THE SPORT OF ROWING 67. Jim Rathschmidt Gordon Sikes – Rathschmidt Style – The 1956 Crew After World War II, Joe Burk served as the Yale Freshman Coach. Burk: “The head coach was Skippy Walz, and he coached crew the way he had been coached at football at NYU, with much swearing and yelling and shouting and really gave them a rough time, so after I had been there four years, the athletic director told me they were pretty well fed up with Skippy and asked whether I would become head coach. “I said to him, ‘I wouldn’t feel right to be moving up into the varsity job after having been his Freshman Coach.’ “Bob asked me who I’d recommend, and I told him Jim Rathschmidt. He was the Princeton Freshman Coach, and I knew from competing against him how beautifully his crews rowed and what a great job he did.”2494 E. Arthur Gilcreast, PhD became Rathschmidt’s Freshman Coach and confidant at Yale. “I can only add that Jim himself told me that Yale had asked Ed Leader for a recommendation, and that Ed had also nominated Jim. “I can believe that because Ed was a stickler for bladework. That was Jim’s great strength.”2495 The 1956 Yale Varsity 3-seat John Cooke reminisced to me: “As far as technique is concerned, I’m not sure where Jim’s inspiration came from. Jim learned to row from his uncle, ‘Dutch’ Schultz, who 2494 Burk, personal conversation, 2005 2495 Gilcreast, personal conversation, 2005 was a famous sculler and showman [and later rigger at Princeton University2496]. “Dutch would be rowing confidently to victory in a sculling event, and then just before the finish, he would do a barrel roll, eliciting a cry of concern from the crowd, before popping up again and rowing across the finish. “He would brace one oar with his feet, stand up and paddle the shell back to the dock with the other oar, using a canoe stroke.”2497 As a boy, Rathschmidt would hang around the shop at the Princeton boathouse. He attended the Hun School, a prep school nearby, where he lettered in football, boxing, hockey and crew2498 and later became its rowing coach. In 1934, he joined the Princeton staff as sculling instructor. His Princeton Lightweights won the Sprints in 1942. After graduating from Cornell in 1948, Charles von Wrangell became coach of the Princeton Lightweights, and he became good friends there with the by then Freshman Heavyweight Coach Rathschmidt and with Head Coach Dutch Schoch,2499 2496 Rowing News, December 1956, p. 10 2497 Cooke, personal correspondence, 2005 2498 Eli’s Rathschmidt Earns Top Crew Coaching Fame, New Haven Evening Register, July 2, 1956 24995-seat on the 1934 IRA Champion Washing- ton freshman crew that contributed three mem- bers to the 1936 Olympic Champions. See Chapter 59. 692
