THE SPORT OF ROWING “He told me he could get people to do it for a lot less than that. I said, ‘You can get people who will pay you to be in charge of thirty-five young men. You could make money on the deal! “‘As for me, I don’t know that I could guarantee you a national champion the first year, but they’d be close to being in the final because we have so much potential here in Long Beach with the academic situation, the proximity of the boathouse to the campus and all the students living down by the beach. “He said, ‘No. I’ll pay you three years down the road.’ “I said, ‘No, thanks. Here’s the deal. I’m going to campus and find two coeds and teach them to row, and I’m going to take them to win the 1971 National Championship.’ “And that’s what I did. I met with Melinda Collis and Karen McCloskey. They had been kind of in and out of the boathouse and had actually rowed a double that year, but with no specific direction. Every day we’d go out, and I’d be in the double with them, or we’d be in wherries, or we’d all be in singles. “We did that day after day, and then finally Melinda meets this guy, Jake Fiechter5830 from Harvard, 1967 team captain, who was in the military out here. Jake didn’t want Melinda to be in boats, and so she quit. Eventually they got married. “So now I had a double with one sculler and just three months before the Nationals and team trials in Old Lyme, Connecticut, so I see this girl Joan Lind walking around the boathouse. She was wearing her Wilson High School outfit with these big old soccer socks, stripes, soccer shirt, and I think, ‘Boy, she could be an athlete.’ “Joan was a freshman at Long Beach State and had begun rowing the previous 5830 See Chapter 102. November. She’d even gone out a few times with Melinda and Carol Simpson. “I decided to see if she was interested. I watched her start around the island, and so I went the other way, met her, turned around and came rowing back with her, talking to her a little bit and asking her if she might want to train for the 1971 National Championships. She was pretty excited about it, I thought, so we started. “Three months later Karen and Joan were the best double in the country even though they actually finished in second place. We took a boat all the way back to Old Lyme, Connecticut but weren’t allowed to use it because we had to draw for boats. We drew this big old heavy pair/double combination, and you couldn’t change the spread on it. I even changed the seating because of the load. They raced well but didn’t win. They would clearly have won in their own boat. “That was the beginning. It just skyrocketed from there. My wife Jan was pregnant, and I was so nervous being a coach. It was so much harder than being an athlete. When you’re an athlete and you’re done rowing, you just go to bed, but when you’re a coach, you never, ever rest. You’re always thinking, ‘What is the next thing? What is the next thing?’”5831 1972 In 1972, Joan and Karen won the Women’s Nationals in the doubles. They then combined with U.S. Singles Champion and original LBRA member Carol Simpson, Head of the Charles Champion Gail Pierson5832 and coxswain Jody McPhillips from Cambridge Boat Club in a National Team Quad put together by Sy Cromwell.5833 They placed eighth at the 5831 McKibbon, personal conversation, 2007 5832 See Chapter 128. 5833 See Chapter 87. 1628
