THE SPORT OF ROWING none exactly providing career role models for ambitious college graduates. Mendenhall: “Courtney, for instance, despite all his victories really left no comparable school of followers [except Conibear himself!].”1715 By contrast, the example of Hiram Conibear, one of the world’s first professional physical educators, led many University of Washington rowers to seriously consider coaching as an occupation worthy of a college graduate. Remarkably, during the first five decades of the 20th Century, three generations of rowers at the University of Washington became coaches at virtually every major rowing program in the entire United States, and they brought three generations of the “Conibear Stroke” with them. This is a classic example of migration, one of the four processes of change in population genetics.1716 Mendenhall: greatest achievement was the perfection of a system which assured the perpetuation of his technique and influence.”1717 In 1946, in an article titled “A Sweep for Conibear,” Time Magazine reported on a race that the Conibear Stroke couldn’t lose: “Last week, for the first time, Eastern crews went west to race on Seattle’s Lake Washington. The largest crowd ever to see a sporting event in the Pacific Northwest – some 150,000 – hardly expected its Huskies to win, but Cornell, Harvard, M.I.T., Rutgers and California were all coached by Washington alumni and used the Conibear Stroke.”1718 1715 Mendenhall, op.cit., p. 20 1716 See the Preface. 1717 Mendenhall, op.cit., p. 20 1718 A Sweep for Conibear, Time Magazine, July 1, 1946 (That 1946 race was ultimately won by Cornell, coached by Washington grad Stork Sanford, and with future rowing historian Charles von Wrangell in the 7-seat.1719) Mendenhall: “[All these Washington- grad coaches] were products of a system for teaching a successful rowing technique but also for organizing and supporting this particular sport, so demanding psychically as well as physically for all who take it seriously, so costly to maintain with no chance for income of its own, so rewarding to those who participate, yet so mystifying and even forbidding to the rest of the campus.”1720 Washington crews were the first West Coast team to come east to Poughkeepsie, and the press played up the cultural continent between rowing on the two coasts. Glendon historian Susan Saint Sing has “Perhaps Conibear’s sagely pointed out that The New York Times used different language for the Husky crews, for instance: Courage boiled high, and gray, cold waters were churned into white flecked foam by the fury of their efforts. Saint Sing: “The word choice to describe Washington was more colorful and dramatic, again conjuring up images of the courageous, rugged frontier West in contrast to the more sophisticated, well-bred East.”1721 And the Huskies played on their mystique for all it was worth. When Coach Rusty Callow brought his first Washington crew to Poughkeepsie in 1923, the crew “handed out totem poles to the fans, who were heard asking, ‘Where on earth is Seattle?’”1722 1719 See Chapter 70. 1720 Mendenhall, op.cit., p. 20 1721 Saint Sing, Breakthrough Kinesis, p. 116 1722 Newell, p. 73 456
