The Rowing Podcast
The Rowing Podcast
Paul Cooke: "Just Put Your Ship Next to the Enemy"
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I sit down with Paul Cooke to discuss his coaching journey and the cultural renaissance of Brown Crew leading up to the historic 2008-2009 season that marked a new era for the program.
My guest today has been coaching the heavyweight men at Brown for 18 years. Starting in 2002 under his leadership, the program has experienced a cultural renaissance. In a breakout year during the 2008-2009 season, Brown swept all of the heavyweight events at the Eastern Sprints, going on to capture the ladies' plate at the Henley Royal Regatta in England. Since then, he has guided the team to consistently meddle in the IRA National Championships with multiple Eastern Sprints titles in the varsity 8. Most importantly, he has helped to cement an ethic of respect, humility, and hard work that guides Bruno today. One of my previous guests described him as something of an artist, driven by the connection to people that rowing provides. I'm excited to have on as my guest today, Paul Cook. Thanks for having me. I'm happy to be here. I'd like to trace some of your background into how you got into rowing and then eventually into coaching. So, you know, where's your hometown? Where were you born?
SPEAKER_01I was born in Philadelphia. I never lived there, but my family actually my father was a mathematician. He was at the Institute for Invalid Study at Princeton. And then really early on, we went to California. My dad was a postdoc at the University of California, Berkeley. So we were around a lot of mathematicians early in my life, which is a very interesting breed of people in general. And then when I was about four or five, we moved to Ithaca, New York, where he started at Cornell. What about your mom?
SPEAKER_00What did she do professionally?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so she was mostly just taking care of us when we were younger. When we got to Ithaca, she started to pursue a degree in art. Yeah, she's so she's an artist now. Actually, there's a place called the Museum of the Earth, right around associated with Cornell. It's a paleontological museum, I think that's the right word for it. And so she has a piece in there which has goes back through geologic time and and is a basically a piece of art representing each million years of the of the fossil record. So that's very cool. He's doing some other things since then and before then, but that that's something that's been this was a big project for her. How did you first get exposed to rowing? My father passed away. My mom remarried. He was a pro he's a professor uh in ecology, and and they were gonna go to Oxford for the year. So I was gonna go away to school, and I was not really 100% sure about that, but um, that was the plan. And uh I applied a few places and decided on St. Paul's School in New Hampshire. And for some reason, my mom was like, Well, they have rowing there. Why don't we try it out at the Cascadella Boat Club in Ithaca? So we went down to the boathouse and I don't know, futzed around a little bit, and and then I went made my way to St. Paul's School and started rowing there. I still wasn't 100% sure about the sport, you know. I thought about playing lacrosse and all that. I guess I was drawn to it. You know, it was like it seemed like a pretty big thing to do at St. Paul's, and I kind of enjoyed doing it. But the first year I got bronchitis and I was like knocked out of competition for any of the varsity or JV boats. And I rode around in this, like in the second club eight, you know, I really was not that excited about it. Rowing up and down Turkey Pond, and like our our coach, our our coach was this the computer science teacher. And you know, I remember a guy in front of me catching a crab, and like we're just rowing. I was just like, what are we doing? The next year came along and I got a little more interested and and uh rode more seriously. And and then my senior year, I rode for, well, my junior year was with Mr. Morgan, Charles Morgan, who was uh been a great coach there for a long time and was definitely excited to row for. But then my senior year I rode for Rich Davis, and that to me was really a uh a big moment in sport and in my life in general. What was different about Rich Davis? I'd always been a soccer player for that up to that point. I played a lot of soccer when I was little and I loved the game. So I still play, I still love the game. So I was playing at St. Paul's, and it's kind of what I wanted to do in college was play in college, but I didn't I didn't really know exactly how I was gonna, you know, it wasn't too far along in the recruiting process. At at St. Paul's and and working with Rich Davis, um, all of a sudden there was someone who seemed to like pay attention to who I was. It seems like every coach should do that, and every coach does. And I'm, you know, it wasn't it wasn't like the other coaches that I had hadn't done that, but for some reason he seemed to pick out, you know, something about what I was doing. He was excited about. And at the same time, there were some things that he felt like he could do that would help me as a as an athlete, but also as a person. That really made a big impression.
SPEAKER_00What's behind the saying, if anything goes wrong, just pull harder?
SPEAKER_01So that was basically the mantra that Rich Davis put in our heads as rowers. And I think um one of the things that I enjoyed about his coaching was a lot of it was about the psychology of athletics. And a lot of it was was addressed towards, you know, what do you do when you feel like your mental state or your reaction to the situation isn't what you think it should be or it want or what you want it to be. Rich was really good at getting people to recognize when they were faltering mentally and to get them to recognize those moments and then to correct them or to at least neutralize them so that they could get closer to the performance that they wanted to have out of themselves. That was really important. I felt like I was a decent athlete in certain ways, but that I was held back sometimes by my own sense of anxiety or nervousness or whether I had enough confidence, you know, any number of ways that you might look at your mental strategy towards racing and competition. And he was really helpful in getting me to think in a way that I felt better about myself. And one of them was that idea of if anything goes wrong, just pull harder. And so it's like, okay, well, that I can do. You know, it's not that's not too complicated. If I don't like the situation, I can just try and put in more energy and more effort. And so when you were approaching a race, and we had some pretty big races at that time, we were racing at a high level in the U.S. high schools, and then we went to Henley Royal Regatta. And I, you know, you'd be nervous for some of those races. And when you would go to the starting line or when you were in your warm-up, you could think about okay, look, all I got to think about is if anything goes wrong, just pull harder.
SPEAKER_00Can you recall any specific practices and experience or something where he worked with you specifically on something that you were overcoming at that time and how it played out as an extension of that theme?
SPEAKER_01So there's a few things that come to mind. One was I wasn't sure why he chose me. Like we put me in the seventh seat behind Jack Rusher, who was back from the junior national team and would go on to row in the Olympics. I felt a little nervous about being in that place, and I was fighting for a seat in the boat with some other good athletes, and I was not sure I was gonna make it and whether I was gonna be good enough to do it. You know, I think one of the things that that he did was just put me in that position. For example, I I you know, I remember being sick and I was, I didn't want to lose my seat, so I was, I was, I was, I don't know, I had a cold or something. I was I wasn't 100%. And we did some some uh some race pieces, and Jack turned around after one of them was like, you know, if you can't do this, just get out of the building or something like that. I don't remember what he said exactly. But I was just, you know, I was pissed. And I and I think I I essentially, I actually don't wasn't thinking about Rich Rich's words, but I just pulled harder because I wanted to stay in the seat. And I really, you know, I was nervous, I was trying to do as good a job as I can. I like that pressure of trying to push myself. But I do remember one time coming to uh to Rich, I was like, it was right before the first race. I was like, I keep he kept asked us to visualize the race, right? It was the Wednesday before our first race, I think. I still remember it. And I said, every time I think about the race, I imagine myself catching a crab. Like I couldn't, like, I couldn't visualize it without like something going wrong. I don't actually remember exactly what he said, but you know, for whatever, you know, he seemed to calm me down enough and and put enough trust in me that that, you know, that was really what it came down to was that it felt like he would trust in me. But one of the things that he did too was he was like most of my teachers would, if I got an A or a B, they didn't really say much. You know, it was like, oh, you're doing great. Don't worry about it. Um, but like if I was late for practice, I would get an eye for ri like I would, he would look at me like, what are you doing? And uh he didn't really do it in a mean way, but he he would you would definitely notice. You wanted to do that, you know, you wanted to get that right for him. And that was something that I felt like in other ways of my life, I was a little more likely to be lazy or not quite get something done quite as well as I could, you know, when it came to rowing and practice. I really wanted to do that right. As far as one other, you know, moment that he might have made a big difference. I'm gonna jump forward. It's funny because I was I was coaching at Cornell, I was coaching the lightweights, and this is this is a pretty funny story, actually. And uh I was coaching the lightweights, and we'd won the whole uh it was my first year of coaching in college. Um we were we'd won all our dual races. It was really an exciting experience for me. And we were going to the Eastern Sprints. I felt really good about the team. Like the guys were training super hard. Um, we'd had Finn Meislin. I don't know how many people know Finn. Finn was a coach at Cornell. He'd had a stroke. He was coming out with us, so he was watching practices, and he seemed impressed. Anyway, they were racing really well. So we go to the Eastern Sprints, we'd all agreed it was the freshman lightweights, right? So we're at the bottom of the pecking order, the bottom of the ladder. Sure. And uh, you know, no one, the freshman lightweights don't get to call many shots, right? So it was the year when hatchet blades came out. And uh, and so yeah, like you know, Dartmouth had raced with the hatchets first, and they'd beaten everybody, and everyone was going crazy because Dartmouth hadn't won that many races before that year, and they were really good that year. And so everyone, it was something like the the hatchet blades were, you know, they were starting to row with them in the in the beginning of the year, and by May, everyone was racing them and they were ordering them and and everything, and but the lightweights didn't get them. So it was like the freshman lightweights, rather, because there just weren't enough sets to go around. It's like, guys, sorry, you know, we don't have one for you, we don't have any for you. We made an agreement before the sprints with all the coaches, and it was like, okay, so the freshman lightweights are not going to row with hatchet plates. Uh we race the heat, the heat goes well, uh, we win the heat, and then at like 11 o'clock, middle of the day, someone comes over to me and they say, Hey, Paul, look, there's a meeting of the lightweight coaches. Like freshman lightweight coaches, not the lightweight coaches, but freshman lightweight coaches. And um a very special, very special breed of coaches. Wait, who are those guys? What are those, you know, do the those guys even exist? Oh, I don't know. I don't know what that group of people is over there. That's the freshman lightweight coaches. But anyway, uh, so we gather up and one of the one of the coaches, I think it was Navy, he says, Well, we we're gonna use the hatchets. And so I was like, okay, I don't think there's much I can do about this. I I thought about you know going to league or something like that, but again, you're the freshman lightweights, no one's gonna really care. So a bunch of people said they might use them. Or anyway, you could tell, like everyone's everyone was thinking, you know, what's gonna happen? So we're we're heading out, we're launching for the final, and I'm thinking, okay, do I do we row with the hatchet oars or do we not? We're getting ready to launch, and I I decide, you know, we've raced all season, we've won all our races, we're not gonna change at the last minute. We're not gonna do something different. So we race them with the with the the old Macon oars, and they're heading down to the starting line. And I go down to the beach and I'm watching them race, row down to the starting line, and then and there's Rich Davis, my high school coach. That's why I give came back to. But and Rich looks at me and I tell him, I'm like, I'm pretty nervous because I they're, you know, I don't know if they got the right oars. And he goes, and he looks at me and he goes, yeah, he goes, like, yeah, they can't win with those oars, can they? And I was just like, that was that was like Rich would always just say something like, he would take your worst fear and he would say, you know, yeah, yeah, you can't you can't row fast with those sorts of oars, can you? And I wish I could sort of put his wry smile alongside with the comment. He knew that he was being sarcastic and he was, you know, not really uh believing what he was saying. He was just saying your worst fear, and that you would then uh recognize it for what it was, and and and have confidence because you would realize that the the voice in your head that was uh saying you couldn't do it was was not one to be listened to.
SPEAKER_00What was your reaction to him saying that? Because I think had I been in your shoes, I might have laughed at myself.
SPEAKER_01That's what he was really good at, which was, you know, you'd sort of laugh and you like right, like immediately my reaction was, yeah, I I really shouldn't worry about it that much. And you know, what he recognized and he knew was that I was a young coach, I was nervous, I really wanted them to succeed. I I cared about it a lot. And he was still gonna say, look, yeah, you care about a lot, but don't don't let your don't let your your your demons take over. Like just be who you are. I thought that was, you know, I really appreciated him. And that was the kind of thing he would say, you know, through my high school career. I don't remember as well a mo that's the moment that I remember him saying that that got brought it all back from when I was from high school.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I I meant to ask you about the the lightweights thing because um yeah, I I I coach the Frostlights too. But um, you're right, it is a special kind of group of people, you know, as enthusiastic as hell and they pull really hard. I always thought it was funny. Todd always kind of joked. He's like, God, the freshman lightweights are great. They just kind of got nothing to lose.
SPEAKER_01So I have I have to diverge for a moment. One of the best races you know you would ever see would be the second freshman lightweights against the varsity women at Cornell. I mean, no one ever pulled harder.
SPEAKER_00It was always pretty exciting. To trace things a bit more to where you are now, were the next stops and and how did you end up where you are right now?
SPEAKER_01Uh yeah, I spent three years at Cornell and they were really they were really wonderful years for me. You know, I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do. I I liked rowing a lot. I thought this coaching, I really liked it, I realized that I really liked working with people. Had had to make an interesting choice when I took the Cornell job, which was I had a job that was not really paying. It was like an internship, but it was with Bill Nye the Science Guy before it was the Bill Nye the Science Guy show, you know? So there were these two producers, McKenna and Gottlieb out in Seattle, and I was like, I was it was them and Bill Nye and me. And I was like, I was like the grunt guy who would go get stuff, like a boat. We did a boating safety show, and and I would get stuff for the show, and so it could be made. And um, you know, and then so I had gone on to coaching, and you know, I still, I mean, I always loved that show, so I always sort of looked back, I was like, man, I wonder what that would have been like. So, you know, when I was at Cornell, I was certain I was in that position of like, I really didn't know whether rowing and coaching was something I was gonna stay with. You know, I felt like we'd had some success and I'd really enjoyed it. At the time, Brown was really at the time at the at the pinnacle and had had been had won the last three Eastern Championships, the last two national championships, or last yeah, the last two national championships. And that and Steve Gladstone retired at that point, and Scott Roop took over. And so um I was like, well, I gotta give it a shot. This is where I wrote in ho in college. I got offered the job as the freshman coach at Brown, and this was back in the fall of 1994, and so I got started at Brown. You know, there's there has been a lot of things along the way that what comes to mind is that, you know, when I first started as the head coach, that was now when Scott retired, that was 2001. You know, things, things had hadn't always been perfect as the freshman coach, but you know, I felt like I'd always done a decent job and we'd had some some good victories and some losses, but you know, overall positive. And then as the as the head coach, all of a sudden I was like, wow, I got a lot, I got a lot of my plate. And and how are we going to do this? So yeah, so we had a time there where it was a bit like, wow, like, or I did. I, you know, I'm not sure. A, I think I I don't think I really knew exactly what I needed to do right away. And we didn't really have great performances. There were some problems with the culture of the team at at the beginning. It'd been a really sort of tough year, the when the one before I I started, where where the team felt like it hadn't met expectations. How do we get that going and get it right? It wasn't like uh Mr. Davis' words were in my mind all the time or anything like that, but I I think it was more just a matter of you know, my own um makeup, but I was feeling like it was really difficult to know what to do to get the right to get things right, and I was and I was struggling a bit. And so we went, we went to the IRA, I can't remember which year it was. I think it was 2002. And we really had some some performances that you felt like sick in the stomach by. You know, I don't know if you've ever had any of those, but you know, I've been pretty lucky not to have too many, but there have been some. And afterwards, uh really like it was right after the semifinal, and I was walking into it was at the Cooper River, and I walked in, I sat down with Steve Gladstone uh for a little while, and I, you know, you could tell he you probably could tell I was I was down and he was talking to me a little bit, and he goes, he basically says basically something like, Well, you know, Paul, like if you're if you're not that good at it, like give someone else a chance. You know, it wasn't he wasn't very he wasn't very uh sympathetic. He was matter-of-fact, which was basically like, you know, you have to you you know if you don't if you're not gonna be good at this, let someone else do it. I I don't remember exactly his words, but that was that was what it amounted to. It was actually really refreshing for me. It was like, oh, okay, this this is, you know, this is the moment when I have to decide uh well what I really want to do. Instead of sitting around feeling sorry for myself, I have to make a decision. And if I'm gonna make a decision that I want to do this, I better get going. And there's not gonna be much time to waste sitting around thinking about you know what I did wrong. I mean, yeah, you have to analyze it, but you can't sit in it because otherwise, why don't you just give someone else a chance? When it was put that way, it was like, well, there wasn't really much reason to sit around if you recognize that someone else would do a better job. So you better just get started with it. And Luke McGee and Joel Scrogan, uh, both guys who had been at Brown, started on the coaching staff. Luke is the freshman coach and Joel as varsity assistant coach. Immediately it was like we had a bunch of guys around in the coaching staff that understood a lot of the same things about how we had had success in our own ways at our own times. You know, we basically decided, look, what we really need to do here is get to work, like start to work hard.
SPEAKER_00That can mean a lot of things. Can you give a couple of tangible examples of you know, where the rubber meets the road? What changed?
SPEAKER_01I I think my first reaction when I, you know, when I had those guys on on board was look, we need to figure out what a what a really good team looks like, what a really good athlete looks like, and express that to ourselves and to the and to the athletes and get them to. See what the differences are and minimize those differences and start to approach the standard that we need to be at in order to be competitive. I remember Luke in the in the in that time was writing down workouts, and he was like really into workouts, and I was like, okay, well, whatever. I was thinking more on the psychological side, and Luke was really thinking about the specifics, you know. So he started with a freshman and he was like, guys, we're gonna work really hard. I mean, and when it was our first meeting, I remember actually sitting down there and watching Luke, and he was like, Yeah, we're gonna work really hard. I mean, I think it was basically the meeting said over and over in several different ways. And uh, you know, he didn't disappoint. And they were running hills and they were doing long erg workouts and they were rowing long distances. The upperclassmen were trying to figure out what was going on with all that, and there was a a bit of bickering and fighting against the idea of this increased workload. Out of all that, there started to be a turn, a turning point where some of the guys on the team recognized that this mentality, this idea of working hard was gonna get them somewhere.
SPEAKER_00If I can recall, I remember I think Luke might have told me about this because yeah, I think that survived that mentality of if if nothing else, you're gonna be the fittest guys on the water. Like we're gonna do so much work that like it's not even gonna be a question to you whether or not you're physically ready for this. But I think he told a story at one time about a workout at Brown where they did like they they started on one floor of the boathouse, 20 minute piece, like hard. Not like not steady state, like as hard as you can pull it, like 20 strokes a minute, like tooth busting pulling. Stopped, walked upstairs, said, All right, grab an Urgana, do another one here. Finished a piece, and then walked to another floor and then said, sit down, grab an ergonomine, do another one here. Just stuff that was very, you know, it's like there's no magic behind that, but it's just very in your face, simple. It's about effort and it's about your mentality and your approach. And I felt like if any, I th when he told me that, I was like, wow, that must have been a very interesting time in the boathouse when that was the shift. That was a reflection of that shift of like, you know, what about the oars? What about the boat, or what about the science? It's like, that's all secondary. That's all secondary. Your first thing is you.
SPEAKER_01I remember going down to the boathouse one day, or maybe it was after practice, and and there was one of this guy on the he'd he'd been in the second freshman with Luke, and he was in, we were getting ready for practice, or something like that. And I said something to the effect of, okay, guys, we're we got in a little bit late. I'd really like to get us to get this 20-minute piece in. You know, I I think it's gonna be a bit challenging to do that after this practice, but I think it's just something we gotta do. And and Caleb, this guy, looks at me and he goes, Well, I think Luke pretty much caught her eyes to any any sort, any sort of resistance to hard work. So don't worry about it. That was kind of a nice moment. That was a period of time that was really formative for me, was recognizing that if you really want to get something done, and and it sort of came from all these other other moments that if you're gonna really want to get something done, uh you're gonna have to get to work and and get to it and and enjoy the work and and uh be accurate with your efforts over the course of the number of years I imagine that it that it took to get the team to the point where you guys were starting to feel like this was this is the standard we were talking about.
SPEAKER_00This is the the level of work we were talking about, we've been aspiring to. Can you identify checkpoints along the way, turning points that really stand out?
SPEAKER_01I would say the first thing was, you know, before you think about climbing the mountain, it felt like you had to get out of the trench. You know, it was like uh, you know, the first that first year of working hard, I it felt like we were so far away from the from winning, um, you know, not maybe some races, but winning, you know, say a championship, that it wasn't even really on my mind. It was on my mind, of course. I mean, as an athlete, it always is, but it felt like it was too far away to even try to dream of at that point. I don't want to over-dramatize it, but it just all I was trying to do at that point was just like write the ship, see if I could get like the right attitude in myself, the right attitude in the athletes. I'd been part of a lot of really good teams. I mean, I was I've been very fortunate that way. And and I knew what a good team felt like, and I just felt like we just we need to get to that. The thing that was was great was it it started to be really fun to work with the other coaches and to have these meetings about what we were gonna do that day and how that was gonna happen and what was gonna happen. You know, one one of the things I remember, I don't really remember, I guess I can think about which year it was, but um, you know, we went out to race Harvard, and Harvard's, you know, I would say historically our brown alumni care the most about our race with Harvard, and I don't think we had you know won any of those races for two or three years. You know, we'd been swept completely. You know, we went out for for the race, it was a home race for us, and um the second Frosh won. Wow, like you know, it can be done. And that was a you know, that was a little moment, but then the next year things started to really get going. Yeah, the next fall we went up, we went up to Rochester and we were doing a head, we're doing a head race up there, and then there's a short race afterwards, and Harvard had a crew up there which was we thought pretty close to their varsity. They beat us in the head race, but not by a mile. They'd beaten us by something like 40 seconds the year before. And then we did a 1500 meter race in the afternoon, and we lost by like a half a second. It seemed like a fluke because they kind of caught a crab or something like that, but we knew that there was something going on that was changing for sure. We had good captains, we had a really committed group of people. The sophomores had come up and they were really, they would, they really wanted to make a difference. What happened was we went to through winter training, I think, you know, we we went through a lot of what Scott Roop had done, and Scott was a very, very uh demanding coach in terms of workout. He was a lot of fun, he was a little zany sometimes and and uh came at things definitely with a sense of creative creativity, but he was very challenging. And and the workouts would come one after another, especially through winter training and hard workouts. We went through these with that squad and we started to see them have a real sense of toughness. We came into this race, and our first race of the year was was going to be against Harvard, and they'd won, I think, 33 races in a row. And here we were kind of trying to climb out of the out of the trenches and seeing some signs of success, and we knew we were getting to the point where we were okay, but there were some signs that winner where you were were like, wow, there's something pretty good going on here. I remember we used to do bench jumps after practice. You know, we just get some benches out, and this was usually on Saturdays, and at the end of the hard workout, we would do bench jumps, and one of the coaches would be holding a stopwatch, and so the athlete didn't know how long they were going to go. It would just be sort of until the coaches thought they'd done enough, which um I guess is not always the way you want as an athlete, but you know, I think there's value to that sometimes too. Most of the things weren't that way, but that was one where it was like, it was like we would we would look and when it seemed like they were done, it was like, okay, they're done. And and that meant that they had to, they, and they they knew that at this point, which was they were supposed to put together a pretty significant effort before they would get the call to stop. So it must have been I don't remember, end of February, early March, and we went up there to the end of a Saturday practice, and we started, you know, we started the bent jumps, and they were going for a while, and you know, it was like, okay, that's the they're pushing it. Their legs are hurting. They're that's that's pretty good. And so we we I forget, you know, we didn't blow the whistle, but we're like, oh, okay, that's enough. And and they didn't stop. The moment there for me was that the athletes recognized that they were pushing themselves. Okay, that was that was the end point that the coaches expected. But that wasn't that wasn't the end point for them. We went to we we were had a home race against Harvard, and and we had this energy in the boathouse that was that was pretty good. And and we did some, we we started, we put a lineup together that was able to do a few 2,000 meter pieces on our race course and and and other places. We went into Worcester, I remember, and did a 2,000-meter race up there just on our own. And we came to that race day against Harvard, and it was like it was a really interesting moment because we had no chance, it seemed, you know, in my mind, like we had no chance of winning that race. But at the same time, like I remember this feeling of before the race, I like I couldn't look those guys in the eyes and tell them like you know, we're up against an opponent that's too strong. Not the way they had trained, not the way they had had had uh had gone at it. And um, and so in my mind, I think like before I we came to the race, uh I I kept grappling with that feeling of like how can I talk to these guys about this race coming up in a way that reflects their investment in what they've done. I'm looking at them after like those workouts through the winter, and I'm I'm I'm thinking, I need to put these guys in the best possible position to win this race because they've they've earned that a hundred like not just have not just they've earned that, but I would I wouldn't would not be doing my job like to get back to what I should be giving someone else this opportunity if I can't do this properly. In other words, to take that energy that these guys have put into this preparation and give them the frame the best possible framework to deliver a performance. And at the time, I don't know if you were aware or remember or anything like that, but Harvard was really good at winning races in the body of the race. They wouldn't go out very hard, you know. And I I mean I raced them myself, not you know, not that long before this, and you know, Harry was the coach at the time. And uh they would you know you'd get this big lead and you'd think that you had it made, and then they would go like tearing right past you, right? So I kept thinking about this. Like how we're we're this like relatively diminutive crew, you know, we don't have as many athletes on our team, we're less experienced, we haven't won any big races. How the hell are we gonna, how the hell are we gonna beat these guys? Like I kept thinking, like, what how are we gonna how are we gonna row them down in the second thousand? Like, we can't do that. I I don't know what happened, but there was an image that popped into my mind. I guess actually it was actually it was a race that when I was uh in the second varsity at Brown, and we beat Harvard from the line, right? Like we we got out ahead and we held it. And that was I was like, that's that's that's the only way we can win this race. And it wasn't so much about fly and die, like that kind of thing. It was like we needed, we needed to take as many seats as we could in the first 400 meters. And then at the 500 meter mark, because I was all I knew that they like the second 500 was the thing for them. That at the 500 meter mark, we need to row as hard as we possibly can without expecting to get anywhere. And I remember talking to the guys uh like about three days beforehand and describing what I wanted them to feel in the settle of the race because I knew the that it had to have this sense of determination that they they would not fold when they started to get rowed down. And I remember watching, so we're we're in it's me and Luke and Joel, and we're in the watch, and uh and uh we're watching the race, they go off the line, we get the start that we're kind of thinking we might, and we took set like eight seats early, and they they may even have stretched they stretched it out to about deck on deck, you know. So now we had done this before and and lost you know badly. So it wasn't like this was was over. Um, but you there was something about it that was that looked good, and and we got to the to the 500 meter mark, we rode really, really hard, and we didn't go anywhere. And they started to come back, you know, and it was like, oh man, look out. And they came back through that second 500, and they came back, but they and they came back to about one seat down, but they didn't pass us. And all of a sudden the boats were going the same speed. And um to watch those guys, you know, in that second thousand, it was really seat for seat, was amazing, having gone through the period of time that we've gone the last through the past few years. We got to the the Narragansett Boat Club, which is about 20 20 meters, sorry, 20 strokes to go. And Ben Harrison, our sixth man, he's racing down. He's like, Ray's we're calling the last 20. There's a fat flower pot that's row that's that's like in the river, and his his oar hits the flower pot and he takes a bad stroke, right? And at that point, we've got maybe a half-seat lead. And for whatever reason, like the next stroke after that, Ben just like lit it up. And the the the sprint they had that like from that moment forward was uh you know, it was like watching the bench jumps. They were um, it was still really close. It wasn't like we pulled it away. We won by, you know, maybe three tenths of a second. But to win the weight race the way we did was um, you know, at that time and to break that streak was a massive moment for for me and for the program. And the funny thing was that Joel Scrogan is in the launch at the at the time, he goes, he goes, guys, like we gotta act like nothing just happened when we get back to the dock.
SPEAKER_00So what did you do when you got back to the dock?
SPEAKER_01Because I boy, we didn't really hold together that well, but you know, it was it was the thought that counted, right? But you know, I you know, it wasn't the Eastern Sprints. It wasn't like the it wasn't like it was um we didn't have the kind of celebration, I don't think that would have made another team feel like we had just won the world championships. But the level of confidence in the athletes walking around the boathouse afterwards was and in everybody was awesome. I remember getting an email from one of our alums who said, I, you know, the next day he wrote he wrote something something like, I wore my brown uni in rowing today, and I never felt prouder, or something like that. Um so that was that was nice to hear. After that point, we had we had a period of time where we were, we were, you know, we had we had it going. We had we had uh a motivation, we had uh something exciting, it was really exciting going in the boathouse. Uh we were coming into the sprints ranked in the top three, you know, sort of each year, but we we felt we kept falling short, you know. So 2001, for example, or sorry, 2008, we went through the dual race in the varsity now uh undefeated. And we came into the the sprints ranked number one and uh you know in Wisconsin, who nobody really knew about at the time, I guess, but uh, you know, they knocked us out, we got second, uh, they won the sprints, and then they went on to win the IRA. But we still had this great hunger in the squad. And um the the following fall, we actually passed Wisconsin at the head of the Charles. They had taken their four best athletes and put them in the four. Um, and we we passed Wisconsin and came in second, I think, to Washington by about a second at the head of the Charles. So we were still very much in the game. We came into the springtime, and you know, so we sort of thought we knew who the varsity was. I mean, they they'd done it at the head of the Charles about as close as we could expect. Um and we started in the beginning of this of the spring, and and it seemed like we had everything figured out, and then I don't remember exactly when it was. It was like right at we came back from San Diego. We had we we raced Yale, we beat Yale, we went to San Diego, we kind of faltered, and then all of a sudden, the boats were the same speed. Like you we had so many races that year, and we won, we had a very good season. We lost to Harvard by half a length uh in the in a dual race up in Boston. Um, and then we we started having these practices and where we where we uh I literally was so nervous for those practices because I couldn't I thought I knew who should be in the in the varsity based on their performance throughout the year, but when I put those people together, they would lose to the JV like all the time. And and then when we went out, when we would do our like our in-house races, the the JV was pretty good at a lot of things, but what they were really good at was 2,000 meter racing. There were these, we would go out and we would race these 2,000 meter races in practice that were like literally down to three seats. And it wasn't like three seats where you watched and practiced and you're like, yeah, those guys are going hard. It was like three seats where they had they had just raced like they were racing on Saturday. And it got to the point, it got to the point where where we're where we would race, like we would race on Saturday, and it wasn't even close to the racing we were seeing in practice. I mean, the the JV was winning by something like 10, 15 seconds, you know, the varsity by nine or something like that. Yeah. And then you'd come back on Monday, and like everyone would be pretty, you know, would have celebrated over the weekend, but it's like you came back on Monday, you're like, man, I I don't know what's gonna happen. And and so you'd be I I literally got to the point in the middle of the season and towards the end of the season where I was more nervous about practice than race day. So it got down to the it got down to pretty close before the Eastern. So that year the Princeton race was was one week before the Eastern Sprints, right? And um, I thought we had a lineup together, and um we're we're getting ready for Princeton, but we go out on Wednesday before Princeton, and I think the the JV beats the varsity, so I'm like, oh man, I gotta switch the lineup around. So I switched the lineup around. We went out on Thursday morning, and I was like, we got it. This is gonna be great. And and the JV just clocked them. I mean, they they beat them by a length of open water. And I mean, you know, here we are, we're two days from the Princeton race, and we're uh 10, you know, eight days from the Eastern Sprints, and we've got a really good crew, and they're just lost to the JV by, you know, two legs. And so I said, you know, after practice, I said something like, okay, guys, like, you know, we're gonna go out for practice this afternoon. I don't know what we're gonna do, but you know, unless something crazy happens, the JV's gonna race as the varsity, the varsity's gonna race at the J as the JV. Yeah. Um, and which it actually happened in my time at Brown, sort of anyway. But um, so we went out that afternoon and we did 30 stroke pieces and um the varsity, one like either all of them or eight out of ten or something like that. So I was like, I'm totally mystified. So we go down to to Princess like the free race day, right? And um, and I said, and we did what we say, we did we had three 700-meter pieces or three 600-meter pieces down the race course. And I said, you know, whoever wins the most of them is gonna be the varsity. And uh, and the varsity, the the varsity that we you know we had predicted to be the varsity ended up winning and then went on to win that race against Princeton and the JV1 again by big margins. And but you know, it kept on going. So the next week we're gonna we're getting ready for the sprints, and we're still having the same issues. Uh, we thought we had it figured out on on Tuesday, and then on Wednesday, the JV beats the bars. We did one one or two times two meters, I think we did one, we did two times 2,000 meters, and the and the and the J V won the first one. And I'm really pulling my hair out. And then uh, and then we switched a guy, and the and the varsity won the second one, but it was like, okay, you won the second piece, right? I'm yeah, like I'm literally, you know, okay, so you win the second piece after you make a switch, so that's the varsity for the eastern sprints, you know? Like, you know, that just felt really wrong. So um we decided we would do one more race on Thursday, and the winner would be the varsity would be the varsity for the sprints. And and so we went out and they got it done. You know, the varsity the varsity won by maybe a length, maybe it was one of actually one of the bigger wins they'd had uh in because so many of the races had been so tight. Um anyway, uh there was some really good signs in the next couple days, and and the varsity and the JV and the freshman and the second freshman and the four all won. And it was it was uh an amazing day at the sprints when we swept. And um and then and then, you know, I I don't go into it too long, but then we came right back, you know, and the and the JV raced the the varsity within three seats, I think, the following Saturday. Um and that kept on going all the way through Henley and to the point which we actually entered both of the boats in the ladies' plate. And uh I was my biggest fear was that the JV would knock out the varsity in an early round, and I would just you know the whole trip would be like you know, uh a sort of a a the this terrible like crazy end to this season that had been going so well. Um and unfortunately the but also but also sort of uh well anyway, the the the J the J V ended up getting knocked out because they jumped a slide and the and the and the varsity on the other side of the draw went on to win. And uh, you know, it would have been really interesting to see what happen would have happened if the JV had been able to complete their side of the draw.
SPEAKER_00I think that this has happened. I mean, I I haven't been to enough Henleys or known enough Henleys to recall this, but I feel like this has happened where two of the same team have raced each other in the final, and it's like, geez.
SPEAKER_01It's definitely happened, but I don't know that it I've seen it in the ladies' plate. Um, yeah, so the last thing I want to touch on touch on was something that you were uh uh alluding to just about that idea of you know hard work getting you where you want to go and attitude being everything. And you know, this idea that once you see the mentality of the crew right, you know, everything falls into place. I've always believed in that. I still believe in that. It was pretty it's been pretty interesting now in the last few years when freshman rowing went away um and recruiting amped up, that um it's sort of like our sport has gone from, and and this is um just my own my own corner of the world and my own perspective. But it it to me, it feels like our sport has gone from what rowing was during, you know, most of my my experience as an athlete and as a coach was a sport that's a little bit different than all the others. And and all of a sudden, uh it doesn't feel like it's different anymore. You know, that that we're no longer like different than hockey or football or I mean, yes, we are, of course, we still are in a lot of ways, but that we've made a a very big jump in recruiting towards those other sports, and not just recruiting, but in the overall um the overall program, you know, and I think a lot of this has come at least, you know, for a long time. Like we were racist, like Harvard was the the the crew that we were always up to go after. And when we when we were able to to be victorious, that was success. Sometimes we wouldn't be able to get to the point which we could you know make it with Washington and Cal, uh beat Washington and Cal or something like that, but but they're different, you know, they're they have different they're from a different league and all that. But um, but what's happened in the last few years, I think with Yale doing as much as they've done with Steve running that program the way he has, is that it, at least from my angle, it requires now that I in some ways go back to those early moments of whether it was doubt with Rich Davis and or being challenged by Steve when I was a young coach, or or trying to figure out how we were gonna get where we wanted to go with Luke and Joel. It's been a period now of, okay, if you're really gonna do this, you need to figure out how to deal with the whole program. And that means fundraising, that means recruiting, that means building a, you know, building a consensus of, or a uh, I don't know about a consensus, building a community around your rowing program that's gonna support a level of commitment, a level of excellence, a level of capability in in the athletes, the coaches, uh that's gonna that's going to be at a level that you can't compete with if you don't do that. A greater degree of attention to detail at every level is required by the head coach in order to be successful. And and I I feel like that's been challenging for me for sure. Like there have been days where it's been like, how do I do this? What am I doing wrong? But I also feel like as I'm starting to get into it, I'm enjoying it more and more now. And I guess one thing, like looking back at some of these stories, I mean, I never felt like I was really great at rowing when I started. I never felt like I was, I had I had that really great start at Cornell, but there was there was a lot of things that I felt like I wasn't really that great at. But I've always felt like had a sense of imagination and a sense of persistence. And that I'm starting to feel like I can imagine what it would take to put together the kind of recruiting that we need to do, the kind of fundraising. Obviously, these times make things a little bit strange as far as that goes, but uh the the kind of relationships that we need to forge within the university uh in order to have the support we need to get where we want to go. And I just have found that I've found that to be really exciting and interesting in the last couple of years. And um I'm I'm really looking forward to seeing where where we can go with it. And that that to me, the analogy is you know, we've we've figured out how to win these these these races, these these moments over time have been amazing for me. And um I just feel like there could be another amazing moment ahead.
SPEAKER_00Paul, if your closest friends could only describe you using three words, meaning three distinct adjectives, which words do you hope that they would use for you?
SPEAKER_01So three words uh I would say uh loyalty, imaginative, and competitive.
SPEAKER_00What drives you and gets you excited both personally, emotionally, professionally, spiritually, all those things? All kinds of exploration.
SPEAKER_01Who is someone that you admire in rowing and why? So I really admire the students and the athletes that I work with. I admired them when I was uh young, and I looked up to them when I was a freshman at Brown, and I I still admire the ones who carry the flag, lead the team, and decide they want to do something that's bigger than themselves.
SPEAKER_00Do you have a favorite pre-race mantra or a specific way that you like to prepare before a big performance?
SPEAKER_01I usually just tell myself to I usually just have to remind myself to relax and to stay true to myself and trust myself.
SPEAKER_00Do you have a favorite race course or a favorite regatta? And why? That race course in Sacramento is beautiful. To finish things off, if you could give one positive piece of advice to each of the following people who's looking to really excel in the sport of rowing, what would you say to a rower, to a coxswain, and to a coach?
SPEAKER_01All three of them, I would say the following, which I've told to some people before, but um you know who Lord Nelson is, right? He said to his ship captains, if you don't know what you're doing, just put your ship next to the enemy.