THE SPORT OF ROWING Graves is now head coach at the University of Texas. Among a basket-full of awards, she has twice been inducted into the National Rowing Foundation Hall of Fame. So much for not deserving a place in the 1984 Eight. United States Scullers After a decade of work by coaches around the country, but mostly by Tom McKibbon and John Van Blom at Long Beach Rowing Association, the 1984 U.S. women’s sculling squad was also deep in experienced international talent, but they tended to row a different technique from their sweep sisters: a variant of Classical Technique as opposed to Modern Orthodoxy. The 1984 Single Judy Geer had been the first captain of Dartmouth College’s Women’s Crew. She made her first National Team appearance as a sweep rower in 1976 and had been a National Team sculler since 1977. By the 1980s, along with Joan Lind, she was the last of the 1970s generation of U.S. international woman scullers to still compete. In 1981, Judy came in fifth at the Munich World Championships in the doubles with her younger sister, Carlie Geer. Carlie then rowed as a member of the 1982 fourth-place and the 1983 fifth-place National Camp Quads, the latter stroked by Judy. When Carlie won the 1984 Olympic Singles Trials, it was a bit of an upset. Among her competition were Joan Lind, 1976 Olympic Singles Silver Medalist, and Anne Marden, granddaughter of 1914 Harvard Henley stroke Charles Lund, National Team member since 1978 and winner of the 1981 U.S. Singles Championship. Marden was destined to win World Singles Bronze in 1985, World Doubles Bronze in 1987 and the 1988 Olympic Singles Silver Medal. But the favorite in ‘84 had been 1983 World Singles Bronze Medalist Ginny Gilder until she suffered an injury only a month before the Trials. After losing to Carlie, Lind, Marden and Gilder plus converted National sweep rower Lisa Rohde, stroke of the 1977 seventh- place U.S. Eight, ended up in an extremely strong 1984 U.S. Olympic Coxed-Quad put together by Van Blom. Steering was Kelly Rickon, now Mitchell, in high school the former ZLAC Rowing Club teammate of Lynn Silliman, coxswain of the Red Rose Crew.7759 Marden and Rohde had already been training with Joan for a year in Long Beach. “Lisa felt they had already built a lot of respect for each other by training and racing in their singles every day. “‘We looked at putting the quad together as a challenge.’”7760 Carlie’s Technique In her single, Carlie Geer’s position at the entry showed a mix of less-than-normal leg compression and greater-than-normal body angle forward with her head low, a trait she shared with other American scullers of the era, including Gregg Stone7761 from the 1970s and Anne Marden in the ‘84 Quad. Quad coxswain Kelly Rickon Mitchell: “One thing that Carlie did really well that we were trying to do in our own boat was to break her arms right at the catch. You’d catch with arms straight, and you were driving with your legs, but you were trying to get your arms in right from the beginning, 7759 See Chapter 128. 7760 Reith, op. cit., p. 29 7761 See Chapter 139. 2162
