THE LONG ECLIPSE OF AMERICAN ROWING 101. The Evolution of Harry Parker The Mid-1960s 1963 Season Rowing News: “Parker was serving as Freshman Men’s Coach at Harvard University in January, 1963 when Head Coach Harvey Love died unexpectedly of a heart attack. The 27-year-old Parker, then considered the young apprentice, assumed control of the program, thus beginning a new era in American collegiate rowing.”4598 Harvard Magazine: “That spring under Parker, the crew recorded a respectable 3-1 record, but at the Eastern Sprints, the spring regatta that brings together the major college crews in the East, Harvard had finished next to last in its heat, failing even to make the final. “[Looking forward to the end-of-the- season Harvard-Yale Race] Harvard coxswain Ted Washburn recalls, ‘Rowing the way we had at the Sprints, I never imagined we’d beat Yale.’ “After their disastrous elimination at the Sprints, Parker decided to take the Varsity back to fundamentals. He made them row at rates as low as 22 or 24 strokes per minute (racing cadences are generally in the 30s or 40s), and concentrate on solid technique – long strokes through the water, optimal blade coverage. “Parker starved his crew of race-tempo work. ‘We begged him,’ Washburn says. ‘When are we ever going to row at racing 4598 Ed Winchester, Deconstructing Harry, Row- ing News, December, 2004, p. 50 cadence?’ The Harvard Eight didn’t realize that they were getting faster. They knew only that the boat felt good. “At the start of the Harvard-Yale Race on the Thames River in New London, Connecticut, Yale shot emphatically away from Harvard. ‘There they go,’ thought Washburn, ‘but we’re going to row our race.’ Yale developed their lead for the first mile, Washburn recalls, until open water separated the crews, but then they stopped moving away. Harvard began grinding down the gap. “A little before the two-mile mark, Harvard passed Yale and continued rowing away from them, finishing over eight boat lengths in front after four miles. It was not only an upset, but a rout. “Harvard continued rowing away from Yale for another eighteen years. The Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, and Carter administrations would pass, and Ronald Reagan would become president, before Yale won again at New London, in 1981. “From that moment in 1963, Harvard would not lose a single intercollegiate race until 1969. By then, Harry Parker was a demiurge in the world of rowing.”4599 Steve Gladstone,4600 destined to be the winningest coach in IRA history after Charles Courtney, coached the Harvard Lightweights in the late 1960s. “Looking at 4599 Craig Lambert, Upstream Warrior, Harvard Magazine, May/June 1996 4600 See Chapter 105. 1275
