THE SPORT OF ROWING Chicago, then a power in college athletics. He worked under Amos Alonzo Stagg, a pioneer of American football.1558 As head trainer, he accompanied the Chicago track team to Paris to compete in an international meet held in conjunction with the Exposition Universelle de 1900. In 1901, he was hired by the University of Illinois as track coach and football trainer and even filled in as head football coach for the final game of the 1903 season. Late in 1903, he accepted the position of head of the Department of Physical Training and Athletics at the University of Montana and produced league champion track and football teams during his second year. While working in Missoula, as a sign of the seriousness of his commitment to his career, Conibear spent the summer of 1904 pursuing a course of study at the Chautauqua School of Physical Education.1559 The following summer of 1905, he continued his studies at Chautauqua, and “here he had his first contact with the ancient sport of rowing. Under Dr. Albert H. Sharpe,1560 he spent four weeks training for a four-oared barge race with the Shadacoin Club of Jamestown [New York].”1561 Dr. Sharpe was a Yale graduate, Class of ‘02, who had rowed his freshman year and been coached by recent graduates under 1558 Mendenhall, Coaches, Ch IV, p. 2 1559 Then and now, Chautauqua is a destination resort in Western New York State world renowned for its educational programs, coincidentally on the shores of the lake which was site of the Hanlan/Courtney match race where Courtney woke up to find his boat sawed in half. See Chapter 11. 1560 Lundin, p. 30. By 1923, Dr. Sharpe became Director of the Ithaca School of Physical Education. He later became the Athletic Director at Cornell University. 1561 Beck, Ch. V, p. 5 the supervision of head coach John Kennedy. At that time, Yale was following Bob Cook’s quasi-English Orthodox Tech- nique.1562 According to Conibear, at Chautauqua Sharpe “‘gave me my first lesson in the art of pulling a shell’ and inspired ‘me with an enthusiasm for rowing and some of the knowledge gained from his own experience at New Haven, which have stood me in good stead ever since.’”1563 After serving as athletic director at Montana for two years, Conibear returned to the University of Chicago in the fall of 1905 as head trainer for football and track, and during the summer of 1906 he served as trainer for the Chicago White Sox professional baseball team as they won the World Series. While at Chicago that year, he became friends with a former University of Washington football quarterback named Bill Speidel, who was there studying medicine. Through Speidel’s contacts with the UW Athletic Manager, Lorin Grinstead, Conibear was offered the position of UW Assistant Director of Physical Training, and coach of track and trainer of football. After ten years of pursuing his professional goals, Conibear next moved to Seattle. He would spend the rest of his life there. How Conibear actually became the Washington rowing coach has been lost in time. Legend has it that he was chatting with Grinstead on the sidelines of a varsity football game during the fall of 1906 when the fact that the university had no crew coach came up. Failing to mention his Chautauqua training, Hiram Conibear in his best aw- shucks Midwestern drawl, said something 1562 Conibear, p. 315. See Chapters 34 and 35. 1563 Qtd. by Mendenhall, op.cit., p. 8 420
