THE SUNSET OF CONIBEAR Perry: “The Varsity stroke was Joe Baldwin, but I found it hard to follow him because he was so strong and fast through the water. We came in third in the Adams Cup behind Penn and Harvard. “Then one day Baldwin couldn’t row for some little minor injury, and I got back in the stroke seat. “That very same boat with me at stroke was clearly faster! We had been training with the Plebes that spring, and they were fast. Every day we didn’t know if they would beat us or not. I got in the stroke seat, and they never came close to beating us again. “I remember all this as if it were yesterday . . . ”4050 Bob Wilson, 1960 7-seat: “I’m not sure if this is accurate, but I recall that Lou used to set up wooden ‘ladders’ on the wall in the boathouse with a slot for each seat, and he would move names around from day to day. Since we were rather cynical in our view of Lou’s approach, I recall frequent second- guessing and, if memory serves me, one day before Lou arrived, someone on the team shuffled the names and made the seat changes that ended up with Lyman at stroke. When Lou got there, he said nothing and that’s how we went out for practice that day. “The boat rowed well, and the rest is history.”4051 Lindsey: “I had Lyman in mind for the stroke seat all along. I had done the very same thing at Stanford. The guy I wanted at stroke, I had him rowing at 2 for most of the season, and then moved him late into the stroke seat because I figured that once you’re in the stroke seat, you’ve got extra pressure. Let him sit back there at 2 and relax and work on his rowing.”4052 4049 Bos, personal correspondence, 2006 4050 Perry, op. cit. 4051 Wilson, personal correspondence, 2006 4052 Lindsey, op. cit. Perry: “I can’t take any credit for the difference I made. Rusty used to say that I had a unique ability to set a rhythm that the bigger guys could follow. It was a sixth sense, and I get goose bumps just talking about it. “It’s a rhythm thing. A good stroke, it’s indefinable. You can’t really say beforehand that one guy’s a good stroke and another isn’t.”4053 The 1960 IRA After their Adams Cup loss, the 1960 Navy Varsity came in third at the Eastern Sprints, a little over a length behind a winning Cornell crew they had already beaten. The race was rowed into a headwind which favored the traditional low- stroking Big Red over the higher-stroking Middies. They also lost by a foot to Cal at the line at Wisconsin, so when they moved on to Onondaga, they had lost more races than they had won. Nobody expected a great deal from them, and they felt no extra pressure. The three-mile IRA would be good endurance training for them. The Washington Huskies under Al Ulbrickson’s successor, Phil Leanderson, had beaten California in their dual race and came to Syracuse as the only undefeated crew left in the country. With the advantage of hindsight, we can detect a pattern in that year’s collegiate season. Instead of being crippled by the retirement of their longtime coaches, Cal, Navy and Washington were all doing very well under their new, younger coaches. They finished in that order in Syracuse. It is not uncommon for crews to excel the year after a coaching change. This is an example of hybrid vigor, combining the benefits of the foundation laid by the 4053 Perry, op. cit. 1121
