Experience
gained in undergraduate competition in such sports as baseball, football, and
rowing,
as well as that gleaned from many subsequent years spent as a college
coach, has convinced me that rowing
is the finest, cleanest and most beneficial
of all amateur sports. It is, to my mind, the finest, because of the
things
which are required of one who would excel in it; because of the undeniable grip
it has on almost every
man who had come under its spell, a grip which lasts
far beyond his active days in the sport, and because
I believe these two things,
rowing’s requirements and its fascination, give to the man who participates in
it
more real and lasting benefits than any other sport.
For the college undergraduate, it is a long, toilsome journey to a seat
in a Varsity shell, but in that long
journey the boy learns several things. He
learns how feeble is individual effort and how strong is united effort.
He
learns the value of team work in the sport which requires it in far greater
degree than any other sport the
American takes part in. He finds he must often
give up individual rights and desires for the benefit of all concerned.
He must
have the true spirit of cooperation if he is ever to become a real part of any
first-rate crew, and to my
mind there is no denying that fact that some of this
spirit on a widespread scale, giving up of petty individual rights
and desires
for the benefit of all concerned, would go some distance toward solving a great
many of the world’s problems.
It is my honest belief that you will find in the crew squads of
universities and clubs the very highest type
of young man. There is no more
unselfish sport than rowing. For the oarsman there is no near-by, shouting crowd
of admirers. There is simply the pleasure of the sport for itself and the
satisfaction of going a job well.
In rowing, there are no substitutions. When once you sit in a shell at
the start of a race, be it four miles
or a quarter mile dash in a single, you
are there until the end of the race, unless accidents interfere. There is no
relief; it is
up to the oarsman to prepare sufficiently before the start to be
reasonably certain of accomplishing the work at hand.
Once started, there can be
no quitting. And he must do this himself. No coaching, no other person can help
him during
the middle of a race. It’s up to him. And this is not so unlike
life itself when, in our darkest hours with no one to cheer us
on, we must
“screw our courage to the sticking point” and press on against defeat.