WVU coaches try to grow, grow, grow their sport
Scour campus for anyone willing to put in the work
Morgantown Dominion Post
12 July 2009
By Stefanie Loh
Are you moderately athletic, eager for a new challenge and excited
about the prospect of spending 40 hours a week working out with a group
of highly motivated individuals? Do you want to compete for a
chance to represent WVU in collegiate regattas all over the country? If
you answered yes to all of the above, the WVU women’s crew team wants
you.
The WVU women maintain a varsity squad and a novice squad every year.
The novice squad consists entirely of walk-ons, most of whom have no
prior rowing experience.
“There are a few colleges in the country who rely heavily on
recruiting, but most have a call out at the beginning of the school
year to get as many kids as they can to come out,” said Jimmy King,
head coach of the WVU crew team. “We’re looking for student-athletes
who have never rowed before because rowing at the junior level isn’t as
widespread as soccer or swimming.”
Basically, the novice program is a year-long tryout for aspiring rowers
to earn a spot on the varsity.
Assistant coaches Tina Griffith and Meg Ayers play the part of novice
team drill instructors. As Griffith describes it, “Basically, we have
to take kids who know nothing about rowing and prepare them for a
Division I varsity team in a year.”
A daunting task by any standard.
“Most kids don’t know what it’s like to be an athlete at this level,”
Griffith said. “When we start out, they can barely run a mile, and at
the end of the spring they are running [under] eightminute miles.”
The rookie boot camp for rowers starts when fall semester begins at
WVU.
Rowers spend the first two months learning the basics on ergometers,
stationary indoor rowing machines known in rowing parlance as “ergs.”
The team also does a lot of physical conditioning during that first
semester.
“We do a lot of circuit training and sort of assess everyone’s
conditioning,” Ayers said.
With so much emphasis placed on having the recruits master the basics
of rowing, they barely even get on the water during the first three
months
“Maybe on Saturdays we’ll let them out on the water just once to keep
them kind of intrigued,” Ayers said, grinning.
Then comes the weed-out period.
When it gets too cold to get on the water — and mind you, the team rows
in 20-degree temperatures — training moves indoors and the team will
spend the winter months in the Shell Building on the erg every day.
Understandably, that sometimes leads to bouts of cabin fever.
“But we try to open the doors and let them see out every once in a
while,” Ayers joked.
To keep things fresh, the novices work out with the WVU’s men’s club
crew team and play Ultimate Frisbee.
The novice team typically participates in a couple of races in the
fall, but will have a full competition slate in the spring.
Without the luxury of signing recruits, the coaches have to do a lot of
canvassing to fill their roster.
Griffith used to make the rounds of area high schools to talk to
basketball, volleyball and soccer coaches. But that hasn’t proved
lucrative in the past, so she and Ayers now focus on recruiting on
campus.
“We do a lot of footwork,” Ayers said. “So we’re constantly handing out
fliers.”
They also stuff mailboxes in the residence halls. But as anyone who’s
ever rued the plethora of junk mail commonly found in mailboxes knows,
that’s not the most effective way to reach your target audience.
But the coaches have figured out a way to make their junk mail stand
out in the cluttered mailboxes of party-minded undergrads.
“We try to make them look like Club Z papers,” Ayers said, referring to
the 18-and-over bar downtown that’s frequented by WVU underclassmen.
“We put them on bright colors and keep them really short so at least
the kids will have it in their hands and look at it before they throw
it away.”
Occasionally, the coaches will even tap into the university’s male
population.
“Sometimes we’ll even go up to guys and say, ‘Hey, have you got a
girlfriend? Is she strong? Does she kick your [butt] all the time? Have
her come row for us,’” Ayers said. “It’s funny, sometimes it works.
There are guys out there who will say, ‘Yeah my girlfriend would love
to do that, she’s looking for something to do.’”
With more than 10 years of coaching experience between them, Ayers and
Griffith have a mental blueprint of the kind of athlete they’re looking
for.
“You’re definitely looking for that special sort of person, that type-A
personality,” Ayers said. “And we’re always looking for a good student.
But we want someone who’s real particular about detail and who’s
internally driven. That helps us ease them in.”
Don’t mistake “blueprint” for picky, though. Ayers and Griffith will
take on pretty much anyone who’s willing to learn.
Most of their rowers played an assortment of other sports in high
school but were not good enough to continue on the collegiate level.
Many of these former high school athletes also fell into rowing while
recovering from injury. “Some of them have injuries [from other sports]
but we’re willing to take them,” Ayers said. “Rowing is low-impact and
we can tweak with [the workouts] a lot. So if they have injuries, we’ll
figure out something and make it work for them.”
Griffith and Ayers have proved to be pretty good coaches too.
At the end of this past season, King invited 12 of the 13 novice squad
rowers to come back as members of the varsity.
“Come row for us,” Ayers said. “If you give us enough time, we
should be able to turn you into a rower if you have any sort of
athletic ability.”