ROWING COACHING Coaching of American crews and scullers club and college — has been for years and is to-day entirely on a professional basis, and the crews that have been amateur coached can almost be counted on one hand.
The early days of college rowing had a sim plicity and freedom which could be well emulated to-day, and the matter of coaching was not much thought of ; the crew sat and rowed according to their lights, and the man who happened to have a little more light helped along his brother ; but a regular coach, with nothing to do but shout instructions, was unknown. Yale and Harvard rowing grew up in this way, and went along nicely because the desire to win had not yet developed to a mania. But when the younger colleges began to row, they had not the tradition and the experience to train their crews, and had to appeal to the professional oarsmen for instruc tion. Thus the Massachusetts Agricultural Col lege employed Josh Ward, and in their first year won from Harvard ; the professionals of the time had a better knowledge of rowing than most of the amateurs, but their greatest cunning was in the rigging of the boats,— a part of rowing where they have always excelled. With the vic tory of the " Aggies " and the rush of the smaller colleges to boating, the professional oarsman had full sway, and, though he never obtained much of a foothold at Harvard, — excepting Faulkner, Yale always had a professional about and, in Davis's time, were fully under one, while Cornell hired men as soon as they could afford. Colum bia started with one of the Wards, and later had Jasper Goodwin, an amateur, coach them. Penn sylvania, with the exception of one year, has always been coached by a professional.
Coming down to the present day, Harvard is the only college that has an amateur coach, and their policy is to have the elementary coaching done by professionals and the finishing by amateurs, — a willy-nilly system.
Fortunately for our college rowing, the Ameri can professional oarsman belongs to a far higher class than the English, and the men who have been most prominent in college rowing, such as Ellis Ward, Courtney, Kennedy, Ten Eyck, and O'Dea, have all been men who do not seek to give any thing of a professional atmosphere to their train ing, and in fact have been considerably more open in their methods than the amateurs that have coached. The false atmosphere that surrounds
college rowing did not grow up because of the professional coaches ; its waning secrecy is a relic of the times when all rowing followed the conduct of the races for stakes.
I do not agree with the Englishman that the presence of the professional coach is bad for the sport and takes away the amateur idea ; a wily pro fessional might have a bad influence on boys, but the modern professional coach, who attains any prominence, is not a person of this kind, and any argument against their employment, on such ground, is unsound. But I do believe that the progress of American rowing will be helped by a rule that prohibits professional coaching; not a rule that allows a professional to do all the coach ing with a nominal amateur head coach above him. Such a plan is merely dishonest, and dis honesty is bad for any sport ; but a rule that would absolutely do away with the employment of any coach would benefit the sport for two reasons: First, because the coaching of a single person prevents, the growth of a system of rowing, and secondly because the cost of a professional coach bars many colleges from the boats. I believe that in the early days the professional was nec essary, for the college man knew nothing of row ing; but had he been forced to learn, he would have learned just as the professional learned, and a thorough understanding of principle and practice would have been attained that might have been handed down from age to age. Our college oarsmen do not learn to row ; the pro fessional is there with his far greater knowledge, and the candidate takes his precepts just as he takes his class-room work, and does as he is told without thinking too much on the why of it. When he passes from college he knows nothing about rowing ; he can only go through the motions. On the other hand the English oars man knows each step, and when a man has rowed for two or three years he has a good idea of boat ing, though his execution may be no better than that of the American.