Saratoga Rowing Association Blog

Practice Canceled Today: February 26

Practice canceled due to weather.

Circles in Circles from Cat

Samuel Johnson said:  “The fountain of content must spring up in the mind, and he who hath so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own disposition, will waste his life in fruitless efforts and multiply the grief he proposes to remove.”

I have recently been spending a few minutes each day reading the classic book on leadership and personal change by Steven Covey “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People”.  I am only a few chapters in, but I already see significant applications to the pursuit of successful rowing…

I should wait until I read deeper into the book or sit down and organize my thoughts a bit more, but, conveniently, a blog is allowed to be a little more “shoot from the hip”.  One of the very cool images that Mr. Covey draws in the book is what he calls the circle of concern and the circle of influence.

In this sport, we have large circles of concern that include the boat we race in, the speed of the boat we are in, the placement of that boat at the regatta, the friends we have on the team, the coaches we have on the team, the regattas we attend, etc…  But while those are in our circle of concern, they are not all within our circle of influence.  The wise athlete will step back from the situation and take stock of the items within their circle of influence.  It is when we start working within our circle of influence that that circle grows.  The time spent outside the circle of influence and inside the circle of concern is, as Mr. Johnson said, a “fruitless effort” and often causes frustration and continued grief with the areas we wish to mend.

So, in our sport, what is included in our circle of influence?  Is it within your circle of influence to be a first boat rower?  NO.  Certainly that is a point in the circle of concern, but it is not wholly within our circle of influence.  There is only room for at most 9 people in the first boat.  They are the fastest 9 people on the team.  We have no control over the other people on our team.  You may be a high school girl 6’2” 180 pulling 7:00 on a 2K…  If there are 8 girls who are 6’3” pulling 6:55 on the team, you may still not be in the first boat.  Another example would be our 2V girls eight this fall at the Head of the Fish.  They were the 4^th fastest crew at the Head of the Fish in the varsity category.  That is 2 spots faster than the first boat finished last year.  Were it not for the other 9 members of the SRA varsity girls, that 2V would have been an improvement on last year’s finish… In fact, if those other 9 girls were not in the race, SRA would have finished 3^rd.  The point I am making is that one cannot say your placement in a boat is within your circle of influence.  That 2V was VERY fast - faster than last year’s 1V.  That there were 9 other girls on the team who were faster than them was not in their control (unless they pulled a Tonya Harding… which I hate to bring up, but I have often seen people try to do this same thing but through social means instead of physical ones).

Another example of something not within our circle of influence is the genes with which we were born.  There is a whole lot that we can do to improve our physical capabilities and skills, but we all know that there will, eventually, come a point where we reach the max that our genes will allow. (I have rarely seen that point attained by a high school rower)

Where does that leave us?  What is within our circle of influence?  Well, really just 2 things.

1)      We have the ability to choose our disposition (see Mr. Johnson’s quote).  This leads me to another term I learned from Steven Covey – Response-ability.  We rarely have full control over the situations in which we find ourselves, but we ALWAYS have the ability to control our response.  It is when we forget this ability that we lose the opportunity for happiness.  We do not lose the opportunity for happiness when we find ourselves in unpleasant situations, we lose it when we do not take the opportunity to choose our response to that situation.

2)      The other thing within our circle of influence is the work that we do each day.  We can make sure that we are a little faster (stronger, fitter, more skilled, smarter) than we were yesterday.  We can focus on making the boat in which we are rowing fast.  That is it.

The good news is that though there are only two things within our circle of influence.  Our circle of influence will expand as we invest our energies there.  If we want to win states, we firmly root ourselves inside our circle of influence, and eventually we end up satisfied and in a fast boat, and we have a good chance.  If we hang out outside our circle of influence, than we remain disappointed because even if we did “get into” the first boat that does not necessarily mean that the boat is fast.  I am always wary of people who “really want to make the first boat” it is almost as if they are admitting that they want to go for a ride in a fast boat.  I have the most respect for people who really want to make their boat fast… In this case, regardless of who else is on the team, even if they end up in the second boat, it will still be a fast boat (even faster than if they were in the first boat last year).

Wanting to get in a better boat = spending time in the circle of concern

Wanting to make the boat you are in fast = spending time in the circle of influence

Where are you spending your time?

On Coach Philosophy from Cat

I was going to start blogging with a wrap up of the fall season, but, it seems that a bit of a discussion on philosophy is in order.  As mentioned in the previous blog statement Chase and I are almost polar opposites when it comes to philosophy.  After a 10 years friendship, we both still believe this is a good thing (An alloy metal is stronger than a pure metal – when the properties of the dissimilar pieces meld, the resultant metal is stronger).  However, there have been changes that reflect those philosophical differences that have ruffled a few feathers over the past season.  I am not surprised by this.  Any time you change leadership you can expect a similar reaction.  Ultimately people do not like change.

This fall, at the very beginning, I informed the girls that this was a “new beginning”.  I did not have any interest in things of the past.  Everyone started with a clean slate.  All I cared about was that you show me the rower that you INTEND to be.  I was not even asking to see the rower you ARE, only the rower that you INTEND to be (and that you follow through with your intentions).  I formulated a training plan that would allow them to put their intentions on display, and I formatted a means by which I could study those intentions.  During the first 2 weeks I led the warm-ups and I kept the entire varsity girls squad together.  During that time I taught the athlete how they should warm-up and prepare for practice, and I studied the intentions of the athletes while they rowed on the water.  Following the 2 weeks of training together, I broke the squad into groups of similarly abled athletes and assigned a coach to each of those groups.  During that time I continued to study the intentions of the athletes, only this time it was studying a smaller group on the water, but still studying the intentions of all the athletes during the warm-up and checking in with Bean and Lesley to see how their athletes were doing on the water.

It has come to my attention that a few people feel they were treated unfairly, and while I do not think it is my obligation to justify coaching decisions, I will oblige because it is a change in philosophy from the previous leadership that is not being understood.

A clean slate is a clean slate.  Regardless if your history is Saratoga’s greatest teammate or Saratoga’s most wayward teammate, Saratoga’s 1^st boat 6 seat or Saratoga’s 4^th boat spare.  All were afforded the clean slate on which to display their intentions and their abilities.  Of course we all know that even those with the greatest of intentions may never reach the top, and we know that even those with the greatest of abilities can squander them through lack of intention and not reach the top either.  In fact… we don’t even have a solid definition of the “top”.  We have girls in our 1V who might not even make other teams 2Vs, and we have girls in our 4V who could be in other teams 1V.  That does not change their ability as a rower.  You cannot define your ability by the boat you are in, but rather by how fast you make your boat go.  (For example, our 3V finished 14^th out of 51 Varsity Girls 8s at the Head of the Fish.  Should they consider themselves lesser rowers than the 15 boats of “1V” rowers that they beat?).  We do not choose the other athletes on our team, and those other athletes do not make us slower because they are faster than us.  The only thing we get to choose is if we are a little bit faster today than we were yesterday.  I am getting a little sidetracked here, and this is a discussion for a separate blog, but briefly – for you to think about – If your goal is to get into a “fast boat” then you will always be disappointed and you have missed the mark pretty significantly.  If your goal is to “make your boat fast” then you will end up in a fast boat (1V, 2V, 3V – it is the speed that matters, not the skill of your teammates) and you have correctly applied yourself.

Anyway, getting back to the point, regardless of everyone’s history, we started the fall on even ground in my eyes.  Over the course of the fall, I filled the boats based on how fast people could make a boat go.  The lion’s share of that was done in the first 2 weeks (you may think you didn’t get seen enough… I would disagree.  For the past several years I have chosen the Jr. Development Team after watching them for 1 hour.)  After the 2 week period together concluded, and the squad was assigned to similarly-abled groups and assigned a coach, there was still a little bit of ability to move around with the groups, and even cross groups.  But the ability to cross groups was limited (it only happened when someone was absent and left a seat open for someone else to fill).  This is another topic for another blog but just to get you thinking… No seat is saved for anyone.  You miss practice and someone sits in the seat you vacate.  If they make the boat go faster… they stay in that seat.  If they do not, then you are back in.  In this manner I do not punish for missing practice – but as soon as the boat goes faster… you are out.

Again, getting back to the philosophy, it is pretty simple.  I expect daily excellence, and I expect your intentions are to improve every day.  But I place you in a boat that corresponds with your ability to move that boat.  The only people who are disappointed by this are those who have lots of intention, but the skill level is still not developed (usually sophomores who have not spent enough time practicing those intentions and just need to be patient while they grow) OR those who show little intention and/or skill level but have high expectation based on something other than skill level.  Remember… I said the slate was clean.  No one should have had any expectation for placement apart from what they were prepared to prove over the course of the season.  (I did not give any erg tests… your test was how you practice every day)

Here, perhaps, the biggest change in philosophy is felt.  It is “straight-up” an “ability to move the boat in a competitive category” decision.  No one gets to sit in the senior eight because they are a senior.  If a sophomore is faster than the senior… they sit in the senior eight, and the senior has to hope they are fast enough to make the second eight, or another boat in which they are eligible.  I group athletes by their speed in the category.  This may seem harsh to the senior, but it is my contention that the senior who got bumped by the sophomore either: A. is not physically gifted enough to row at that level regardless of how hard they work or B. did not row with enough intention during their first 4 years of rowing to develop into the rower they need to be in order to be in a first boat.  In an ideal world our seniors would be faster than our juniors who would be faster than our sophomores who would be faster than our freshmen.  But this would only be the case if everyone had the same genetics and practiced with the same intention… then those who had been doing it longer would be faster.  This is not the case.  I do not believe competitive sports are a seniority rules situation or a majority rules situation or a popularity rules situation.  It is a Meritocracy.  Those who make boats go fast are in fast boats.  Those who do not make boats go fast are not in fast boats.  That is my philosophy in a nutshell. (my only caveat is that making boats go fast has to be considered in the context of a season.  If you can make a boat go fast but can only row once a week… I have to decide if consistent practice without you, or inconsistent practice with you will end up faster at the end of the season)

This is getting to be a long post, but that last statement brings me to my last point.  Lots of people over-rate coaching.  They seem to think that I choose the people that I want to make fast and then put them in the first boat – and I give them something special then they get fast.  That is untrue.  The first boat is faster than the second boat because they are better rowers right now.  Might there be a person in the 3^rd boat who will work their tail off over the winter break and indoor season and end up in the first boat… sure.  If someone becomes a better rower while someone else sits on their couch.  The 3^rd boater will be in the first boat… not because I decided to make them better but because they decided to get better, and they had the physical gifts and stick-to-itiveness to make it happen.

I do not pretend to think that this will change people’s minds about their own placement, but it is there, in black and white.  If you make boats go fast, you will be in fast boats.  If you row with intention, every day, over time, you will learn to make boats go as fast as your genetics allow.  Ultimately it is you making the boat go fast that will put you in a fast boat.

Saratoga Rowing Association: Vision and Transitions from Cat

During our time off between seasons I would like to take some time to express some of my thoughts regarding the past, present, and future of Saratoga Rowing in blog form.  This is new to me, so please be patient as I find an online voice which expresses my ideas in the manner which I hope they are heard.  I have been planning to start this blog for a few weeks now, but very hesitant knowing that the written word can easily be taken out of context and it is hard to read emphasis and side notes.

With your understanding and patience I would like to start this blog with a bit of background on my thought processes as we transitioned into a new structure for SRA.  My initial thought was to come in with a plan for immediate implementation.  After thinking about it for a while I decided instead to use the fall to get a feel for the organization.  So, instead of making wholesale changes, I decided to sit back a little bit and observe.  Of course we all know that I did end up making changes here and there, but I feel as if my patience has allowed me to see what works before trying to change it.

As with anything in life, there are positive and negative aspects of this choice.  On the positive side, I was able to see many great pieces of Saratoga Rowing that I might not have seen had I started everything new (My favorite being the VG vs. VB race pieces once a week).  On the negative side, I am sure it has been a bit difficult getting a sense of where I am leading and the reasoning behind any changes I have made.  (Of course you could always ask…).  So, now that I have seen Saratoga Rowing in action, I would like to take these winter months to start expressing my vision for the club and its many components.

Another fear I have in expressing so concretely plans or ideas is that I may not be afforded the opportunity to modify them.  If you ever see the information I hand out to the varsity girls, it always says "preliminary" on the top.  There are some times when a steadfast commitment to the plan is appropriate, and there are some times when a clever adjustment makes all the difference.  My second request in this introduction is again a request for patience and understanding allowing me to continue "tweaking" the plan as it is expressed here initially.  A lot has changed since the last time I coached at Saratoga, and while I believe I have a system to implement which will help this club succeed on many levels, I am not so silly as to think that I have planned for every eventuality.  So I can almost guarantee there will be small adjustments along the way.

Over the next several weeks I hope to address topics such as:
Hosted Regattas, Masters, Varsity boys, Varsity Girls, Frosh and Novice Girls, Frosh and Novice Boys, the boathouse and its organization and rules, Volunteers, Equipment, Season planning, Yearly training, Club costs, Florida and TN, Spring Racing, Coaching Philosophy, Fall vs Spring intentions, Training vs Racing, The mature athlete, Meritocracy, Absenteeism, response-ability (a term borrowed from Steven Covey), and many other topics… 

Note, in some of these topics I will be speaking as a coach, and in others a club director.  If you are ever unsure, feel free to ask "does that go for the squads you coach or for everyone?"  For example, Chase and I are very good friends, and have worked together very effectively for 7 years.  I have the utmost respect for his coaching ability.  In fact, I think he is one of, if not the best high school freshman coach in the country.  However, we will both happily tell you that we are almost polar opposites in many respects.  We actually think that was a strength of our team during those years.  I also think that coaching freshmen is a very different job than coaching varsity.  Perhaps if I was coaching freshmen I would function a lot more like him (and, in actuality, when I was coaching walk-on freshmen in college I followed a lot of Chases model).  Anyway, my point is this.  If I, speaking about the varsity, talk about a certain philosophy - it doesn't mean that it applies to the freshmen (but it is good for them to hear since it will be the next phase of their high school rowing career… and they will hear yet another one depending on their collegiate choice).

Please stay tuned as I work my way though several topics.  If you have questions or would like to see a topic discussed in this format (vs. private e-mail) please e-mail me directly.  I will not promise immediate response, but I will do my best to incorporate answers in future posts.

Enjoy your winter.  Check back often.

Cat

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