Reflections: Rowing Crew of '59

 

Time for the mile: 4:52. Second fastest time in the history of the event.

Mike never mentioned his high fever on the day of the championship race, which I, and I think, most of the crew didn’t know until Rev Stephenson spoke of it later.

Mike was one of 2 members of the crew who had never rowed until 6 weeks before going to the Canadian Henley. So indeed a remarkable achievement! Along with the Cox who had never even seen a rowing shell before.

It has been one of the summer highlights for the school to read in the press of the standards achieved by the eight which was sent to the Royal Canadian Henley. The boys, to quote one account "were an unheralded crew of giant British Columbian school-boy oarsmen who caused one of the major upsets in the seventy-seven-year history of the Royal Canadian Henley." By winning the high-school race, the crew from the school captured the Calder Cleland Memorial Trophy, a symbol of supremacy amongst school-boy crews in North America. If this crew had done just this they would have done well, but, rowing in the Senior eights, one of the toughest competitions in this country, they came a very close second to an experienced and strong crew from Detroit.

The boys competed in three races — the High school eights, the Junior eights and the Senior eights. They won a first and two seconds. This achievement was almost unbelievable to experienced oarsmen in the east and caused not a little surprise and some consternation among clubs there. That this crew could row so well and thoroughly enjoy themselves winning or losing reflects great credit upon the school and also upon the two men who coached them, Laurie West, and the Manager, Rev R.L Stephenson.

There has been a great deal of publicity attending the boys' exploits, but, as yet, it has not adversely affected any of them. They carried the school colours far into a new field, and they did this well and they did it quietly and confidently. When they won they were self-possessed and poised, and when they lost they were the same. They represented the very best in the school and deserve a great deal of credit for their conduct, both on the water and off. The boys sacrificed a great deal to train and row together — their reward was well earned.

Of course, the crew weren’t the only ones who were heroes in this adventure. None of it would have happened without our Manager and Coach, who really were the ones who knew what was required if we were to accomplish our aim of winning, and they had the ability to guide us to our goal. At first impression, the very idea that we would be able to compete, much less win, seemed rather absurd when looked at realistically. We were just high school kids with no training in this most demanding of sports.

Rowing has been called the number one team sport renowned for skill and toughness, dealing with extreme pain and needing infinite amounts of courage, both mental and physical. “Rowing isn’t easy,” Stan Pocock, who with his father George, built the world’s finest racing shells, said about the sport, “It’s so much a matter of heart.”  To overcome the pain, successful rowers need that special spirit to give them the courage to go to impossible levels of endurance and never quit. Our motto: “acta non verba”, actions not words.” George Pocock, a champion rower and famous rowing shell builder, also said, “When you feel you can no longer row with your legs, start rowing with your heart”.

 

Our Coach, Laurie West, was ably assisted by our Manager, Rev. R.L.(Dick) Stephenson, who had also been a rower, and who was part of the coaching team in the training boat beside us every day when we rowed. They never gave us pep talks in the usual sense or denigrated us when we didn’t perform. They simply told us to go out and do it, pointing out our mistakes to make our technique better, all aimed to help us become a well-oiled unit to move through the water as one. There was no asking “if” we could do it, it was just, we will do it, and this is how you do it. Simple. Our inspiration came from the story of our coach, Laurie West, who had rowed for Canada as the stroke of one of the famous UBC rowing crews who had won gold and silver medals at the Melbourne Olympic games in 1956. His coach was the legendary Frank Read, known as a hard-nosed disciplinarian using extreme coaching methods. While his methods were very effective, with the time from 1950 to ’60 being referred to as the Golden Age of Canadian Rowing, it sometimes was achieved to the personal detriment of some of his charges, who were blamed if they failed to live up to his standards. Tho he had won gold at the Empire Games in ’54, Laurie, who was the stroke of the men’s eight in Melbourne, lost by 2 secs at the ’56 Olympics, and had to settle for a silver medal. Laurie was devastated and apparently chastised by his coach, but the Rev supported him and saw that he had the ability to teach a novice high school crew how to row. The one thing going for us was that the crew was composed of exceptional athletes, physically strong and tall, having played rugby for the school in the winter, and eager to put their all into whatever was required of them. Laurie and the Rev both saw the potential in these young men to be able to win a major championship. But in just six weeks- surely impossible? Tho emotionally scarred from his experience at UBC, in his quiet, yet determined way, Laurie simply showed us how to row and then told us to go out and do it with compassion and courage. And we did it because we knew that he had done it under such difficult circumstances. And if he could do it, then we could as well. No questions asked. When the boys came back from a gruelling long row, with hands, feet and bums blistered and bloody, and the crew ready to quit, Laurie would say something like, “it all gets easier from here on. Only 3 more weeks. You can do it. You are strong. Never give up.” Tho, as cox, I asked the Manager “what do I do?” He said, “just sit in the back of the boat and steer”. I said to myself, that sounds easy. If I only knew, eh! But that is what I did. Only once, in Coal Harbour in downtown Vancouver, I ran the boat over a big submerged log and was extremely lucky that the very expensive Pocock world-class shell wasn’t completely destroyed, only a bent rudder, which had to be replaced. A piece of cake! Laurie told me later that the same thing had happened when he had trained for the Pan AM Games in ’54, but the poor cox wasn’t as lucky, as that Pocock shell had a big crack which the Pococks had to rush up to Vancouver to repair. When we left the school after the many hours of training rowing back and forth on the lake at Shawnigan to learn fluency, rhythm and stamina, we went to Vancouver to train in Coal Harbour with the University of BC crews and lived with them for 3 weeks at a UBC frat house. The boys were able to gain great insights about rowing from the older UBC crew who had raced in international events, so had been there, done that.

 I, also, learned many valuable lessons from the UBC coxes who were much older and very experienced. How not to be just a lump of coal weighing down the back of the boat, but an asset to help the other eight members accomplish their goal. To know when to give the “big tens” and when to encourage if the team was flagging. The cox needs to sense his crew and know-how and when to urge his troops on. Usually, the boat is just a well-oiled machine, smooth and efficient, but on a few special moments, the boat can, and must if it is to win, turn into a roaring animal, a cheetah racing over the savannah after it’s prey or a racehorse thundering down the home stretch at Churchill Downs. At just the right time, the cox yells “Big Ten” and the boat takes off, almost flying as it slices and surfs thru the white foam racing towards the finish line, as we did in the High School Championship, to win with the 2nd fastest time in the event’s history.

I can’t speak for the rest of the crew. It would be nice to hear what they think 62 years on, tho only half are still with us. But I know the experience for a 15-year-old small 105-pound squirt was remarkable in the extreme, and it was, I am sure, also special for this amazing group of high school athletes, who happened to be destined for great things. It easily could have ended in disaster and am sure there were times when failure was imminent. The Rev was our rock, and we wouldn’t have made it without his steadfast influence, guidance, and confidence, always ready with advice and help to this disparate group of high school boys, with all the emotional problems this entails. His uncanny ability was not only to help the coach prepare the crew for the race of their lives, but also to manage finances, logistics and scheduling, and coordinate the outside influences of our parents, all of whom had given most generously of time and expenses to make sure the project went ahead. While many others said we had no chance, he gave us courage, perseverance and stability when we so easily could have crumbled. He made sure we were always awake at dawn every morning all patched up ready, emotionally and physically, to get in the boat for those long torturous training sessions.

 And somehow the magic worked. Stories like this only seem to occur in movies or books of fiction. Similar in many ways was the remarkable story of the University of Washington Crew, also unheralded and unknown, who went to the 1936 Olympics and beat the famous Crews of Germany and Europe for the gold medal. How was I lucky enough to be part of this real-life adventure? So special, to always remember something which very few of us ever get to realize. I’m sure that other members of our Crew would concur that this was the most amazing experience in which they had ever participated.

“Courage is being scared to death but getting back in the saddle anyway”- John Wayne