIRST VARSITY EIGHT IN THE MEN’S COLLEGIATE/OPEN 8+ BEN PORTER CUP EVENT. L-R: COOPER PAGE, BENJAMIN SMOLINSKI, CARTER MILLS, DYLAN REEVES, EZRA KLINGHOFFER, FRANK CODDINGTON, KYLE HOLE, AND EVAN THORNTON. PHOTO: JOHN HOLTMAN.

A letter from Sherry and Darwin Cook

It is almost 45 years since we lost Cristy on a morning of whiteout fog as she drove home from practice at Almota. Since that terrible day, the Cougar Crew community has become part of our extended family. The Pocock racing shell we bought for the team in Cristy’s name in 1980 was recently discovered in Tacoma. The team is planning a memorial ceremony for Cristy in March. We are told the mailing list for the team is around 1,600 names. We’re pretty sure there are some who ask: Just who are these Cooks we keep hearing about? We decided this is a good time to share some memories and thoughts with the entire crew.

Darwin graduated high school in Moses Lake, Class of 1955. When he was still in high school in Moses Lake, he paid $3.75 an hour for plane rental, fuel, and instructor. A lot of money when he was making one dollar an hour after school and Saturdays doing farm work! He soloed at Ephrata before entering what was then Washington State College (WSC). After completing his freshman year in Electrical Engineering in Pullman, he transferred to Oregon State College in Corvallis, to study Aeronautical Engineering.

REMEMBERING CRISTY CAY COOK

He also took a class on the Willamette River in Intramural Rowing which he enjoyed a lot.

Darwin and I met at his dining hall on the OSC campus. My best girlfriend and I were volunteer staff. Her mother was a cook. Working behind the counter gave us repeat close inspections of lots of handsome guys. Well, of course, eventually there might be a little discreet flirting involved, and one day Darwin asked if he could walk me home, about six blocks from the OSC Campus. He was 18 and I was 14. After we started dating, I enjoyed watching rowing when classes at Corvallis High School were finished. The cost of out-of-state tuition sent Darwin back to WSC the next school year, 1957-1958.

We married in September 1958 and nine months later, Miss Cristy Cay Cook was born in the middle of June. We had one more year in Pullman. Darwin graduated from WSC in May 1960 with an EE degree, a private pilot’s license, and a commission as Second Lieutenant in the Air Force. After four years in ROTC, he had two hours of flying time still available, so he took 9-monthold Cristy and me up for a spin. Our first airplane ride! We had a ball zooming over the rolling Palouse wheat fields until the engine

Pullman, 1959

Lakewood, Summer 1965

Bartow AFB, FL, 1961

ABOVE: DECATUR, TX, SUMMER 1977. CRISTY WITH HER AERONCA CHAMPION TRAINER ON OUR FARM’S AIRSTRIP.

sputtered. We were in a 2-seat Aeronca trainer and I was sitting behind Darwin with Cristy on my lap. Both seats had full controls. While I was admiring the scenery, Cristy decided the throttle needed adjusting!

We moved to Bartow Air Force Base in Florida, where Darwin began flight training. Miss Tammy Jane Cook (now Lindberg) was born in October 1960. In 1963, Darwin went to Vietnam for a oneyear tour of duty, flying the Fairchild C-123 Provider, a transport used to deliver supplies and evacuate the wounded. While Darwin served combat duty, the girls and I moved to Moses Lake, where Cristy started school. When Darwin returned in 1964, we bought our first house, close to McChord AFB, where he was based for the rest of his Air Force career. Cristy started kindergarten at Idlewild Elementary in Lakewood. The school tested all new students for reading comprehension. If the student tested at a level considered 7.3 years or above, they advanced one-half a school year. Cristy continued to advance, and when her peers started second grade, she started third.

In October 1966, my parents, then 44 and 42, died in an auto accident caused by a gravel truck driver. We adopted their children, my sisters Paula (3) and Jo (14). We doubled our brood and bought them a puppy for Christmas. Darwin resumed civilian life as a pilot with Delta Airlines. Cristy was very active in Girl Scouts; she loved camping and earning badges. We bought a farm 13 miles from Decatur, Texas when she was in 6th grade. Our girls were active in 4-H: Cooking, Sewing, Crafts, and (of course!) Horses. Cristy loved to help in the kitchen and was able to cook an entire meal by herself at 12. She loved the piano and we often had to tell her: Enough practice for today! She learned piano at twice normal speed.

In high school, Cristy started flight lessons with Edna Gardner Whyte of Roanoke, TX. Edna, a friend of Amelia Earhart, owned Aero Valley Flight School and was a legend in her own time. We feel very lucky to have known Edna and to have had her as Cristy’s instructor. Darwin got his pilot’s license at 20. Cristy at 17.

The accident was November 7, 1979. Next day, the Whitman County Deputy Sheriff told us the fog had been so thick that he had great difficulty inspecting the accident site. Tammy told us later she had driven her car that morning for the first time, at Cristy’s request. Both daughters had four athletes in their cars. Previously, it was Tammy’s habit to ride on the driver’s armrest in Cristy’s Camaro. Tammy has always been very watchful, so maybe she could have prevented the accident. On the other hand, it might have ended twice as badly.

In Pullman on November 8, Cristy’s physics instructor knocked on our door at the motel. He gave us a photo they had taken for class identification. He told us Cristy was No. 1 in the class when they took their first test. On the second test, she slipped, but only to second place. He also told us she had asked to be called Cris.

Darwin and I truly appreciate the help and friendship given to our family by the WSU Crew and others at the university. Flowers from the Horticulture Center for the Service at Kimbrough Hall on November 9 were beautiful. We had asked Coach Struckmeyer to pass the word that instead of flowers for the eulogy, we preferred that cash donations in Cristy’s memory go to the crew. President

Terrell and Coach Struckmeyer were comforting along with other Crew leaders. Men’s Commodore Tim Richards did a wonderful job; we still remember the cheer at the end of the service. On November 10, we went to the river for a short ceremony with Cristy’s ashes. I was so impressed by Cristy’s teammates who gathered and gave me a beautiful, dried bouquet of wildflowers.

Darwin and I visited our daughters the weekend before the accident, hoping to avoid the crowding and chaos of Father’s Day weekend coming up on the tenth. Cristy told us on that last weekend that she wanted us to help start a fund to raise money for the team. We were honored when we received notice that a newly opened crew operating account would be called the Cristy Cay Cook Memorial Fund. Cristy would be honored as well.

On Valentine’s weekend in 1997, just weeks after we moved into a new house in the Columbia Gorge, a wild winter storm downed trees and branches all over our 10 acres. Soon after, Coach Ernie Iseminger brought a big work party of rowers that stayed a long weekend, running five chain saws for three days—we cleaned up the mess. A smaller mixed group from the men’s and women’s teams helped us move furniture and clean up the construction debris still left in the house. We got to know the group very well and were so impressed with everyone.

From 1953 to 2017, we have had six people from three generations in our family attend WSC and WSU. Four of those earned undergraduate degrees; and one earned a graduate degree as well. I am an Adopted Cougar with my Certificate hanging on the wall. My husband and I started the Cristy Cay Cook Shell Fund in 1980 to buy a Pocock cedar racing eight so crews could race in a boat with Cristy’s name. We loved visiting Pocock’s while they were building the hull. My husband was 86 last month and I will be 82 on my next birthday. The Cristy Cay Cook now hangs on display at the Commencement Bay Rowing Club, revered as the first racing shell ever owned by that program. We are grateful to everyone who helped us build the boat, and if, someday, our daughter’s shell returns to its first home at WSU, we will be doubly grateful.

Sincerely,

Sherry and Darwin Cook

DECATUR, TX, APRIL 1978. CRISTY LOGGING SOME AIRTIME IN OUR BEECHCRAFT BONANZA WITH DARWIN AS CO-PILOT.

Tammy Lindberg Remembers

My Big Sis Cristy

Cristy was the ultimate big sister. She was my idol, mentor, and protector. In high school I spent so much time around Cristy and her friends, everyone called me “Little Cristy.” Cristy’s pet name for me was “Pansy.” Born 16 months apart, we were close, emotionally connected, and supported each other. Our differences were complementary. She breezed through school, rarely opening her books while I had to work hard for my “A”s. During piano lessons, I would be in tears, the instructor yelling at me. Cristy would perform flawlessly, and I could hear her and the teacher laughing

and carrying on like friends. Cristy was naturally athletic, and I was last to be selected for every team. In the Fall of 1979, Cristy decided to switch to Pre-Vet and chose our Dad’s alma mater, Washington State University. I had enrolled part-time at University of Arizona because Mom and Dad thought I needed to live at home, in Tucson. After just nine days of class, they allowed me to withdraw and follow Cristy to WSU.

Cristy was assigned to McAlister Hall, and I was at Regents Hill with a roommate from Pullman, track star Cheryl Byers. Jana Calvert had a single room in Regents. After Cristy and I used all our dining hall guest passes to eat together, Jana and I convinced Cristy to move to a single room in Regents and the three of us became great friends. Cristy and Jana would go out on weekends to Moscow and Jana and I often met for ice cream at Ferdinand’s. Jana will never forget a Halloween party they attended; Cristy was dressed as an angel.

Not sure if it was Cristy who was first drawn to the WSU Crew recruiting table on the campus mall or whether the rowers managing the table spotted a future coxswain (all four feet, 10 inches and 88 pounds of me). However it happened, we both joined Cougar Crew. I was coxswain in Cristy’s lightweight eight. Jana joined too and rowed in the open eight. Cristy continued to watch over me. Once after winning a practice race, she decided it was too cold to throw me into the river, so she grabbed my wrists, Jana grabbed my ankles and they gave me a “bun dip.”

On November 7, 1979, Cristy and I met on the ramp in Regents before heading to the meeting place prior to morning rowing practice. Most times Jana drove Cristy’s car but she wasn’t boated for this particular practice. Expecting a full car, Cristy suggested I also drive. I had not yet driven to the river and few teammates knew I had a car. I always rode with Cristy. After practice, I was strolling to my car and Cristy shouted to get going or we would be late to class. I loaded my passengers and pulled out behind her. The fog was terrible and the girls in my car were helping me watch for turns in the road. When I reached the stop sign four miles outside Pullman, where the Almota Road makes a “T” with the Pullman-Wawawai Road, I saw Cristy’s taillights through the thinning fog; she had failed to stop in time, crossed the road and crashed into the embankment on the other side. A Deputy sheriff told us she had missed the Stop Ahead warning sign. The skid marks began at the Stop sign.

Cristy may have died instantly. I was one of the first to reach her car, and I could tell she was seriously injured, but I still had hope. At the hospital, I asked about getting her flown to Spokane to a larger hospital. When I identified her as the driver, the med tech stopped talking without explanation. At that point I knew my big sister was gone, and I thought: She will never meet my children. In my eyes Cristy was going to be the Auntie Mame to my offspring; she the extrovert to my introvert; the exciting to my boring.

Cristy idolized our father. I once jokingly said “He isn’t perfect by any means.” But you could not tell her that! She thought Dad hung the moon and was driven to make him proud. One of the most difficult things I have ever done in my life was to call my parents from the hospital that day. My Mom was Christmas shopping for Cristy, so (pre-cell phone), I could not reach her. I called

ABOVE: PULLMAN, SEPTEMBER 1979. CRISTY DROPPING TAMMY OFF AT REGENTS HILL DORM.

TOP PHOTO: DECATUR, TX, FALL 1973. CRISTY, TAMMY, AND CHIPPER ON THEIR WAY TO RIDE IN THE FORT WORTH STOCK SHOW.

our neighbor Bob Yeschek, a retired USAF Lieutenant Colonel and Air Force One pilot; he had the task of notifying my Mom. My Dad was notified during a trip; he was flying for Delta Airlines.

On November 8, 1979, I went with my mother to identify the body at the County Coroner’s Office while Dad and my younger sister Paula sat in the waiting area. Although I had seen Cristy’s lifeless body behind the wheel before two team members gently escorted me away, I felt I needed to say a final goodbye. Mom and I both noted that Cristy’s motionless remains were intact except that her right foot was at an abnormal angle. We were told the ankle broke at the moment of impact as she was trying to stop the car. Mom cut a lock of her beautiful, thick brown hair to take with us and we left.

After Thanksgiving break, dear friends Cheryl (Byers) Schauble and Jana (Calvert) Quinlan flew to Tucson and persuaded me to return to Pullman. I put on a happy face and suppressed the extreme sadness I felt internally. Despite my best efforts, strong emotions would pop out at the most inconvenient times and it wasn’t possible to finish the semester. I returned for Spring semester and shared a room in the Community House with Deb

Julian and Jana. Deb gave me her bed and slept on the floor and Jana moved her twin bed into the closet. After the accident Jana rowed the Frostbite Regatta and Head of the Lake, but never returned to rowing. Deb and I continued and went to the Pac-10 Championships at Redwood Shores. St. Helens blew on the return trip to Pullman and we were delayed a few days; so I got to stay with my parents, then living in Edmonds.

It was on the Pac-10 trip that I got to know some of the men’s crew. Mike Noble did his best to make me laugh. In our downtime between racing, there was lots of clowning around. Two heavyweights grabbed an occupied lounge chair and heaved it, fully loaded, into the motel pool. Because, they said, the occupant spent too much time blow-drying his hair that morning. They were fun and hard-working. Before we started the long bus ride home, Bob Lane and his family hosted us at the Sunset magazine compound in nearby Menlo Park. I was studying dietetics and the Sunset Test Kitchen amazed me.

School was a challenge. I had to re-take the classes I could not finish first semester. I struggled through spring semester and then took another semester off. Jana was instrumental in getting me back to school, and Mike Noble gave me a ride back to Pullman. I came back to school but I never returned to crew. Often it was all I could do to get through my classes. Crew inevitably reminded me of Cristy so I had to give it up. Typical of the grieving process, I was socially withdrawn and suffered chronic guilt and insomnia. It took great effort to focus on my schoolwork and complete my degree in a field that no longer exists: I wanted to teach Home Economics. Instructors and fellow students noticed my gift for chemistry and persuaded me to shift to the Dietetics focus in order to qualify for an internship. Another nutrition student, Corinda (Graf) LeClair and I spent so many hours volunteering to help other students obtain advanced nutrition degrees that we were the only undergraduates to have a key to White Hall so we could work at night. As a result of hard work, perseverance, and friends, I graduated just a year behind schedule in 1984.

President Glenn Terrell took a special interest in me, and his sister invited me for Thanksgiving dinner while I was completing my dietetic internship in Atlanta. He sent me a letter of congratulations when I got my last promotion.

In addition, President Sam and Pat Smith, Coach Struckmeyer and Marj continued to be instrumental in turning a horrific situation into something positive by further engaging my parents with WSU. When they lived in Port Ludlow, they met Wallace Beasley (for whom the Coliseum is named) and helped him host an annual fundraiser benefiting newcomers to WSU. Coach Struckmeyer and Marj rolled up their sleeves and donned aprons to help Mom and Dad at this enormously popular Salmon BBQ in Port Ludlow. Thanks to all these efforts, the terrible

GREEN LAKE INVITATIONAL, SEATTLE, MARCH 1980. TAMMY COOK COX’D THE WNL8 TO A WIN.

WSU WNL8, NORTHWEST INVITATIONAL, BELLINGHAM, APRIL 1980. TAMMY COOK WITH THE STROKEWATCH.

CRISTY CAY COOK The Racing Eight

A twelve-character string, burned into her cedar hull near the stern-post, records her origins and her date of manufacture: 1980. Three months after the death of their daughter, the Cook family gift to the Cougar Crew was christened. She represents the apex of the Pocock art and possesses all the classic lines of a craft purpose-built for speed. Within a few short years, Pocock would come to mean plastic, not wood.

The details of her service life are currently unknown. We know she was christened in non-traditional livery applied by Coach Struckmeyer. She was given up or sold to the recently established Commencement Bay Rowing Club in the middle 1990s where she became their founding 8. The recovered history of other WSU racing shells from the era suggests 1996 as the most probable date of transfer.

At an unknown point in her life her livery was altered to the traditional Pocock font in gold. Her Spruce splash-boards were replaced with mahogany and her taped Dacron-decking was replaced with silk secured with 1/2 round beading. The shell house in which she now hangs, beautifully restored, was constructed around her.

CBRC is commissioning a plaque, to hang near the CCC, documenting her origins and based on the biography of her namesake found in Dave Arnold’s Pull Hard! A companion plaque from the Cougar Crew, acknowledging her legacy to us and to be mounted in the CBRC shell house, is in the works.

—Mike Klier (75)

My Big Sis, continued

pain of losing Cristy has translated into support for the university and Cougar Crew.

In the Spring of 1980, Jana and I christened the Cristy Cay Cook at half time of a basketball game. Cristy’s initials reflect a tradition in our family: I have a great grandfather and an uncle, named Charles Carroll Cook. My parents followed by naming their first-born Cristy Cay. My daughter, also Cristy Cay, recently passed the Texas Bar exam after graduating from St. Mary’s Law here in San Antonio, TX Jana Calvert Quinlan named her firstborn Christine; Dad’s Delta co-pilot Bob Beckman and his wife Elaine named their first-born Christine.

About six months ago I received a phone call from one of Cougar Crew’s first coxswains, Alan “Mike” Klier (75). He was working on a project to track down any wooden Cougar racing shells still in existence, with the hope of returning them to Pullman. I provided a photo of me and Jana christening the original Cristy Cay Cook in Beasley Coliseum and another of the shell beside the Snake, with me and Leticia Nunez, Cristy’s best friend from Decatur High School in Texas. One of Coach Struckmeyer’s Golden Labs is playing with a frisbee in the background (see below left). Cristy started life in Pullman and her ashes were scattered on the Snake. I assumed the racing shell bearing her name would remain in Pullman, appropriately displayed somewhere like the CUB following its last race. But then, life doesn’t always go to plan. Mike Klier found it hanging from the ceiling of Commencement Bay Rowing’s shell house in Tacoma.

There are so many who surrounded me the day of the accident and in the weeks and months that followed. I am thankful to all of you. Many of us have had devastating losses. I once asked an Air Force chaplain “Why?” Why do some of us go through so much pain? He quoted Second Corinthians, 1:4, and his words have given me clarity and strength ever since. “We go through pain so we can help others when they are going through pain.” I will always appreciate the support I received from President Terrell, Pat and President Sam Smith, all my WSU instructors, Coach Struckmeyer and Marj, Tim Richards and the Cougar Crew community and friends who were so gracious and embraced our family. Cristy was full of life. Through all those she knew and touched, and all our memories of her energy, her character, her love of life, her spirit lives on.

—Tammy J. Lindberg

Lt Col, USAF (Retired)

Cougar Crew Coxswain 1979-1980

ALMOTA, MAY 1980. TAMMY AND LETICIA (TISH) NUNEZ WITH THE CRISTY CAY COOK AT THE BOAT HOUSE BEFORE LOADING FOR THE LONG HAUL TO PAC-10S IN REDWOOD CITY, CA.

Power 10 Campaign Doubles in a Year!

The Power 10 Campaign has been a Cougar Crew thing since 2010. In an effort to make the crew’s budget more predictable, Power 10 supporters have been making recurring monthly contributions. By 2021, the campaign had reached 75 members and contributed 5% of the team’s annual budget. Thanks to the hard work of CCAA Development Officer Ernie Iseminger (91) and Power 10 Chair Josh Proctor (01), we have now crossed the 200-member mark, well over 15% of budget. Next target: 300 members. If you aren’t already on board, join today to help give Cougar Crew a funding source they can count on year over year.

1970s

David and Gillian Emigh

David Atherton and Moira Campbell

Jim and Claudia Verellen

Steve Huhta

Doug and Kristie McBride

Eric and Janet Anderson

Richard Stager

Jim and Kim Austin

Scott Minnich

James Flynn and Marcia Muto

Jim and Vickie Rudd

Leonard Lee Mills, PhD

Michael R. Kimbrell

Steve Porter

Chris and Linda Gulick

Colleen and Patrick Andreotti

John and Shirley DeLong

Steve and Kari Ranten

Steve Wells and Anita Von Oppenfeld

Thomas Stowe

Tim Malkow

Blaine and Susan Beardsley

Douglas and Renee Engle

1980s

Mark R. Shaber

Richard Ray and Kathleen Randall

Thomas C. Anderson

Tom Caudill

Kim Roberts

Tracy and Lori Pierson

Mitch R. Van Wormer

John Holtman and Eve Boe

Mark Petrie

Brad Carlberg

Guy Marden

John and Bonnie Lafer

Robert and Jeana Obom

Craig and Lisa Curtis

Herbert M. Richards, III, DVM

Philip and Pamela Sprute

Bill Lindsey

Donald and Melinda Ernsdorff

John Sanders

Kerin McKellar

Roger and Tammy Crawford

Chip Lang

Robert and Christine Appleyard

David Curran and Debra Keating

Douglas and Carol Lindahl

Jeffrey D. Corwin

Scott and Sally Nowak

Bob Barton

David and Arienne Arnold

David and Mary Reeder

Erron and Jennifer Williams

Jim Gressard, DVM

Ole and Tanya Jorgenson

Peter Lang

Robert Nehring

Darrin and Lisa Clark

Doug and Lori Wordell

Katherine Garneau

Paul Cote

Join the Power 10 Campaign

> Start here: cougarcrew.com/support

> Click Power 10 Fund

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1990s

Andy and Tracy Sawyer

Kent and Rocio McLeary

Andi Day

Doug Loft

Ernest and Alice Iseminger

Kevin Snekvik and Kathleen McMenamin-Snekvik

Marietta Hall

Mark Wascher

Thom Eldridge

Jess and Victoria O’Dell

Lori Taylor-Collett

Sean and Thanne Halsted

Vincent Xaudaro and Coleen Thompson

Everett M. Schneider

Rodney Mott

Anthony and Melinda Hensel

Brandon Vukelich

Jake and Jennie Bailey

Rob MacDougall

Sean Powers

Vanessa Blake

Tyler Fotheringill

Paul Needham

Sheldon Birch

Aaron Reiter

Glenn Putyrae

Shawn Bagnall

Brian Campbell

Drew Osborne

Jesse Wolfe

Josh Gray

Justin N. Carlo

Michael Slotemaker

Thad and Kathleen Smith

David Ek

Graham and Danielle Condit

John Nelson

Joshua Clearman

2000s

Tony Enzler

Jeff Earle

Jeremy Wexler

Lucas Jerome Olona

Luke Hunter

Peter and Starla Meighan

Joshua Proctor

Ryan Herrington

Michael Toyooka

Ryan and Sarah Hui

Brett R. Mitchell

Jeff and Samantha Olson

Joey and Frankie Tennison

Peter Brevick

Daniel Brevick

David Perkins

Jon Ames

Charles Remington

Lucas Jones

David Worley

Patrick and Mary Pursley

Sean Martin

Garrett Lyman

Karl Huhta

2010s

Colby Farvour

Ian Emrick

Mitchell Williams

Weston Spivia

Alan Scott

Jacob Logar

Kramer Wahlberg

Mark Hoffman

Nick Estvold

Joe Sudar

Eric Demaris

David Herrick

William Miedema

Allison Thomas

Alexander Weatbrook

Alexandre Johnson

Ashley Vu

Curtis Raymond Treiber

Griffin Berger

Hayden Wise

John Gehring

Joshua Benson

Michael Sheremet

August Boyle

Jeffrey Arnevick

Michael J. Marelli

Robin Brown

Ryan Krastins

Blake Bryson

Devon McCornack

Gunnar Newell

Zeke Nelson

2020s

John Najarian

Jose Zuniga

Trevor Zook

Alex Welch

Bjorn Elliott

Daniel Moguel

Henry McRae

Jaime Tom

Nathan Budke

Brendan Glouner

Cedar Cunningham

Ciara McCall

Jacob Brisson

Thomas M. Glouner

Mark Walker-Rittgers

Sean Geoffrey Swett

Friends of Cougar Crew

A&R Solar

American Online Giving Foundation

Ann Rorie

Bob Orr, Jr.

Elna Iseminger

Invoca Accounting

Jeff Aselin

Jeffrey D. Weiner

Jenalle Pana

Jess Goodwin

John McBride

Josh Walter

Ken and Marj Struckmeyer

Matt O’Connor

Michael Lane

Michael Mealer

Miles Bird

Roger and Barbara Heskett

Shell Oil Company Foundation

Shelly Lacroix

Thomas Gould and

Virginia McCabe

Collegiate rowing, continued from page 3

top ACRA schools is now so great that they are essentially two different sports. Most IRA universities now have some international oarsmen on their rosters. A dozen or more is not unusual, and some have more than 20 internationals on their squads. In the 2023 IRA finals (top 6 places), there were 14 US and 34 international rowers.

2023 IRA Regatta–MV8 Final

1 – California (1 US)

2 – Washington (1 US)

3 – Princeton (2 US)

4 – Yale (2 US)

5 – Syracuse (3 US)

6 – Northeastern (5 US)

It is apparent that these international oarsmen are being offered some sort of financial aid. This could be athletic scholarships, grants, or some other form of aid. Varsity Men’s squad sizes are now often limited. Most of the top 12 IRA crews no longer teach freshmen to row. All recruits have substantial rowing experience. At a quick glance, only the Naval Academy, Wisconsin, and Oregon State had no internationals on their rosters. The 2023 IRA Champion, California, had 14 athletes in the 2023 Under 23-yearold (U23) World Championships. At least six Cal oars rowed in the U23 Worlds but did not make it into Cal’s varsity eight.

Since ours is an outdoor sport subject to weather, it’s a bit risky to compare times. Nevertheless, it is fun to note that in 1976, California won the IRA in 6:31 (obviously slow due to weather). In 2023, California again won the IRA, this time in 5:31, a world-class finish. (In July’s U23 Men’s Eight final, third place Germany and fourth place Australia both finished in 5:31. The US was second at 5:28 and Britain first at 5:26.) The differential between the IRA and ACRA is predictable given the global versus domestic talent pools. There are a lot of good rowers out there. Some are from the US.

—Dave Emigh (75)

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WINTER TRAINING, FEBRUARY 2024. PHOTO: PETER BREVICK

The Unfinished Business of Peter Mallory

What compelled Peter Mallory to live a life dedicated to rowing? What compelled him to pursue a lifelong quest to row competitively at an elite international level and train others to do the same? Then to write numerous books about rowing, including his four-volume The Sport of Rowing, the definitive history of the sport? What made Mallory into the kind of person that Mike Klier, WSU’s first varsity coxswain, who later coxed and rowed under Mallory at the Mission Bay Rowing Association, declare that “Peter doesn’t have a life, he has rowing…?”

It wasn’t simply that Mallory descended from a clan of Connecticut watermen. The Mallorys of Mystic Seaport were famous boat builders. His father rowed at the prestigious Kent School and later at Yale. Mallory also rowed at Kent School and recently wrote a history of Kent’s boat club, known for winning and for disproportionately populating the ranks of elite rowing. At Penn, Mallory stroked the varsity lightweight eight to a course record at the Head of Charles. None of this dictated that he remain tethered to the sport for the rest of his life. Teammates at Kent and Penn left rowing behind and settled happily into lives as former rowers without a second thought. Not Mallory.

Mallory was one of those tortured souls, as he describes it, with “unfinished business.” In fact, Mallory insists that most people who continue to row and coach—especially the coaches!—have unfinished business. They might not know it, but they are chasing that elusive accomplishment that will finally give them a sense of closure.

raced off the port side. He switched back to starboard and was seat-raced off that side as well. His old Kent School friend, Steve Gladstone, who would later become the winningest college rowing coach in history, conducted the seat racing. “Tell me what I’m doing wrong, and I will change it, Steve,” Mallory begged. The answer was similar to what he had heard from his coach at Penn. Gladstone said, “You’re rowing fine, Peter. You look good.”

Mallory’s unfinished business began at Penn when he was replaced as the stroke of the varsity lightweight boat his senior year. “I wasn’t robbed, I just wasn’t good enough,” Mallory remembers. “I asked my coach, ‘what am I doing wrong,’ and ‘what is this other guy doing better than me?’” Mallory knew that if he could just understand his deficiencies as a rower, he would correct them and reclaim his seat. His coach gave him a vague, unsatisfactory answer that would haunt him for decades. “You’re not doing anything wrong, Peter,” he said. “You look just fine. It’s just the boat goes faster with this other lineup.”

His unfinished business grew when he was seat-raced out of the US Lightweight Eight. After graduation, he trained at Vesper and coached at Penn. The lightweight national team coach encouraged Mallory, switching him from starboard to port so he could stroke. Mallory was overjoyed. But soon he was seat-

For Mallory, it was cold comfort to represent the US that summer as the lightweight single sculler. Every time he rowed, he launched from the same dock as the US Eight from which he had been expelled. He labored through a winless summer while watching them row their way across Europe undefeated. “It was like rubbing salt in my wounds every day.” He felt abandoned by his chosen sport, an outcast boat-stopper asking questions no one could answer.

As a coach, the unanswered questions, and Mallory’s unfinished business, continued. His freshman lightweight crew at Penn finished second in the Eastern Sprints three consecutive years— once at the close of an undefeated season. They did everything right! Why didn’t the championships follow?

To Mallory, it wasn’t the losing that stung as much as the lack of a good explanation for why some rowers, and some crews, went faster than others. He refused to settle for mystical explanations

Crew historian Arnold profiles crew historian Mallory

JULY 1971. US NATIONALS, ORCHARD BEACH, NY. A CRESTFALLEN PETER MALLORY AFTER LEARNING HE LOST THE NATIONALS DASH TO BILL BELDEN BY TWO FEET.

Peter Mallory will be the banquet keynote speaker at Cougar Crew Days in Pullman, March 16, 2024

about rowers who inexplicably moved boats faster, or boats that inexplicably achieved the magic of “swing.” Mallory wanted thoroughly grounded explanations and a formula for boat speed which thinking rowers could learn and follow.

Over the course of decades, as a coach and a writer, Mallory worked to demystify rowing and translate the mysteries of boat speed into a rational, material theory of rowing. Ultimately this quest zeroed in on the “force application curve”—a line you can now study on your Concept2 ergometer screen. The longer he studied, the more firmly he was convinced the ideal rowing force curve is a parabola or, as he likes to say, a haystack or an ice cream cone. He eventually concluded a cleanly symmetrical parabolic curve correlates well with around 95% of World and Olympic titles during the last century.

The force application curve began to inform his coaching at Mission Bay Rowing Association and ZLAC Rowing Club, where he coached many elite rowers. It also became a focus of his research and writing, and eventually a central theme in the later chapters of The Sport of Rowing.

Mallory’s unfinished business was a gift to the rowing world. It drove him to study the practical experiences of generations of elite rowers and to produce, in the end, an incredible work of scholarship on our sport.

—Dave Arnold (88)

Author of Pull Hard! Finding Grit and Purpose on Cougar Crew, 1970–2020 (Pullman: WSU Press, 2021)

Read Peter Mallory’s movie review of Boys In The Boat here: https://heartheboatsing.com/2023/12/21/rosebuds-a-sled

book note

Peter Mallory’s 2,500-page study of rowing will probably never be equaled

The Sport of Rowing

Two Centuries of Competition

Mallory, Peter: The Sport of Rowing; Two Centuries of Competition (River & Rowing Museum, Henley-onThames, England: 2011)

ISBN: 978-0-9535571-7-2

In 1976 Peter Mallory turned in a 60-page research paper on East German rowing for a graduate seminar on international sport at San Diego State University. Thirty-five years later, the mental acorn of that project had become the mighty oak of The Sport of Rowing, a mind-bending survey of two centuries of rowing history—from commercial trade to recreational activity to collegiate and international sport.

First as a rower and coach, and increasingly as a biomechanical theorist, Mallory focused ever more intently on developing an empirical, quantitative, reproducible methodology for improving boat speed. In 1989, he presented “Optimal Force Application in Rowing, the Analysis of Force Graphs and Force Graph Biofeedback” at the 18th FISA Coaches’ Conference in Indianapolis. In the middle of that conference, the Berlin Wall came down and with it the global dominance of the “Easties,” already waning, because rowers around the globe, including Peter Mallory, had been diligently studying their methods.

In his introduction, Mallory states three questions informing his narrative:

• what are the technique and force application strategies being applied today in our sport at its highest levels?

• where did these strategies come from in rowing history?

• how well do they do in actual competition?

Mallory nicely illustrates the thrust of these seminal questions

JULY 2022. HENLEY-ON-THAMES, UK. PETER MALLORY AND SPOUSE SUSAN ENJOYING THE MAJESTIC SPECTACLE OF THE HENLEY ROYAL REGATTA.

and gives broad hints as to how they will shape his history with a brief and utterly charming first chapter introducing us to the personalities and boat racing experiences of Bill Stowe and Brian Volpenhein, two strokes in two very different and yet eerily similar US Men’s eights: the 1964 and 2004 Olympic champions.

In Mallory’s first volume, heavy on the origins of commercial and competitive rowing in Europe, especially England, we eventually discover the Yanks imitating their Old World contemporaries. Reading The Sport of Rowing is like opening a forgotten trunk in grandma’s attic—only this chest is packed to the lid with thousands of brittle yellowed newspaper and magazine clippings, the words and the images of long-lost rowing lore.

In 1875, for instance, Cornell swept the annual collegiate national championship sponsored by the Rowing Association of American Colleges (the “RAAC Regatta”) on Saratoga Lake, New York, winning the only two events: Varsity and Freshman. The only shell afloat was the then-standard straight six, rowed over a fully-buoyed 13-lane, three-mile course. Yale, favored to win, finished sixth, deeply chagrined by the decisive victory of what Yalies considered a “rural agricultural trade school” unworthy to be an adversary, much less a superior contestant.

That shock was the beginning of the end of the RAAC. Yale withdrew, inviting Harvard, Columbia and Princeton to follow.

Columbia and Princeton declined. In 1876, Cornell swept the RAAC a second time, and Harvard threw in the towel, complaining of Cornell’s paid coaches. The humiliating shock of Cornell’s sudden rise had at least three consequences still with us today:

• The Harvard-Yale Regatta on the Thames in New London, CT was lengthened to four miles—echoing the OxfordCambridge Boat Race on the Thames in London. Harvard and Yale advertised their dual as the preeminent national collegiate contest and excluded all other crews (“I don’t wanna play at your house/I don’t like you anymore…”);

• The US debut in the Harvard-Yale race of the eight-oared, coxed racing shell, again following the Brit lead; and

• The birth of the Intercollegiate Rowing Association (IRA), formed in 1891 by Cornell, Columbia and Penn in response to the end of the RAAC and their exclusion from the Harvard-Yale Regatta.

It is little remembered today that the Poughkeepsie Regatta (the IRA Championships, raced on the Hudson River near Poughkeepsie, NY, 1895–1949) was for a span of time the most important sporting event in the country, bigger even than the Indy 500 and the Kentucky Derby.

The sharpest details from a slew of noteworthy contests over many decades are some of the richest nuggets in Mallory’s treasure trove of talking points on the evolution of modern rowing. But it is the advent of the IRA which gives insight on the first attempts by coaches to rationalize the mysteries of boat speed. After three straight IRA losses to Penn, then coached by Ellis Ward, Charles Courtney at Cornell consulted with Cornell’s engineering department and built the first data-collecting ergometer in 1901. Using a force meter with recording graph, Courtney identified the basic weakness of sequential force application (first legs, then back, then arms): it produces an irregular power curve.

Courtney modified his teaching to simultaneous arms/back/legs and never again lost to Penn.

Mallory describes this episode in US rowing history as “remarkable”—Courtney and Ward (at Cornell and Penn, respectively) were teaching what is now the “Modern Classical” technique of concurrent muscle-group pull-through and parabolic Schubschlag force curve. This was several years before Steve Fairbairn returned to Britain from Australia, bringing modern rowing theory and technique to Jesus College, Cambridge—the beginning of the end of English Orthodox methods. Thanks to his colorful personality, extensive published writings, and the perennial successes of his crews, Fairbairn was, almost without question, the most influential rowing coach in Europe in the first half of the 20th century.

One objection professional historians may raise concerning The Sport of Rowing is that Mallory often quotes original sources at great length—sometimes letting the newspaper reporters of the late 19th and early 20th centuries tell the entire story of a regatta. He balances this defect (if it can even be called a defect) with great skill in melding disparate voices into a smoothly flowing narrative. For instance, in his account of the University of Washington’s trip to the 1936 Olympics, Mallory quotes Bob Moch, www.huskycrew.com, The New York Times, The Seattle PostIntelligencer, Stan Pocock, George Pocock, Hazel Ulbrickson, Don Hume and many others, knitting the quotes together seamlessly, only occasionally inserting a “bridging” sentence or two. Unconventional? Yes. Effective? Definitely.

At the end of Chapter 39 “Courtney’s Mature Technique,” Mallory offers a conclusion illustrative of his immense, altogether admirable mastery of rowing history and well worth the long slow stroll through the 386 preceding pages: “…the name of Hiram Conibear of the University of Washington came to be identified with the American Version of Classical technique. Today, almost nobody remembers that it began at the University of Pennsylvania under Ward, that it was refined and improved at Cornell under Courtney, and that it was Courtney himself who taught it to Hiram Conibear.”

Cautionary note: The Sport of Rowing is a sprawling 2,560-page work. I have been months working my way (with many, many re-reads) through the first online volume, and at this writing have reached only page 444 out of 664 (excluding several lengthy reconnaissance missions into the coming chapters). Word to the wise: do not try to read this on a notebook or laptop. Splendid on my 27-inch monitor. There are a few four-volume paperbound sets remaining at: Richard Way Booksellers, Henley-on-Thames, UK. Call Diana Way, Tel: +11.44.491.576.663. Price: £222, including shipping. If you’re feeling truly flush, there are apparently a few signed-by-the-author hard bound boxed sets remaining (as pictured), purchase price low four figures, every penny a direct charitable contribution to River & Rowing Museum, Henley-onThames.

Or read it online at: https://worldrowing.com/about/history/ the-sport-of-rowing/ —Rich Ray (80)

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