In dealing with the selection of men for a crew he has to consider various points. He has to calculate for what seats such and such an oarsman will be available, as regards weight and capacity generally for the seat. He has to bear in mind the date of the race for which he is preparing his men; many an oarsman may be admittedly unfit for a seat if the race were rowed to-morrow, and yet he may show promise of being fit for it six months hence. A may be better than B to-day; but A may be an old stager hardened in certain faults, and of whom no hope can now be entertained that he will suddenly reform. B may be as green as a gooseberry, and yet the recollection of what he was two or three weeks ago, compared to what he is now, may warrant the assumption that by the day of the race, some time hence, B will have become the better man of the two.
A coach who takes a crew in hand halfway through their preparation should be prepared to hear evidence as to what was the standard of merit of certain men some time back, compared with their present form; otherwise he may delude himself as to the relative merits and prospects of the material which he has to mould into shape.
Just as orators are said to learn at the expense of their audience, so coaches do undoubtedly learn much at the expense of the crews which they manage. Many a coach will agree that he has often felt in later years that, if he had his time over again with this or that oarsman or crew, he would now form a different judgment from what he formerly did.
In concluding this chapter we cannot do better than extract from Dr. Warre’s treatise on Athletics certain aphorisms for the benefit of coaches, which he has tersely compiled under the head of ‘Notes on Coaching’:
Notes on Coaching.
In teaching a crew you have to deal with—
- A. Crew collectively.
- B. Crew individually.
A. Collective.
1. Time.—a. Oars in and out together. b. Feather, same height; keep it down. c. Stroke, same depth; cover the blades, but not above the blue.
2. Swing.—a. Bodies forward and back together. b. Sliders together. c. Eyes in the boat.