AMERICAN ROWING COMES OF AGE loaned to them for the year by Charles Courtney after the Syracuse boathouse had been destroyed by a tornado. During the early 20th Century, while Harvard and Yale focused on racing each other in New London, Cornell, rowing their concurrent Schubschlag Classical Technique, ended up winning eleven of the next seventeen Poughkeepsie Champion- ships. Courtney’s career record of fourteen total IRA wins1473 may never be equaled. In the century since, only Steve Gladstone, coach at Cal and Brown and Cal again, has won as many as eleven IRA titles.1474 Under the dateline July 17, 1920, The New York Times reported: “Charles E. Courtney, the most noted of American rowing coaches, and affectionately known among Cornell men as the ‘Old Man,’ died at noon today of a stroke of apoplexy.”1475 He had been out rowing on his beloved Cayuga Lake when he was stricken. “The Cornell world mourns the loss of one of the greatest inspirational teachers it has ever had the good fortune to possess. We recall none whose record is more brilliant in any line. “The Old Man was truly an inspirational teacher. Had his field been one of the orthodox educational subjects and his ability as great in that other field, educators of all types would have cheerfully admitted the comparison. Courtney’s record is not wholly one of victories over competitors. It is also one of victories over the handicaps of his particular sport. 1473 He also won nine Rowing Association of American Colleges regattas in the twelve years prior to the founding of the IRA. 1474 Starting in 2011, Gladstone will attempt to add to his count as coach of Yale University. 1475 C.E. Courtney Dies From Shock in Boat, The New York Times, July 18, 1920 1476 Qtd. by Young, pp. 102-3 “There are a few things about rowing that are entrancing; the rhythm of a shell, the catch, the pull and slow recovery, eight bodies swinging in perfect harmony, eight pairs of legs alternately driving and holding back with the regularity of a clock, and eight backs swaying with a precision of which there is no equal outside of a varsity eight. These rhythms are attractive, however, only to the finished oarsmen, the eight men who sit in the boat each year. “For the novice and the dub there are the sore hands, the checking of the boat, the yapping of the coxswain, the boils, the grinding, grueling ten or fourteen-mile pulls, the late suppers and the training rules. No grandstands cheer the crews. None of the glory that makes football stand out as more attractive than academic study entices the men to the rowing machines. When the crews come home from Poughkeepsie, even the student body has gone. “With opportunity of this drab sort, Mr. Courtney took his men, with the sheer force of his personality enwrapped them with the spell of his dominating character, and received from them the best they had in grit, strength, skill and obedience. Could this performance be duplicated in the classroom, the unattractive and monotonous made a living thing, and the tedious converted by inspiration into the most coveted of treasures, then the problems of education would vanish, as they have vanished whenever they have been handled by a genius of the Old Man’s caliber. Courtney has made himself, his art and his record a treasured and integral part of Cornell University.”1476 391
