AMERICAN ROWING COMES OF AGE American Universities As much as the sport of rowing had appealed to the English upper class and the German military class, it also appealed to American university sensibility. Ed Leader, Coach of the University of Washington beginning in 1916:1144 “For the college undergraduate, it is a long, toilsome journey to a seat in a Varsity shell, but in that long journey the boy learns several things. He learns how feeble is individual effort and how strong is united effort. He learns the value of team work in the sport which requires it in far greater degree than any other sport the American takes part in. He finds he must often give up individual rights and desires for the benefit of all concerned. He must have the true spirit of cooperation if he is ever to become a real part of any first rate crew, and to my mind there is no denying the fact that some of this spirit on a widespread scale, giving up of petty individual rights and desires for the benefit of all concerned, would go some distance toward solving a great many of the world’s problems.”1145 The 1852 race between Harvard and Yale was the first American intercollegiate competition in any sport. “In 1858, [Harvard] rowed the first racing shell built in America. Her captain, Benjamin Crowinshield, purchased six red silk handkerchiefs as headbands, thereby beginning the tradition of college colors1146 and the identification of Harvard with crimson.”1147 1144 See Chapter 52. 1145 Ed Leader, qtd. by Kelley, pp. vii-viii 1146 at least in the United States. Cambridge and Oxford University boats were distinguished by color beginning in 1836, and Cambridge’s Light Blue had been adopted from Eton Blue, which first appeared years earlier. See Chapter 4. 1147 Zang, p. 2 Naturally, American collegiate rowing looked to the source, to England, for inspiration. They devoured everything published in Britain on the subject. However, American colleges would soon seek a path separate from their mother country. While British institutions eschewed professional coaches, Hanlan and many of the scullers who had raced with Hanlan around the world would soon become collegiate rowing coaches in America. British rowing journalist and historian Chris Dodd: “Although some, like Princeton, had amateur coaches, colleges primarily involved in eight-oared rowing with professional coaches dominated the sport in the United States from the 1870s, and this put a different emphasis on the coaching methods and the motivation for success. “The [English] hand-me-down method of transmitting wisdom from crew to novice was not for Americans. They were instructed by paid trainers who were recruited first from among professional oarsmen. “Many professionals took advantage of the natural laboratory that sculling provides to test a change in style. Until 1877, when launches became fast enough to keep up with crews, a coach without a towpath to follow on horseback or cycle either had to row in his crew or pursue in a single.”1148 Yale versus Harvard Initially, the evolution of American collegiate rowing technique closely paralleled that of Oxford and Cambridge. Yale and Harvard took up rowing in the early 1840s, and by the mid-1850s, as T.S. Egan had at Cambridge, Harvard discovered that a longer stroke based on body swing forward on their fixed seats was superior to 1148 Dodd, op.cit., p. 189 303
