THE SUNSET OF CONIBEAR 94. Joe Burk Wins the IRA The Light Boat – The Point System – Ted Nash – St. A’s Joe Burk became the last major college coach in American rowing to pass on the Conibear heritage to his crews. His tenure at Penn is remembered as a period of rowing innovation. Gardner Cadwalader ‘70: “As a result of everything that Joe thought about and everything that he experimented with, there has since been a tenacious incremental advancement of the sport. Who else has that as a legacy?”4282 “In his initial season at Penn [1950-51], Joe introduced his first twist in coaching. The varsity did not row in the indoor tanks. He felt that still water caused a crew to lose its timing, and to the outdoors they went in the winter.”4283 That policy continued for as long as Joe coached at Penn. Bill Purdy ‘68: “In my four years at Penn, we only missed one day of rowing on the river, and that was because the buses could not get through the snow. We always started our winter rows with multiple sweat shirts, hats, gloves, etc. which were quickly shed as we warmed up. I always felt bad for the coxswains who must have frozen on many days.”4284 Franklin Field on the Penn campus should be a designated National Historic Rowing Landmark, the site where stadium stairs were first run. “In the 1950s, Joe introduced weight training to the program”4285 long before it was common at other schools. Frank Betts ‘57: “Joe introduced weight training for the 1956 or 1957 racing season, I cannot remember for sure which, but I do recall after practice on the river, sweating through the winter face down on a high bench doing as many arms-only pull-up reps4286 as possible with increasingly heavy weights, which were followed by deadlifts and then crunches with our feet up on a bench and fifty pound weights on our chests, along with using our hands and wrists to roll up a weight attached by a cord around a broom handle. “This regime was alternated with, or sometimes followed by, running from the boathouse to the finish line and back [three miles round trip]. “After the ice cleared that spring, Joe filled the Varsity boat with the eight oarsmen who had lifted the highest combined total. It was the worst boat I ever rowed in since my first week on the water as a freshman never-ever rower. “It lasted two days, as I recall, never again to be mentioned.”4287 4282 Cadwalader, qtd. by Fabricus, p. 19 4283 Fabricus, p. 2 4284 Purdy, personal correspondence, 2007 4285 Fabricus, p. 3 4286 Today the exercise Joe invented is called the bench pull. The oarsman lays down on his stomach using “a bench that looks like a household ironing board, only much heavier and more substantial,” (Burk, personal conversation, 2005) and draws a bar with weights up with his arms to the underside of the bench. 4287 Betts, personal correspondence, 2007 1179
