Word: crews
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Harvard heavyweight crew, spring vacation has been one of the best weeks in the year. During those seven days of double practice and the accompanying "cumulative fatigue," the crew finally came together into the famed "Harvard racing machine" --a machine that Coach Harry Parker has led to a 70-6 career record and a century-old tradition of pre-eminence...
Unlike most sports, crew trains all year for a single season in the spring. Throughout those 300 hours of fall and winter practice, each oarsman is sustained only by the distant image of racing season. As a result, those long hours of pre-season rowing--in a racing shell, in an indoor rowing tank, on an "unpleasant machine" called the ergometer--develops in each oarsman a formidable mental drive that will be focussed, months later, into a six-minute race...
High school talent and an intense freshman training program provide the foundation for Harvard's varsity crews. As one crew member said, "You've sweated through Ted's training--now you're ready for the professional discipline Harry demands." Coach Parker's credentials are also lengthy: an oarsman and sculler since college, he has worked with Harvard crews for 19 years and coached the U.S. national and Olympic women's crews. Gordong Gardiner '79, the team captain and varsity boat stroke, describes Parker: "Harry's the best in the country. He treads the very thin line between undercoaching and overcoaching...
...extra, the pithy advice that makes us do well." The personality of the man, as well as the counsel of the coach, is the crucial factor. Howard Johnson '81 remarks, "He's inspiring because he's such a stable Rock-of Gibraltar person." Hap Porter '79 sums up the crew's relationship with the coach: I trust him--totally. It's easy to have a winner teach you how to be a winner...
...comments--and performance--of Harvard oarsmen make one point very clear: crew is a uniquely psychological sport. There is the very psychic sense of "we're all in the same boat"; one oarsman notes, "Crew is one of the purest team sports--there's an enormous amount of trust and cooperation involved and you can't mess up. Eight other guys are depending on you, and a single missed stroke of the oar can easily lose the race for everybody." A teammate adds, "You really feel like one machine--your oars are going in together, coming out together, you rest...