The Rowing Podcast
The Rowing Podcast
Larry Gluckman
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In memoriam of Larry Gluckman. We talk about the revival of Trinity Crew and the HRR win that changed the program forever.
Well rowed, Larry.
As you can imagine, this is a very special episode. Larry and I sat down for this interview only a few months ago, back in February, to catch up and to talk about rowing for a little while. Although we spent limited time together, he was easily one of the most gracious and selfless people that I've ever met. As anyone who knew him will tell you, his impact in the rowing community and in the lives of countless young people was immeasurable. Thank you, Larry. And well rowed. Larry Gluckman's love for rowing blossomed at Northeastern University under the direction of Coach Arlett. Before graduation, Larry earned a seat in the Vesper Coxlas IV that captured the bronze medal at the World Championship in Vichy, France. Following graduation and an assignment in the Peace Corps, Larry resumed his international racing career, making the national team for the world championships in 1973 and 75, and making the team for the 1976 Olympics. Larry's coaching career began at Columbia as the head coach. He then returned to Northeastern as an assistant coach. In 1980, Larry was named head coach at Princeton University. There, his crews battled for top honors in the EARC. Next, Larry took command of the Dartmouth program. He also worked for Concept 2 as a marketing representative until he took the position of men's head coach at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, leading it through a very successful six years that included D3 National Championships, a Henley Royal Regatta Temple Cup Trophy, and Head of the Charles Collegiate 8 victories. In 2009, Larry and his wife Sarah moved to Glover, Vermont, whereupon he started the Small Boat Training Center at Craftsbury, which developed into the Green Racing Project. During his years leading the elite programs at Craftsbury, he placed numerous crews on the USA, U-23, and senior national teams, including a bronze and the women's double at the U-23 World Championships. In 2015, he assisted Coach Wes Eng in leading the women's USA U-23 team. His women's quad placed fourth that summer at the World Championship. In 2016, he worked with the Crassbury Green Team Men's Senior Quad at the Last Chance Olympic qualifier. In 2018, he coached the Saratoga U-17 Skulling Development Program. Other international coaching efforts include assistant coach for the 1979 Pan American Team, 1980 Olympic coach for the Women's Double Skull and Coxless Pair, and coach of the 1981 World Championship Women's Cox 4 and 1984 Olympic Women's Cox 4. Larry coached skulling at the Craftsbury Center since the late 1970s. He also guest coached at the Florida Rowing Center in Wellington, Florida, and the Rio Salado Rowling Club in Tempe, Arizona during the winters from 2015 through 2020. Larry and his wife Sarah were happily married for nearly 50 years.
SPEAKER_01I don't play games, but when I went to um the place to buy them, I asked the guy and and I explained what I was going to do. And he said, just get yourself a pair of gaming headphones. And he said, this one over, he said, how frequently are you going to use it? I said, I may never use it again, but he said, okay, get this one here.
SPEAKER_03Got it. Where so where are you these days? You know, I don't I don't actually know where you live.
SPEAKER_01Uh I'm in, I'm in um, I'm in a small town in northern Vermont called Glover, G-L-O-V-E-R. And it's about 12 miles from the Craftsbury Outdoor Center.
SPEAKER_03Gotcha. Gotcha. All right. So that's pretty good. You're in a great spot. You know, I don't I don't obviously know the the your full personal history, but when did you when did you move there? How long have you been there?
SPEAKER_01Oh, I've had this property since 1978.
SPEAKER_02Oh.
SPEAKER_01When I was coaching, when I was coaching at Northeastern. And um in 2009, when I left Trinity, it's basically a house that sits on cedar posts, and it's a typical um Vermont, what they call camp. And then in 2009, my wife and I put an addition on.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01So we'd have an indoor shower and we'd have a place to put a washing machine and etc.
SPEAKER_03Do you live there permanently now?
SPEAKER_01Is that your I live here permanently, except if I take a coaching gig during the winter, but I I chose not to do that. I did it for six years uh down in Florida and in Arizona, and this year we decided to stay home.
SPEAKER_03Gotcha. All right, well, good stuff. Sounds like a great spot. Do you do some uh what are you doing now in terms of uh of coaching? Do you coach at Crassbury pretty regularly or just kind of guest coaching?
SPEAKER_01Um I coach there in the fall twice a week with their senior uh team, the senior green team. And I'm going down to Sarasota uh to help John Graves in his final big regatta that before he retires. But other than that, I kind of have to wait till the summer.
SPEAKER_02Gotcha.
SPEAKER_01And I I coach at Craftsbury either with the seniors or with um the guest scholars. And I'm not sure what's gonna happen this summer. Um, but I the seniors are easy because uh they know what to do, and you only instruct on the water, so there's no issue there. And once you hit the dock, everybody's masked up and maintained six feet, etc. They close the dining hall. So we'll see what happens. I'm not I'm not I'm not sure what's gonna happen this summer.
SPEAKER_03You know, do do the Dartmouth crews ever make their way up to Craftsbury? I feel like if I was coaching at Dartmouth, I would I would take some time and make that like a training trip.
SPEAKER_01Uh interesting you bring that up, uh, because um uh I brought Trinity crews here when we were preparing to go to H two different times. Um, and I brought a Northeastern crew here when we were also planning to go to Henley. The water in Hanover is so good and so much of it, and kids sleep in their own beds and stuff. Um, it's a hard place to leave. Um, you know, uh it's just a great place to row. Dormouth is like is like Craftsbury in terms of the environment. The difference being is that the water runs downhill. I mean, it at Dartmouth, the Connecticut River is just can be brutal, particularly in the early spring.
SPEAKER_03I think I've only I think I actually personally only raced there once. I I rode uh lightweight in college at Cornell. And so we go up and race the Dartmouth guys, and I had we had one year we did it, and I remember the 2K was like honestly, I think it was somewhere between five minutes and 5 30. Like it was really fast.
SPEAKER_01Oh, oh absolutely. And the the three years I was um the varsity coach there, two of them, I sent out a letter and I said, any of the teams visiting that we were gonna race a mile and three-quarters. And it it came in just around seven minutes for a mile and three-quarters, a half a mile more and a minute more.
SPEAKER_03It feel it felt like it changed the whole profile of the race. You know, the idea. I mean, if you've ever done like a the dash for cash of a Canadian Henley, like the idea of a settle, yeah, or you know, striding out like throw that out the window. Like, guys, this race is gonna be over so fast. I'm gonna be calling the 1500 meter mark before you realize it, and we're gonna be sprinting. So, like just just go. We'll we'll figure it out when we get there.
SPEAKER_01So right, and that might have been one of the few races they let kept the dam open.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah. Yeah, you come up, you put your blade in the water, and you have instant, instant bend on the blade. Your start is like, guys, don't even apply pressure on the start, just get through the water clean, and then we'll get moving. It's great. Exactly. Love it, exactly. Well, like it's great to have you on, Larry. Thanks so much for taking time. I think last time you and I caught up was uh I can't remember the summer, but it was the summer that West was coaching the U23 women.
SPEAKER_01Um yeah, I was I was his assistant. Yeah, we we flipped roles, I was his assistant, and I ended up coaching the quad.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, it was it was a lot of fun. That was a really good group. I think Kevin Sauer was the coach of the guys, I think. Uh he might have been, yeah. He might have been. Um, yeah, it was a good group. Kevin was there, you were there, Wes was there. I think Wyatt Allen might have been there. It was just it just felt like a really like everyone was super just on the level.
SPEAKER_01It was it was a it was a very respectful group of coaches and very easy to assist each other. That isn't always the case, but uh for this trip it was very, very good.
SPEAKER_03I remember us being the I don't know if we were allowed to do it, but when we were following on bikes, we were all started, we were cheering for the U.S. crews as we were going by. I really don't know if that's proper etiquette, but we were pretty loud.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Uh you know, the Europeans do it, and so no one has ever come up to me and said you can't do it. No manager said you can't do it. So and we don't understand what the Europeans are saying anyway, so they may be giving out stroke rates and heart rates and yeah, who knows?
SPEAKER_03Go now, go now. Exactly, exactly, exactly. Well, starting off pretty early, can you tell us uh where your hometown is, where you grew up?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, for sure. Um, I split my childhood between living in um New York City on Manhattan Island, uh up by the George Washington Bridge. That area is called Washington Heights. And then at around nine or ten years old, I moved out with my parents to uh Hampton Bayes on the tip of Long Island, which is actually a bedroom community for all the people who work in some of the more exclusive areas like West Hampton, Southampton, and East Hampton. Um so it was a great place to grow up. Uh very small school. I went to the same school from elementary school to high school.
SPEAKER_03Wow. Wow. How big was the class?
SPEAKER_01Uh my class uh was 34.
SPEAKER_03Wow. You really knew everybody well. Uh, we did. How did you first get into it? I mean, did you play any sports growing up? I mean, how'd you get exposure to a sport that, you know?
SPEAKER_01Oh, yeah. I, you know, depending on what the season was. Um, there was one coach at the high school, he coached everything. I never played football. Uh, school dropped football when I became um a high schooler. Um and uh but I tried in college. I tried to play football and then I tried to play basketball, didn't realize how much recruiting, even in the 60s, went on and um realized that I wasn't gonna make the team and decided, well, I'll just I'll just stay fit on my own. And within a couple of weeks, one of the guys in my dorm, freshman dorm, said, Hey, you ought to try this new sport at Northeastern, it's called rowing. Get on the bus at four o'clock and I'll introduce you to the coach. And I did, and um I really never got a chance to do much rowing in the fall, and in the spring I was a nth freshman boat. I sometimes I never got off the dock box. And um it was it was wonderful. I I everything I liked about sport, the camaraderie, the hard work, uh being outdoors, uh all of that was um was great. And the coach was a wonderful guy. Uh his name was Ernie Arlett. And um, and by the time the sophomore spring rolled around, I actually um happened to make the first boat and sat there from that spring till the time I graduated.
SPEAKER_03I was gonna say, didn't you you had a you made it to the national team?
SPEAKER_01I made it to the national team as a junior in college. Um I went to Vesper during the summer, and I happened to make one of their competitive boats, and lo and behold, we won the trials, and we went to Europe and and raced in the Fisa Regatta in Europe and came home and came home with a medal.
SPEAKER_03Nice. Congratulations. That's I mean, I know it's a while ago, but still, that's pretty awesome for your.
SPEAKER_01Oh, yeah, yeah. I mean, it you know, it um this the same folks were there that um except for now with the Germanys, um and the breakup of the Soviet Union, but it was still the Russians, the East Germans, the West Germans, the Czechs, England, New Zealand, etc. So, you know, it was um it was very, very competitive, and um I was fortunate to be able to be part of that team.
SPEAKER_03Where was the regatta?
SPEAKER_01It was in Vichy, France. And they've they've held um uh FISA-level regattas there since that time. Uh and we were the first team, full team, to be sponsored by the National Rowing Foundation. Uh the previous year in 1966, they sponsored the eight, but in 1967 they sponsored the whole team, and I'm indebted to those people um for giving me the opportunity. And I had a chance to be coached by Dietrich Rose, which was particularly um rewarding and in you know it taught me a lot about elite level racing and training.
SPEAKER_03I wouldn't call it things coming full circle, but when I was starting rowing, I wrote at Westside Rowing Club in Buffalo, New York, and I was a lightweight, and in the summertime, uh well actually I wrote for St. Joe's during the year, St. Joe's Collegiate. It's the not not St. Joe's Prep. You had the same college.
SPEAKER_01I I I know I I recruited, I recruited up at uh at West Side.
SPEAKER_03Oh, there you go. Okay. I'm I mean we may have run into each other for all I know at some point. I just didn't really realize who you were. Um, but I knew the name. So the reason I bring this up is we used to do something in the summertime called Gluckmans. And we used to do them just before Canadian Henley because we'd kind of be tuning up and we want to get really good at our sprint or our build-up or something. Um, and so you know, the funny thing about Gluckmans is I feel like I've done different versions of Gluckmans. Absolutely. I'd like to know from the man himself. Yeah, what are Gluckman's from your from your perspective? How do you do the Gluckman's approach?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, well, the one that all of a sudden got that name, and when I worked for Concept Two, people would come up to me, young athletes would come up to me and they'd look at my name tag and they'd see Larry Gluckman, and they go, You're the guy that I hate. But really, um I love Gluckman.
SPEAKER_03They were great.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Um, the Gluckmans were the um uh for me, the Gluckman was or the Gluckers were 40 seconds on, 20 seconds off eight times.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And the first one was taking it off the line, and then you'd have five in the middle, all at base, and then you'd have two at the end with with your beginning of your sprint and then your final sprint. And after you did eight minutes of those, which turns out to be uh 320 seconds, and for an average freshman crew, because that's where I started it, um six, you know, just under you know, six minutes um would give you um uh a pretty good effort, you know, or or around six minutes. And um, and so for me, that was a really important workout. And we take a long break and we do it again. Um and if I thought that uh we needed a little more work, we might do it again. But typically two of them made a workout: a land warm-up, a water warm-up, yeah, two of those pieces, and then a cool down, uh, both on land and on the water. And that was to ref sort of replicate what happened on race day.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah. I felt like um, I don't know if this was part of your um way of doing the sequence, but my coach used to vary the lengths of them. Oh so we would we we would like it would be like he'd do we do them um somewhat with what you described, but what he would do was um it's when we we couldn't we weren't very good at getting to top speed. So we'd play around with the idea of like you'd do like if he's uh let's say you did eight or nine of them, right? You do about uh three of them at like you used to do, I think we used to do like three at quarter slide, and the idea would be over the course of the 40 seconds, you're supposed to build the just max speed, like just boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, until you're going like you know 55 strokes a minute, something, and you're going very fast, and then you go, and then you try to carry that quickness over to half slide, you try to carry it over to quarters, three-quarter slide, and then you try to go to full slide, and you realize like, oh my God, like I have to be really light and quick. But it was great because when you when you actually, I always felt that when we transitioned from Gluckmans to regular rowing, the regular rowing was so sharp. I mean, and light and easy. You're like, God, we have so much time to let the boat just like just glide out. They got all the time in the world, boom, take the next one, all the time in the world, versus like bam, bam, bam, bam, bam. You realized how ineff I felt like I've realized how inefficient my movements were with gluckers. If you couldn't, if that wasn't the biggest bucket of water to the face, you couldn't, I couldn't think of a better one where you're like, I can't keep up with everybody. I can't keep, I'm too slow at the catch. I'm doing something funky. And the coach would be like, see, that's why you can't be doing that with your hands because you got no time. You're out of time. You're late already. You're late, you're late, you're late. Okay, gotcha. They were they were they were great. I used to love gluckers, they were a lot of fun.
SPEAKER_01And and what's so interesting, I think, is that I might have talked about that drill at a US rowing meeting or something of that nature, and there were coaches in the room, and every every kid who came up to me, I would say, Well, what do you think? You know, how how do you do it? Yeah, and it was a variation on the theme, but the idea was was very, very high intensity for 40 seconds, and what happened was I started this when I coached freshman at Princeton. Um the guys were really smart. And um I used to just do 20 and 5, 20 strokes on, five strokes off. Yeah, the guy when the guys were doing five strokes off, it looked like they were almost pausing.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01So the time the time was just getting longer and longer and longer. And finally I said, I I'm gonna control this. Let's we're gonna do 40 seconds on, 20 seconds off. I don't care if you stop, but after 20 seconds, we're gonna go again. Yeah, and and and that's what happened.
SPEAKER_03That's so funny how something like Gluckman's like it started as one thing, it's like a game of telephone, it becomes its own, all these different versions.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely, and it's fine, it's great. It's great.
SPEAKER_03Well, everybody, it's it's been settled. This is the original Gluckman.
SPEAKER_01I I I I'm the devil.
SPEAKER_03I wanted to start with, I think a story that hasn't been told in a long time, which was the story of your crew at Trinity. To set the context a bit, I remember uh in rowing news, I believe it was rowing news at the time. I don't think it was rowing magazine, I think it was still rowing news. Uh, the cover of uh the magazine was a Trinity crew. And it was these two guys, and I didn't really know who they were, but they were saluting each other at the finish line at Henley, the stroke and the bow. And I always was like, what's this all about? And that was one of your crews. So could you tell us a bit about that story and the run up to Henley and what the salute means?
SPEAKER_01Well, thanks for asking. Um, I was working at Concept Two. Mm hmm. And um in uh 2003, my wife and I decided that we were going to leave Vermont and that I was going to go back to coaching. I hadn't been in coaching since um 1991. I was looking around and I saw that Trinity was looking, and I knew a fellow named Curtis Jordan, which is a pretty popular name in rowing. Yep. And he graduated, and I knew Norm Graf was his coach, and Norm was up here at Craftsbury uh as the director of the um skulling program, and I had a a lot of respect for him. And I called Curtis and I said, tell me about the program. And he goes, Well, they're really struggling, etc. And maybe you could maybe you could help them. So I I got the job. I went down there in 2003 to four that that that season. There were more guys on campus that were recruited to row in the last three years than there were kids on the rowing team.
SPEAKER_03Oh, interesting.
SPEAKER_01It just sort of showed you that rowing had a bad taste in people's mouths. And um I try to bring it along. I had a good freshman coach. He did some good recruiting, and the next year, or that particular year, I rode with freshmen as freshmen, not part of the varsity. That class, the class of 2007, came to become varsity guys. Yeah. I decided that we were going to have to change the attitude. And I said to guys, I said, um, before they left campus, I said, there's two things that are going to happen in the fall. The first is anybody that can break 21 minutes on the erg for 6K will automatically be in the varsity boat for the head of the Charles. We're only going to get one boat, and so it's open. Yeah. It doesn't make a difference. If there are seniors who break 21 minutes, the seniors get to go first in terms of making the boat. And then the second thing is we're going to create what's known as the Trinity Crew, sort of a combine where you'd come to campus in the first two days of campus, being on campus, and you would have to demonstrate your fitness. Those people that scored in the upper eight on their side in this combine would will always row together so that you know within two days that you're going to be rowing with the best people fitness-wise on uh in the program. And so we made uh and um another lightweight, Wes Ng, as you know, for from Yale, he became my assistant. Yeah, he got into this. I mean, he he thought this was really something. We did we did running, we did erging, we did pull-ups, we did push-ups, we did uh agility drills, tossing, a medicine ball, etc. And kids could go home, and if they didn't have an erg, they could do everything else. If they did have an erg or can get an erg to use, um, for me, they were going to try to stay fit. And so as soon as campus opened up and the kids came on campus, we ran this combine, and immediately we divided the squad. There were those kids that worked hard during the summer and those kids that didn't. And um, and then a month later, at the end of September, early October, we did the 6k. Sure enough, I had eight guys that could break 21 minutes, and we started uh preparing the boat. Uh the week before that, everybody had to row optional, but they had to row um uh if they wanted to, with me leading the pack, had to row a marathon on the Urg, 42 um 000 meters. Yeah, it took me all afternoon, it took other people, you know, uh two hours and 15 minutes or something, and I was the first guys coming, and I was there for the last guys, and I had a bottle of ibuprofen next to me. The other thing we did that year, we decided that we weren't gonna train on Saturday. That from we're gonna train Friday morning, they'd have off Friday afternoon, they'd have Saturday all day, they'd have Sunday morning off, and then they would come down and row small boats on Sunday afternoon. Starting at two o'clock, we went an hour and a half, two o'clock, three thirty, five o'clock. You come off the water and you would row an urg for 10K. And so you could be out in a single or double a pair, and then come in and after an hour, 15 minutes, somebody's waiting at the dock for that boat. And all of a sudden, the culture began to change. We introduced a crew table in the dining hall. The dining hall wasn't part of a dormitory, it was a separate dining hall at um Trinity, yeah, uh, right in the middle of campus, and guys would show up there, and Wes and I and the women's coaches would hang around the table for a half hour, 45 minutes. We eat lunch, the kids would eat lunch, and we talk to them not as athletes, but as kids who are on campus. What's going on? What's going on at this? You know, how's your subjects, etc., etc. And all of a sudden, the crew table took on a life of its own. I began to sense that this was something changing in the culture. We ended up winning the Collegiate 8 at the head of the Charles. First time Trinity had done that, and immediately the ball started rolling. Now the kids really believed in preparation, taking care of themselves, stopping in at the crew table, making sure everybody knows how everybody else is doing. Uh, and I also got an invite to go down to the Princeton Chase. Yeah. Back when I coached at Princeton, myself and Curtis Jordan and Gary Kilpatrick started the Princeton Chase in the mid-80s because I started the event, even though we were a Division III school, we decided to um try it out. And we were in the middle of the pack. There were lots of second varsity crews that would beat us. Um many of the lightweight crews would beat us, etc., in terms of time. But it was a good opportunity for my guys to rub elbows. Yeah. And then we went into winter training, and division three means winter training is no coaches. You can't be in the tank, you can't be on the you can't be with them on ergs. Uh, you can't suggest you you can suggest, but you can't monitor erg workouts, weight workouts, etc. But once a week we were allowed to have an hour for as a check-in. And invariably I would give a talk for 20 minutes about training. There was lots of other discussions. And and then midway through winter training, one of the parents got a hold of me and said, you know, if you can arrange it, I'd like to pay to send the kids to the San Diego Crew Classic. And all of a sudden, we had a very immediate, you know, like six, seven weeks away at the end of March, yeah. All of a sudden, we have a race, a cross-country race, and the guy that fired everybody up. And we went out and we had a really good weekend, won a couple of events, came back, and then I set the course, and I then said to the guys, based on what you've done so far, if we really show some speed in the early going here, I'll petition the Nescaq, which is our league, to um to see if we can go to Henley. They I think they only allowed two schools in the NESCAC, uh, men or women, in any one year to go abroad. We happened to be one of those two crews. I think I think it was either I think it was Bowden who rode in the fours event, and they were the other crew. And so now we uh San Diego took on a life of its own, and now Henry took on a life of its own. And and I said to them, I said to the guys, um here's the proviso. If we don't win at the end of the season the um the ECAC invitational, then I have the right to go through and reanalyze the crew. Okay, you could come in second, but we didn't win. We needed to have a performance that left no doubt in anybody's mind that we deserved to go to Henry. And we had a very good season. We won the New Englands, and that crew was made up of two seniors, two juniors, and five sophomores. You saw it in San Diego, you saw it at the head of the Charles. We're certainly gonna see lightweight varsities, freshman crews, maybe even second varsity crews in the Temple Challenge Cup, which was the event we could enter, and at Henley. And I said, you've got to train like them. You've got to train like the better crews that are gonna be in that event. And the guy started picking up an extra workout or two or three a week, yeah, and we began to really develop. Well, the short uh the short of it is we came in second to Michigan, and um, I got the crew together the day after the regatta and I said, we're gonna open it up. And there was a freshman that actually beat a senior in the selection process. It was the most difficult decision I had to make to not include a senior in a boat going to Henley. And I I I I gave the two I had picked two spares. I picked a senior as a spare, I picked uh a junior as a spare, uh, and but I gave them the option to row in the four, because we took an eight and a four, and they said, no, we'd rather do a different event. I said, tell me what it is, and they said, we'll row the double. They're both good scholars, and uh I said, fine. And then we got we got on with it. We went to Yale, and just at the as they were preparing for the uh IRA in 2005, which they ended up winning, we got beaten every piece we did. But it was it was um uplifting for the crew to be that competitive against uh a really outstanding um lightweight lightweight crew. Um, but it gave me an opportunity that that became very obvious that I had to shake the boat up within the boat. And so the stroke and seven were Peter and Tom Graves. Yeah, and Tom was a senior, and I called him in and I said, I'm gonna have to break you guys up. You're gonna what Peter's gonna stroke, and he and he had he stroked all the crews we had in the two years he was there, uh the first two years he was there, and Tom, you're gonna be the first man across the finish line when we win. And they had a smile on their face. I said, it's just like a sandwich. And I said, We got the meat in between, and you guys are the bread on the outside, and I said, between you two, leadership in the stern and Tom in the bow, keeping the boat straight and keeping us on course and helping the young guys, uh, because I had a sophomore at two and a sophomore at three and a freshman at four. I said, Tom, you are in charge of local 1234, 1234 being the bow. One, two, three, four. I said, you are the foreman, and Peter, you're the foreman of 8765. And my senior coxswain, probably one of the best coxswains, national team coxswain, um, Brack Baker, Cox the lightweight crew overseas from um from Riverside. Um I said, you guys, you three are the are the keys to us being as successful as we can be. And it was tough going initially for Tom, who wanted to be in control, but gradually they began to see how the boat, I took I took smoother, less strong guys and put them in some different seats, and all of a sudden the boat took off. And there was no question in my mind that um when the guys got together, pre-row, post-row, those two guys were leading the discussion. Um, I never gave them a race plan, they always sat together, came up with their race plan, they handed me a three by five card, said, Coach, this is what we're gonna do. Uh, they got into the habit of doing that on ergometer pieces, so they knew the drill on the um on race prep. And I said, fine, you know, you guys are in charge. And every race during the season, um, they learned something about how to set their sights. And we were seated seventh at Henley, and um uh the Graves' father, uh Harry Graves, had a business over in Europe, uh, Scotland, and he um stood up and said, You know, Larry, I'm gonna order. Now that you've committed to go to Henley, I'm gonna order an empacker to have to have it be delivered to Henley. Uh, we're gonna name it the Norm Graph because he rode for Norm and Harry won Henley um in 1976, and this is 2005. So there was just about 30 years between a father and his two sons rowing at Henley. He came up with the boat, beautiful boat. Um, I I chatted with uh Empacker because the boat was going to be used on the Connecticut. I wanted the seat deck a little low. I wanted some little stuff that I thought would be helpful uh in rowing in sloppy water. And um, we got into the boat, and right off the dock, all I saw was smiles on guys' faces. In order to get acclimated to the boat, we went um to Reading, and instead of having the boat trailered, um, we rode the boat to Reading through the locks. One guy jumped out of the boat, opened up the lock, closed the lock, swam back, and um uh they had a great time. There's no coaching, people would cheer them, you know. Hey, good luck at Henley, good luck at Reading, etc. Had a good had a good regatta at Reading, came back, um, did some speed work with the other St. Joe's, the prep on Monday, and then we chilled ourselves until the Wednesday regatta. And on um on Friday, we met the number one seed, which was the Cal freshmen, who were undefeated, no one was within a length of them, and they were the second fastest boat in the boathouse at Cal.
SPEAKER_03And who was coaching at this point? Was this was this Bond or was this who was the coach?
SPEAKER_01This was uh Jeff Bond, with Ted Washburn as the the Henry expert. Brought them, he went to California, he trained them, helped Bond train him, and then he brought him to Henley, and they had an easy, easy time. And um uh, you know, I didn't know what to expect, but the guys had gotten together unbeknownst to me. The guys had gotten together after they did their race plan and said, We're gonna just change it just slightly. And after the race that they won um by uh three feet, um Peter said to me, the stroke, Peter Graves, he said, Coach, they are the most outstanding crew we raced so far, but they're still freshmen. And if we could get the lead, we want them looking over their shoulder for as long as possible. And if they go through us, they deserve to be number one. But if they don't go through us, then we could go to the final. And I said, that's very mature, Peter. I might not have thought about looking like, and there were kids who were, I mean, it was a had a fair number of kids from overseas and some national junior national team kids or U23 kids from various places, yeah. But they were still freshmen, and that crew, the Trinity crew, by the time they were at Farley, got got three-quarters of a length, and then we had given so much that from Farley we were just hanging on until we got to the last 40 strokes, and we used to practice from the middle of April to write to Henley 40 at 40. That was the last thing we did at practice every single day, and it was the one thing that everybody on the heavyweight squad looked forward to. You could get your ass kicked all practice long. Third boat, we had to give them three lengths, but if they could win the 40 by 40, then they would the the team that won 40 by 40 was the first team allowed to dock. Okay, because what would happen is that the water would keep pushing you downstream. So by the time everybody got to dock, you had to row 500 meters to get back to the dock. Okay, and so if you won that, and then they had the whole opportunity of pulling in the two crews that lost, and you know there was some smack going on there.
SPEAKER_03Oh, yeah, you could do you could do the dining hall first, too, and all that stuff, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Oh, yeah, you name it, right? So they got to where we marked off. The reason we did speed work with St. Joe's is because I kept moving back and forth in the enclosure, and the coxswain would tell me where the 40 by 40 started. Yeah, and they came into the enclosure and Cal was moving through, moving through us. But the guys knew that they had one 40 stroke, one minute left, and they could go on to the weekend because the go rowing on the weekend, there's only four crews left in your event after so many 32 started on Wednesday. And I said, I don't if you make it to the weekend, this regatta is a success. And we just Who had enough. The guys just had enough to get back out a little bit and we came across and won the race. And then we had um uh you know a uh a a good row on Saturday, and then we raced Yale, who won the lightweight event at the IRA. We raced them in the final, and we had raced them twice in the spring. Yeah, once in the new lineup, semi-new lineup before IRA, and once right after they finished their spring break and we were starting ours. And we didn't win a single piece. We didn't win 30 strokes at the end or 40 strokes at the end. We didn't win the 2K, nothing. And I think in the back of Yale's mind, that's who they thought we were, even though we had beaten a really fast California crew, yeah, a really fast. Okay, but they thought that that but by winning by three feet was about yeah, that was our regatta. And because we had decided in advance as a group that we were gonna race, not the typical uh Henley way where you try to build a lead and then get the stroke rate down to 32 or whatever, we wanted to be gentlemen, but we needed to prepare for if we ended up approaching the weekend, and so we raced every piece just like um we needed to race at that level. And Yale, who was very good, they by the time they got to the enclosure, they began to take it down. They had, you know, open water, comfortable, and they would go down to 32, 33, and lengthen out, etc. And um they get off the mark pretty good, but because we had gotten off the mark well on Friday, on Sunday, the guy said, we don't necessarily have to have to um go for the lead, but we can lead from behind. We will push them as much as we can, and if they're able to walk away from us, so be it. But what happened was we got to Foley this time and we began to move away. And um I think it was because we were used to racing the middle of the race really hard, and and Yale was less prepared to put in a full a full uh mile and five sixteenths, and um we ended up winning. So for the Graves boys, when they crossed the line, they said beforehand, if we win, we'll salute everybody in the crew. We'll salute the meat. We're the we're the we're the bread there to meet, and we're gonna salute them for doing their job. That's what the salute was about. It was about mission accomplished. Our goal was to race well, make it to the weekend, and to make it to Sunday, and then to let it all hang out. And and and that's what happened.
SPEAKER_03That's pretty special. I mean, for what sounded like a cultural rebuilding year became a Henley one. I mean, wow.
SPEAKER_01It was you know, uh, Matt, it was the confluence of that particular group of freshmen who rode as a as a class and then en masse moved into the varsity and took the majority of the varsity seats on the first boat and the second boat. They were cohesive. Most of the novices at that time, we still had novices. Most of the novices were in that JV boat, they were very enthusiastic. They were the guys who cheated all the time on the 40 by 40. As soon as I would reach for the megaphone, they were gone. They didn't wait for on this one go. And so, yeah, it was very special. And the the parents and the alumni were in the midst of a uh building project. Uh, we were finishing the boathouse that got started several years before, but ran into some contamination issues with the soil, and I had to go back to alumni and back to parents who gave money and asked for more. And we finished we finished the boathouse and we put up a Henley Wall and a Captain's Wall, etc., etc., to be able to honor the people um who brought that program up. And then we decided that we'd honor the um the founders. The the program at Trinity started way back when uh Yale and Harvard were racing sixes um in New Hampshire. And uh Trinity was uh invited to one of those races. And then there was a spell where there was no rowing, and then in the in the uh late 40s, early 50s, alumni decided to have rowing come back.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And um and it came back, and we honored that group, and we called them founders, and they came back to the boathouse, and uh, so it there was a lot of positive energy.
SPEAKER_03Oh my gosh, yeah. I can't even imagine that year must have been so special.
SPEAKER_01It was it was wonderful. I was I felt very lucky. I can remember just one little sideline. I called Curtis Jordan, who gave a sizable amount of money, um, to buy everybody a blazer and a and a tie, uh a Trinity tie. And I called him after the race. I said, Curtis, we won. And and I could hear him sort of catch in in his throat. He said, I'll call you back because he couldn't talk to me. And about 15, 20 minutes later, he called back. He said, Uh I'm sorry that I couldn't talk to you, Larry. He says, Because I think about Norm Graf and and I think about where that program was and the joy I had in rowing for Trinity and where it wasn't for the last eight or ten years, and now it's back. And I'm I'm I'm so appreciative. And I said, Well, Curtis, we couldn't have done it without you. He said, That was nothing. If you want to go again, I'll help you again, you know, and um he was my assistant, and I'm I'm dedicated, you know, I'm I'm so appreciative of his involvement. And you know, and I've I've had individual crews from different programs do outstanding things, you know, at Princeton, at Northeastern, uh, even at Dartmouth when we were just getting going. The year after I left, they won the IRA. Um, you know, so they all did outstanding things, but I just sort of felt that crew did something very special in a very short period of time.
SPEAKER_03Well, Larry, that was a great story. Um, love loved hearing about it. And you know, it's like all these little tidbits along the way about like uh like you said, sixes. When most people hear that on here, they probably have never seen a picture of a six. I've seen I like I've seen this and be like, oh my god, they used to have a two, a four, a six, an eight. A six was a boat. There used to be a six. It was, I mean, outlawed, whatever you want to call it, but they don't exist anymore. So that's great. Um, well, moving on to the next section. Uh, you wanted to talk a little bit about some of the coaches that you work with over the years and or who've coached you.
SPEAKER_01Oh, yeah. Okay, well, that thanks for also thanks for bringing that up because I really feel that um I I have uh a pedigree behind me that um I was very fortunate to have, besides Ernie Arlett, who started the program at Northeastern and created the with Cambridge Boat Club, created the head of the Charles after the bump races in England. He was born in England, um uh lived at Henley on Thames, and um his father was a rowing coach that um uh uh coached Jack Kelly. And his brother also coached uh Jack. Um he he got me going to the level where I could go and feel comfortable competing at places like Vesper and Philadelphia, etc. Uh the coaches at Vesper, particularly Dietrich Rose, was really important in my development. Uh I actually, so I didn't miss anybody, I happened to jot them down. Um Al Rosenberg coached me, who was the Olympic coach and the world champion coach in '64 and '74. Harry Parker, um, although coaching-wise was my nemesis. Um because I was at Princeton and at Dartmouth and um had some wonderful races against his Harvard crews. Uh Harry uh taught me a lot. Some of it was just by observation, but because I tried to make several national teams, I learned a lot from him. Um, Bill Stowe at Columbia, he stroked the 64-8 that won the gold medal. Um, he taught me what to do away from the boathouse. He taught me how to make sure that people on campus, from the secretary in the admissions office to the administrative assistant in the athletic department, to the head of buildings and grounds, um, make sure that you do something for them periodically. And what he did, he hosted a boathouse um holiday party where he had some beverages, he had good food. Um, and no one was obligated to come, but on that night, um, I would say half of the invitees show up, and it was wonderful. And when you made a call to the admissions office or uh to the buildings and grounds, the first question is what's the date for the holiday party? Then you got on to discuss what you needed the phone call for, and that meant a lot, and then at the end of the season, he wrote everybody a personal note. And that to me was very, very important because boat houses typically are away from campus, and you sometimes lose contact with what's going on on campus and appreciate all those people that make you successful. So that was important. Um, Steve Gladstone coached me uh in one uh year when I came back. I was in the Peace Corps, I came back and he coached me in 1973 for the national team. Um Tony coached me, Tony Johnson coached me in in 76 when we were cut from the camp, uh the Olympic camp, and we then went to trial. He took us on. Chris Korzinowski while I was at Princeton. I was his launch muffin. I would drive his launch around when he was coaching the national team women, and he'd share everything with me: how to train, how to rig, how to um motivate people, sometimes negatively and sometimes positively, but he made me aware of the a different role of the coach. Uh, Gary Kilpatrick was a lightweight coach at Princeton for a long time, very, very successful coach. Um he he he taught me a lot. Um, Bob Ernst at Washington, both as the men's coach and the women's coach. Uh, I was his assistant leading up to the 84 games. Um and and then finally, besides all of my assistants, the people at Concept 2, Dick and Pete Dryziacker, um, Barry Dreysyacker, Judy Gear. Uh I was in an engineering environment for 12 years between coaching stints. And Dick and Pete treated me like an engineer and had me begin to think a little more like um task-oriented. And I think that was really important for what happened at Trinity. I approached it a lot differently than I might have if I had just come from another school. And then I have a host of national team coaches. Um, Dan Rook, Curtis Jordan, Wes Ng, um Scotty Armstrong, uh Kevin McDermott. All these guys were either Ivy League rowers or NESCAC rowers, and um they all had an impact on my coaching. I always felt that I had to hire somebody that wasn't like me, and that I would be challenged, that they would bring stuff and go, why the hell are you doing that? This is what we did at Yale, this is what we did at Trinity, you know. Um this is what we did at Princeton before you got here. And so I um I really felt I'm indebted to those guys. So I was very lucky.
SPEAKER_03I love the fact that you uh consciously try to choose individuals who are not like you.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_03I I always feel like I've seen a lot of I've been fortunate. Um I think to be uh as a pretty young coach to have seen a lot of coaching combinations and to have seen coaches that work really well together are the ones that complement each other really well. I always feel like if you've got a coach who's super like headstrong and like you know, kind of the um the taskmaster, you need kind of a an older brother of an assistant coach. And if you've got a head coach who's a little bit more kind of calm and calculated, you need kind of a rah-rah existing coach. You know, for example, for example, or if you got somebody who like kind of feels their way around making the vote fast, you need somebody who's a who's a surgical like engineer type guy who's all about like let's make it about the numbers. Do we have all the data we need to get there? Um and they work, I think they work really well.
SPEAKER_01Totally. I I I hired two engineers. Dan Rook was an engine an engineer major at Princeton, and Scott Armstrong was an engineering major at Brown. And um they helped me in in being better organized. Yeah, they were very systematic guys, they they could look at the minutiae and and and really help me. Um Curtis Jordan was just um a guy who absolutely loved making boats go fast. And um he just I was early in my head coaching career and he just complimented me perfectly. Um and and the same thing with Wes. Don't forget, Wes rode for Andy Card.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, all right.
SPEAKER_01So Andy Andy is in a league by himself, right? Um uh Scott Armstrong rode for Steve, Steve Gladstone, Steve's in a league by himself, and they happen to be in the same league right now at at Yale in terms of same water, same boat house. Curtis rode from Norm Graf. Uh Dan Dan rode for Pete Sparhawk, who who was the the perfect technical guy. His crews always rode beautifully. You know, um Kevin McDermott um road did Wesleyan for Phil Carney, also a technician. So I benefited by all those other coaches helping their athletes become my coach, my assistant.
SPEAKER_03You know, without getting too much into theory and all that, I almost feel like there's benefit to having different coaches during the year. I almost feel like there's something to that.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Like I think I've heard of I've heard of people having, I remember during my uh, and this sticks with me because of an early experience. It was my first year rowing. First year, a long time ago. And I realize, you know, the way I look back on things and the way things really were sometimes are very different. But I know that I had uh my freshman year in high school, I had two coaches, and I'm gonna I'm gonna actually I'm gonna have a hard time remembering both their names. I'll just remember the the two names. Aaron was the guy who was kind of the head freshman coach, if you will, and he was a little bit more kind of relaxed. He'd be right here at home in Seattle, kind of almost a bit of a hippie, but a really friendly guy and very good technically, and kind of talked about the boat, feeling it out. And then we had another guy named Matt Ryan, who I think had some, you know, he he wore, he was like the he was the heavy. And so Matt was the guy who would come in and kick your butt and like you know, play do the erg workouts with you and everything, and like kind of you know give you the the the hard love. And then Aaron would kind of come in and be be trying to take all that and form that into the boat. And I really do think there was something to that. I really genuinely think like there was something that made that better. Because only during part of the season we had Matt, and if I'd had Matt all ye all year, I could see that wearing a bit. And if you'd had Aaron all year, it could wear a little bit. But the just these kind of different rhythms and the different wave of the year. I think that's one of one of the benefits of freshman rowing was that your first year you got somebody who's really different, generally, if you had a good combo. And then, you know, when you got to varsity, it was a new experience, but you carried something with you from freshman year.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Um one guy that I've heard of, and I've never met him. I'll try to have him on the podcast at some point, was Scott Roop. Oh, sure. Apparently at Brown was like the the heavy at Brown, like your freshman year was brutal. The guy basically just like you know, like crushed you freshman year in terms of workouts. You were so tough and you just used to it. By the time you got to the next guy, you're like, Yeah, we'll be fine. Right. It's okay. Exactly.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, no, it's a good observation. I tried to do that um as a head coach inviting um high school coaches to come down and question. Um, while I was at Trinity, uh, a fella, well, you know who this is. It's Finn Meislin. Um okay, former uh open weight coach at Cornell, um, a Princeton grad, Princeton coach. When after Finn had his stroke, I would pick him up. I take him to launch, I pick him up, and the guys would pick him up in his wheelchair at the dock and put him into my launch. And um we would be talking, and I said, Well, what do you see, Finn?
SPEAKER_00Well, why do you have the three man at three seed? And why don't why isn't he at seven?
SPEAKER_01Well, uh here's the reason. Oh, I don't know. I try him at seven. I try him at seven. I go, okay, we'll try him at seven. We'll see how that works out. I said, Do you have any other great ideas? And and he would laugh at me. He goes, You asked me to take a look at the crew, and I said, Okay, okay. You know, and then he would say, Are you doing enough distance work? Remember, distance work, distance is recovery work. I go, okay, I I'll look at my logs, see if I got enough distance work. Yeah, it was great. It was great. The guys adored him, they knew he was a famous varsity rowing coach. He always, you know, there by the grace of God go I. And each guy knew that at any moment something could happen to them and they could end up in Finn's situation. And um, it just added depth to the to my program, to the varsity program at um at Trinity, that we were at the top of our game, so to speak, and yet we had to remember. Um, and and Finn was one of the guys who talked to me about the third varsity. And I I think I made that comment. Um, you know, honor the least capable. And that I there wouldn't be a week that went by that um I didn't take needed because of classes or illness or job interviews or whatever. Didn't Need to have somebody from the third boat or from what I call the land warriors didn't make a boat that day. You know, the the the the bottom bottom portion, the eight or ten kids on the bottom of the of the skill set, and I would need one to fill out. And I wouldn't take somebody out of the second or third varsity. I would take somebody who was on land and move them right into the varsity because he was the guy that was sitting on the erg three or four times a week pulling 10Ks or doing eight by five hundred meters or whatever. Yeah, he hate he should row with the best people, it shouldn't be somebody from the third boat moving to the second, second moving to the first. It should be that guy who was always there. And I reminded people of that, and there was never a bitch, never a bitch from anybody. And the guys would come up to him after the workout, and I know that that the guys somebody would always carry his oar up to the boathouse. I got it. You helped us out today, I got you today. Yeah, really important.
SPEAKER_03I love that. There's some really good stuff going on there.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, really important.
SPEAKER_03Larry, 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_01I would hope that that my friends would would see me, even in a non-rowing sense, as being a motivator, helping them with what their projects are, etc., helping them through hard situations, being really supportive, um, and in general being really fair. Fair that that you know I could see their point of view, I could um um appreciate what they were doing and why they were doing it. So uh yeah, I I would say motivative, supportive, and fair.
SPEAKER_03Who is somebody that you admire in rowing and why?
SPEAKER_01Okay, well, I uh obviously I I admired my um my first coach um who got me started, who made rowing um fun but demanding, uh Ernie Arlett, and the other people are the people who I think had an oversized impact on our sport, and those are the owners of Concept 2. Uh, between the erg, their development of the oars, um going, you know, going to the far reaches of research, um, which is mostly done uh on water, in terms of developing. I mean, it's sort of hard to believe that the big blade is 30 years old and that 1991, and and then the evolution of blades, not only by Concept 2 and Dreziaker, but by Croker, by M. Parker, by Dreyer, all of those folks took little tweaks of what Concept 2 did in the in 1990 and 91 and made it their own and elevated elevated rowing. And plus the Dryakers were the very first to get into carbon fiber, and they weaved their own carbon fiber, um, and and did the resin uh business with it and figured out how to how to heat ores, etc. So their impact, as far as I'm concerned, um on the sport and and the way they ran their business, um, I thought was was tremendous. And um I felt very fortunate to learn about rowing through Ernie and then to be part of a company like Concept 2 toward the end of my career.
SPEAKER_03What is your favorite race course and or your favorite regatta and why?
SPEAKER_01I I I think my favorite regatta is um the the Lucerne race. And that besides Cloggenford, um I think that's one of the most beautiful courses in the world is Lucerne. And the reason I like it is you literally take a take a trolley or a bus from the middle of Lucerne, right by Lake Lucerne. Ten minutes later, you walk down the hill and you have this wonderland of rowing, and people on the sideline fishing or swimming or whatever, and hearing the bells of the cows in the pasture above the course. Um, I just think that is um very, very special. And the ability to stand one lane away from the cruise rowing, um to me, uh the proximity of the coaches to the racing is is unparalleled.
SPEAKER_03What is your favorite rowing drill and why?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, um, my favorite rowing drill um is is working on the top quarter of the slide. Um, I find that more can go wrong in getting the blade in the water and getting energy on the handle than almost any other place. The idea about people missing water or skying or driving their legs without the ore being in the water. Um, I think more can happen at that end, particularly as the boat is beginning to slow down the most just prior to the entry or as the blade is going into the water. I think very fit, very aggressive people who are willing to race their heart out, do enough at the front end to make that very difficult for themselves. Um so I think uh the top quarter drill, meaning that uh the athletes come to three-quarter slide. Uh the blade is on the bow side of them, and and the coxswain goes, you know, roll up and in, and they put the blade in a few times, then roll up and in and take a quarter drive, and then stay there going back around that first top quarter, seeing if you can keep picking it off, picking it off, and then the coxswain will say, Okay, full drive, ready, go. They place it in, and then they go all the way back to the release. I um that to me is my favorite. And then conceptually, I have one other P one other thing, and um I started it six years ago at the Florida Rowing Center, and I call it condition-free rowing, meaning that you need to be able, whatever you do in the boat, you need and if you think it's effective, you need to be able to do it in any condition. So if you're somebody that releases really close to the surface of the water, imagine you going to Sarasota, being able to race the Olympic trial on a windy day and the chop two, three, four inches high, and you're now feathering on top and driving through the water.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Um, to me, that conceptually is something that needs to be emphasized more and more. And I think a lot of coaches like to see a clean release, but they don't differentiate a clean release on a sloppy day versus a clean release on a clean day, and kids have a difficult time. So conceptually, that's one is the drill, and the other one is a concept.
SPEAKER_03What's the most challenging workout you've ever done?
SPEAKER_01Uh I I would I would have to say my my form of the Gluckers on an ergometer. Um eight times 40 20, uh three times through. Got it. Um that to me um is a lactate creator. It's a courage builder, it's showing you can stay focused, um, understand that you need to be lively, just like you said, I gotta be lively and quick, and and and when I get to a lower rate, I'm gonna find that I have a lot of time to get things done. That to me is is the most challenging workout. Um, and as I get older, uh I stop doing those because I don't like the lactate anymore.
SPEAKER_03What profession other than your own being coaching, would you like to attempt?
SPEAKER_01Well, okay, I as as a coach, I would have liked to um maybe try my hand at at basketball. Um, but uh my my beginnings were involved with physical education and special education. And I took a degree at Wisconsin where my goal was was to be able to combine the two. Yeah um in a sense, adapt physical education for kids that had mo particularly motor learning issues. And I firmly believe that fitness is a has an impact on uh the ability for kids to deal with some of their motor learning issues, that if you fatigue quickly, you don't have enough practice energy, enough practice time to be able to learn that skill. A skill that is so simple for everyday people, you as a person that has an neuromuscular issue, you just run out of steam. You just don't have the energy, and I think that impedes motor learning. So I think if I could, I I mean, I nearly did it. I almost had a doctorate, all but my dissertation, when I decided to go back into coaching. And I got to Princeton and I said to myself, is there a better place to coach rowing year-round than where the national team trains on the Route 95, a corridor? Um this is it. And so I wrote to people at Wisconsin and said, I'm not coming back, I'm gonna be a rowing coach.
SPEAKER_03Well, final uh final question. If you could give you know one piece of advice to the following three people, what would you say to a rower? What would you say to a coxswain? And what would you say to a coach?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, um, thank you for giving me those questions in advance. So I had I had an I had an opportunity to think about this a lot. The first one was um for the rower, uh, would be um do the most, do the most to prepare when no one is watching. If you wait until the erg test, if you wait until you're out in a seat race, it's way too late.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01But if you go ahead and on a Sunday, you get into the erg room and and and you spend some time there, put the TV on or put your iPods and in your ear, your ear pods, and and listen to music, makes no difference. But you're by yourself and you're doing the work yourself. No one's asked you to do it. That builds the type of confidence that when you want to demonstrate how good you are uh before your teammates or the coaches or or selection process. I I I cheated and um uh listened to Megan Cook's uh podcast, so I knew what to expect. Okay. Um, I mean, think about how she, you know, never give up attitude was. Um, she did a lot of work on her own, trail running, climbing, mountain, you know, hiking, you all that business. No one was around. And I firmly believe, I firmly believe that's important. And then for the rower, go back to this condition free. Don't do what's easier in technique, do what gives you the most, do what's right. Yeah, for the coxswain. Um, my biggest one is avoid verbal diarrhea. The idea to constantly be chatting, you don't have to do that. Reward those people that maybe the coach said, so and so, you're doing this with your oar, try this. The moment the the coxswain sees any change, even if it's not the full change, that athlete should be rewarded. I call it successive approximations. If the if the athlete's getting close, make sure you tell them so they're motivated to keep trying. And for the coach, um, based on all the coaches that I've worked with and myself and my own experiences, it would be be transparent, be truthful, be steady and accountable, model the behavior you want your athletes to have. Know how to laugh at yourself, and I already mentioned this, honor the least capable. Because the guys in the first boat, you don't have to tell them anything. And the guys in the second boat, they they're striving for the first. But the people who are below those first two boats, they sometimes need a little more attention. And I always, whether I was at Princeton or Dartmouth or Trinity, I always coached three boats. I I I very seldom had an assistant specifically who would handle kids less than um the first two boats. They might have handled the four because they couldn't keep up in practice. But I always would coach my set my third boat. I think the idea of being transparent, steady, and truthful to me is the most important thing for a coach.
SPEAKER_03Love it. Well, uh, Larry, we did we did great. This was really awesome. I can't wait to get this thing edited. It's there's so much good knowledge in here. This was exactly what it needed to be. Um, is there anything that you didn't get to say that you'd like to chat about before we close things up?
SPEAKER_01I think the most important thing for me is that in in every program that I was affiliated with, even back when I coached, um was going to graduate school and coaching at Columbia, I had athletes and occasionally a crew that was always memorable. And because I didn't mention um them today, uh and because the Trinity um 2005 varsity was particularly rememorable, um, I just want to let people know that I appreciated all of my athletes, um, regardless of um what school they rode for, and that they all uh made uh contributions to those institutions and to that rowing program.