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rebeccmeisterPrelude: This entry may wind up getting locked.
The first time I ever went to the Head of the Charles was my junior year of high school. I vividly remember the year for two reasons. The first reason is that my friend Z was coaching for us, and at one point she exclaimed vexedly about how many darned RULES there were in Boston for the regatta.
For me, Z's observation summarizes one of the many cultural distinctions between East Coast and West Coast (she and I are both absolutely West Coasters).
On the organizational side of things, I'm having to deal with a lot of the RULES side of rowing this year. I'm going to provide a public-knowledge illustration of what I mean. The rowing documentary Dare to Be highlights one such case, where a coach got busted and lost his job because he had some of his novice athletes compete in two sweep races at the New York State Scholastic Championships, both a novice event and a varsity event. His varsity boat, which earned a qualification for Junior Nationals, then got disqualified because of a rule peculiar to the New York State Scholastic Championships, which is that no student-athlete is allowed to compete in more than one sweep event at the regatta. This coach was then fired from his coaching position. Now, there's often far more to the story than ever gets captured in a short documentary film, but still.
In contrast, during my novice year in high school, at Northwest Regionals I was allowed to compete in THREE sweep events, no problem: the novice four, novice eight, and JV eight. I mostly remember that regatta because I was super tired at the end of the regatta. (oh, also, we won both novice races, and I peed over the side of the boat right before our novice four race). The rules for Northwest Regionals may very well have changed since I raced there, but the Pacific Northwest doesn't seem to be suffering from some of the strange Scholastic vs. Club Program dynamics at play here in New York. In Seattle, I raced for my high school, which would technically be a scholastic team. But we raced plenty of club programs, including the excellent club programs run through Seattle Parks and Rec (Mt. Baker and Greenlake). To the best of my knowledge, no one made a stink about that arrangement. It just was what it was.
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The second Head of the Charles memory is this: Fall of one's Junior year is College Visit season*, and my high school gave us a couple extra days off from school to visit prospective colleges during the same weekend as the Head of the Charles. Therefore, my Mom arranged to travel out to the East Coast with me so we could tour a couple of area colleges after the regatta wrapped up. My Mom initially flew into Hartford to visit with family in Connecticut, and then drove up to Boston to see me race and carry on with our travel itinerary.
She arrived at our hotel, way out in the Boston suburbs, the night before my race, but hadn't arranged a place for herself to stay overnight. Exhausted from driving and at the end of her rope, she asked if our head coach (not Z) could help her out in any way - she'd be more than happy to just sleep on the floor somewhere. Our head coach said no and I'll never forget the look on my mom's face. She slept in the car in the parking lot overnight instead.
I don't talk about this much, but after I graduated high school I walked away from my high school's rowing program and haven't looked back. I still make a nominal contribution to my high school itself and am loosely in touch with one of the rowing coaches because she was my teammate when we were both in high school. But the story with my Mom at the Head of the Charles is just one example of why I walked away**.
This year, at the Head of the Charles, I had a chance to talk with a Seattle-area rower about some of the program-shuffling that has happened on the perimeter of Lake Union, and learned that my high school's program is now rowing out of a different facility that isn't owned by my high school head coach. It may be that the person who made my Mom sleep in the parking lot is no longer connected to the program anymore. So I might just finally have found the motivation, 20 years later, to support future generations of rowers from my high school.
*So the Head of the Charles is also responsible for me going to Tufts! It was the first college I visited and I was ambivalent about it during the visit. But after visiting a couple other types of places, I warmed up to it and am glad I went there, overall.
**As an adult I can understand some of why that coach might have had some concerns, but on the other hand it was symptomatic of their treatment of other people in general.
The first time I ever went to the Head of the Charles was my junior year of high school. I vividly remember the year for two reasons. The first reason is that my friend Z was coaching for us, and at one point she exclaimed vexedly about how many darned RULES there were in Boston for the regatta.
For me, Z's observation summarizes one of the many cultural distinctions between East Coast and West Coast (she and I are both absolutely West Coasters).
On the organizational side of things, I'm having to deal with a lot of the RULES side of rowing this year. I'm going to provide a public-knowledge illustration of what I mean. The rowing documentary Dare to Be highlights one such case, where a coach got busted and lost his job because he had some of his novice athletes compete in two sweep races at the New York State Scholastic Championships, both a novice event and a varsity event. His varsity boat, which earned a qualification for Junior Nationals, then got disqualified because of a rule peculiar to the New York State Scholastic Championships, which is that no student-athlete is allowed to compete in more than one sweep event at the regatta. This coach was then fired from his coaching position. Now, there's often far more to the story than ever gets captured in a short documentary film, but still.
In contrast, during my novice year in high school, at Northwest Regionals I was allowed to compete in THREE sweep events, no problem: the novice four, novice eight, and JV eight. I mostly remember that regatta because I was super tired at the end of the regatta. (oh, also, we won both novice races, and I peed over the side of the boat right before our novice four race). The rules for Northwest Regionals may very well have changed since I raced there, but the Pacific Northwest doesn't seem to be suffering from some of the strange Scholastic vs. Club Program dynamics at play here in New York. In Seattle, I raced for my high school, which would technically be a scholastic team. But we raced plenty of club programs, including the excellent club programs run through Seattle Parks and Rec (Mt. Baker and Greenlake). To the best of my knowledge, no one made a stink about that arrangement. It just was what it was.
-
The second Head of the Charles memory is this: Fall of one's Junior year is College Visit season*, and my high school gave us a couple extra days off from school to visit prospective colleges during the same weekend as the Head of the Charles. Therefore, my Mom arranged to travel out to the East Coast with me so we could tour a couple of area colleges after the regatta wrapped up. My Mom initially flew into Hartford to visit with family in Connecticut, and then drove up to Boston to see me race and carry on with our travel itinerary.
She arrived at our hotel, way out in the Boston suburbs, the night before my race, but hadn't arranged a place for herself to stay overnight. Exhausted from driving and at the end of her rope, she asked if our head coach (not Z) could help her out in any way - she'd be more than happy to just sleep on the floor somewhere. Our head coach said no and I'll never forget the look on my mom's face. She slept in the car in the parking lot overnight instead.
I don't talk about this much, but after I graduated high school I walked away from my high school's rowing program and haven't looked back. I still make a nominal contribution to my high school itself and am loosely in touch with one of the rowing coaches because she was my teammate when we were both in high school. But the story with my Mom at the Head of the Charles is just one example of why I walked away**.
This year, at the Head of the Charles, I had a chance to talk with a Seattle-area rower about some of the program-shuffling that has happened on the perimeter of Lake Union, and learned that my high school's program is now rowing out of a different facility that isn't owned by my high school head coach. It may be that the person who made my Mom sleep in the parking lot is no longer connected to the program anymore. So I might just finally have found the motivation, 20 years later, to support future generations of rowers from my high school.
*So the Head of the Charles is also responsible for me going to Tufts! It was the first college I visited and I was ambivalent about it during the visit. But after visiting a couple other types of places, I warmed up to it and am glad I went there, overall.
**As an adult I can understand some of why that coach might have had some concerns, but on the other hand it was symptomatic of their treatment of other people in general.
no subject
Date: 2019-10-24 09:05 pm (UTC)Wow.
I'm speechless.
no subject
Date: 2019-10-24 10:26 pm (UTC)I mean really, it was all just weird and awkward and sad.
I need to ask my mom about the situation again. I don't think she and I ever really talked about it right after it happened. We had too many other things going on, like our need to argue vociferously over how to navigate Beantown's cowpaths with our paper map. You know, typical teenage daughter - mom conversations. :^)
My mom's coming out to visit soon, so I might just have a chance!
no subject
Date: 2019-10-25 01:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-10-25 04:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-10-24 09:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-10-24 10:23 pm (UTC)One factor in all this is college scholarship opportunities for women rowers, which wasn't as big a factor when you or I were looking to go to college. That became a much bigger factor starting in the early 2000's, and has had a substantial cascading impact on junior rowing.
no subject
Date: 2019-10-25 12:32 am (UTC)paranoiacaution.no subject
Date: 2019-10-25 01:57 am (UTC)The rules that are at the crux of the matter at the moment tend to have to do with ensuring that high school athletes are not in competitions that pit them directly against college athletes, and structuring things such that athletes only get to compete once or twice at a regatta rather than an unlimited number of times. (there are limits to how much an athlete would want to and be able to compete anyway). But maybe I'm not thinking about this fully yet.
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Date: 2019-10-25 02:02 am (UTC)And I hate to say it, but a lot of rules about money and shadiness get put into place after the fact, not before. :/
no subject
Date: 2019-10-25 05:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-10-25 04:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-10-25 05:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-10-25 06:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-10-28 06:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-10-28 06:26 pm (UTC)