My abs burned as my elbows dug into the firm memory foam mat. I looked down at my old analog watch, and cheered on the second hand in my head as it slowly ticked past the 10, the 11, and approached the 12, ending a particularly painful ninety seconds. I counted the last five seconds aloud, signaling to the rest of the team that we were almost done with the core workout. There was a collective sigh of relief, kind of like when a doctor or nurse takes a patient’s blood pressure and finally allows the air to leave the arm cuff. As the rest of the team did some stretches to end the day’s workout, I walked across the room, full of ergometers, to check in with the coach about the rest of the week. I confirmed that I would see her the next morning on the dock at 7:30, meaning that we would be on the water by 8. I went back to the changing room to grab my string bag, which had a water bottle and spare set of clothes in case I got wet. One of the guys changing near me looked up as he tied his shoes and joked, “Ezra, do planks hurt for you, too?”
“Yeah, of cours—”
“It’s just that, planks make my muscles sore, but like… if you don’t have much muscle, then, well, how would it hurt?”
I shrugged my shoulders, tepidly waved goodbye while avoiding eye contact with the others in various stages of changing, and made my way back across the river for dinner. I knew the guys had plans to eat together at 7, but my roommates were eating at 6:45. I had spent enough time around spandex-covered muscle for the day; I would rather wrap up my day listening to my roommate Karl talk about his choral performance and rehearsal for the three-person musical he was in than hear about which brand of protein powder “actually worked.”
There was no real need for me to do the ab workout with the guys on the crew team. For the rowers, their core strength and level of conditioning would increase their performance on the water and help them earn coveted seats in the competitive boats. As a coxswain, I used this as an opportunity to be part of the team, and to sweat a little, too. Otherwise I would often get restless, spending practice after practice sitting in confined spaces, yelling commands at humans easily twice my size.
The role of coxswain is a unique position in the world of sports as it sits on the threshold between crucial and peripheral, athletic and sedentary. Boats that seat four and eight rowers have an additional seat for the coxswain. Boats are designed so that the rowers face backwards, allowing them to most efficiently utilize their biggest assets, their legs, to propel the heavy boat through the water. One lone member of the boat, the coxswain, sits at the very back, or stern, of the boat, but faces forward. From the back of the boat, the coxswain becomes an obnoxious, but necessary backseat driver, as he or she steers the boat with the rudder, yells commands to correct form breaks, and gives updates on the status of other boats during races. The coxswain is also equipped with an important piece of equipment, charmingly called the ‘cox box,’ which provides a way to measure time, to keep track of the boat’s stroke rate and to amplify the coxswain’s voice.
Thus, the coxswain is simultaneously integral and superfluous to the crew’s success. Without the coxswain directing and steering, the boat would inevitably crash. Yet, imagine how much faster the boat would go without the 120 pounds of dead weight. Though the ‘cox’ is important to the sport, coaches and rowers often call the shells that seat eight rowers, “eights,” even though they seat nine people.
Coxswains go through the same trials and tribulations as rowers, yet manage to avoid the pain of battle. Coxswains are required to wake up early for practice, to talk with coaches, prepare and review race strategy, just like the other athletes on the team. But I would leave practice often without needing to take a shower; the only soreness I felt was the occasional stiffness in my legs from sitting for hours, getting a free boat ride down the river.
Whenever I came home from elementary school, my grandma Bubs would have me immediately come to the kitchen to empty all the sand from my shoes into the trash can before offering me a snack. I usually would take my socks off, too, rubbing off the excess dirtiness that had collected during the day. Recess was a time for me to dig holes in the sandbox and climb on the monkey bars. Across from the play structure was a large blacktop where kids would play kickball, soccer, or play basketball at the two hoops. When recess was over, those playing sports would pile back into the classrooms, either gloating or sullen, either as winners or losers. I would happily shuffle back to my desk, glad to have successfully climbed on top of the play structure without falling off – a personal victory in evading adult supervision. I enjoyed the climb, the rush of being seven feet off of the ground, and the view I had of the student athletes down below.
Over time, I slowly developed calluses on my hands from swinging between the bars and hanging on to other parts of the play structure, while many of the kids running around on the blacktop would get scraped up and bruised. I was fascinated and repulsed by athletic competition at recess. Seemed to me that recess was a time to relax and unwind after a morning filled with long division and similes, not a time to place one’s self under pressure.
By the end of elementary school, I had peaked and retired from the soccer and baseball teams my parents had signed me up for; perhaps the rigor of an hour of weekly practice, and the occasional early Saturday morning game had been too much. Although we would laugh about my absentmindedness in the outfield on the drives home, it had become clear I wasn’t having fun on the field when I felt like I wasn’t contributing to the team and would do anything I could to run away from the ball. While some of my peers began to pursue soccer more seriously, trying out for traveling teams, I pursued other things. I spent more time painting watercolors and picked up the saxophone, telling others and myself that sports weren’t really for me.
Yet, two defining events of my time in elementary school were the 2002 and 2004 Olympic Games. I followed both in any way I could; I’d watch on TV, read the sports section of the newspaper, watch highlight reels on the internet, and look up more information about certain athletes I found particularly fascinating.
I obviously wasn’t alone in following the Olympics closely. But, it seemed odd that a kid who scoffed at sports as a waste of time would spend so much of his free time following sports. Besides watching the games, I was captivated by the human interest segments on TV, about the early mornings spent on the ice rink, the legacy of a Soviet training system, or judging controversies. I would stay up past my bedtime watching gymnasts, swimmers, figure skaters, and runners put themselves under incredible amounts of competitive pressure. Sure, I was impressed by the superhuman feats athletes completed, and couldn’t figure out how one could complete a triple Salchow. But I loved watching sports that didn’t inherently fascinate me either. I would spend hours watching curling, cross-country skiing, archery, or whatever NBC chose to broadcast. Beyond the sports themselves, I couldn’t stop watching the performances that represented the culmination of years and lifetimes of training and sacrifice.
I loved watching gymnastics because it was the first time I had been exposed to smaller people having access to athletics at a high level. The commentators would often comment on the gymnasts’ heights, explaining how their compact build allowed them to more easily complete two revolutions. As the shortest student to graduate from my middle school (for some reason, school administrators thought they should give out diplomas by height, rather than alphabetically by last name), watching gymnastics provided me a glimmer of a way smaller kids could have access to a highly competitive athletic environment. When I broached the subject about giving gymnastics a try to my parents, they politely said no. My parents seemed to have a pretty detailed understanding of all the different ways I could paralyze myself. They also reminded me that though gymnasts were small, they were incredibly physically fit. Without having to say anything else, I knew my parents were probably right.
Still, my parents urged me to give sports a more serious try, not just to keep active, but to be part of a team, too. There is nothing quite like tossing Gatorades to your teammates, and congratulating them on a good race. Following in my brother’s footsteps, I ran cross-country for two years in high school. Of course, there are smaller guys who do quite well in the sport, but I found myself running in large invitational races against guys who looked like they were twenty-five when people still thought I looked eleven or twelve. Still, I did enjoy my two years with the team. No one relied on me to do well and my score never counted for any important meet. Like the feeling I had on top of the play structure when I was younger, I found myself achieving small personal victories – this time, shaving seconds off my PR times. Maybe I would run recreationally on my own in college. There would always be another Olympic Games to follow, too.
I came to college thinking the closest I would get to participating in sports would be playing in a marching band or playing chess. Early during the fall of freshman year, I noticed a woman by the dining hall, handing out flyers about the rowing team. I had initially intended to avoid making eye contact with her. I had too many flyers already stacked up on my desk; the political review, the mock trial team, and three a cappella groups had all already promised me that they would each change me life. She politely, yet assertively, stopped me and encouraged me to come to an info session at the end of the week. She thought I’d be a good coxswain.
It turned out that this woman was Linda, the coach for the Freshman Men’s Lightweight team. At the info session, Linda outlined the expectations that came with making this type of commitment, and the types of athletic backgrounds that did well in the sport, and explained how special it was to row at Harvard, a school with such a historic rowing program. After her presentation, many of the guys asked about weight. As a lightweight sport, many of guys were right on the bubble of being lightweight eligible. Linda explained that the average weight of rowers in lightweight boat could be no higher than 155, and that no one rower could weigh more than 160. One smaller guy piped up, asking about weight expectations for the coxswain. Linda explained that the league had a weight minimum of 125 for coxswains in an effort to prevent teams for pressuring coxswains to lose an unhealthy amount of weight. Comfortably under the weigh minimum, I gave Linda my email address, weight and height. Why not?
For the first time in my life, I was in a competitive athletic environment where my contributions were vitally necessary to the operation. My focus could contribute to a victory and my foibles could result in loss. Of all the coxswains, I was the leanest and the only one to naturally fall below the weight minimum – during races, I would carry sandbags to reach the requisite 125. I had made weight, and it seemed that I was all set for a successful collegiate rowing career.
Yet, other coxswains, weighing in at 135, even approaching 140, seemed to communicate better with the cohort of rowers and were often assigned to the boats of stronger, more experienced rowers. In fact, two of the coxswains had come to crew, hoping to row. Those two coxswains in particular had athletic backgrounds themselves. One had served as team captain of the soccer team, and the other had been a nationally ranked tennis player. The coaches had recommended they try out coxswaining because of their smaller builds. They had had their own experiences of victory hanging in the balance. When urging rowers to move faster, they already had a strong grasp of a competitive, motivational vocabulary that they had heard from their own coaches in their athletic pasts.
The first few times I was assigned to the more experienced boat of rowers, I was on the verge of laughing. The very first time I went out on the water, Linda reminded me that steering with a rudder wasn’t that much different from driving a car; it’s important to pick a point in the distance, rather than focus only on what is directly in front of you. I explained that in theory I understood what she meant, but as a city boy from San Francisco, I didn’t have my driver’s license, but would certainly try my best. Linda’s head tilted to one side and looked at my incredulously for a second, and then went to deal with other rowers. I couldn’t believe my job was to yell at people and that because of the rules and etiquette of the sport, they had to listen and do as I said. Each time I began to chuckle, I realized that the microphone headpiece I was wearing provided the whole boat of rowers with a live broadcast of my guffaws of disbelief. I would clear my throat, bite my lip, and refocus my efforts. The design of eight person boats contributed to an inexplicable humor of the moment as well. While eight fit guys faced backwards, I sat at the back of the boat, facing forward. As a result, for an entire workout, a coxswain has an hour-long staring contest with stroke seat, the rower that sets the pace, which everyone else follows. Although modern boats are equipped with sound systems that allow rowers to hear the coxswain’s voice and instructions clearly, the majority of communication still happens between the coxswain and the stroke seat. As the stroke seat makes small adjustments, the rest of the boat follows.
Although I rarely stare into my friends’ eyes for prolonged periods of time, it is standard operating procedure for the cox to be face to face with the stroke seat. There is something quite intimate about being this close to another person’s face, as their pores, blemishes and bushy eyebrows come into clear view. Early on, when I was still familiarizing myself with the commands and traffic patterns on the river, I coxswained a boat and spent an entire hour and half staring at Zander’s face and his pronounced jaw line.
Zander came to college with a strong rowing background. In fact, during his senior year of high school, he stroked his boat to victory at the high school national championships. Zander embodied strength and stubbornness. Once halfway through practice, the eye contact became too much for both of us, and he put on his sunglasses, which he had been wearing on top of his head as some sort of headband. At the end of practice, the coaches decided to set up a mock race. As we got ready to begin, Zander looked at me and reminded me to keep an eye on the other boats. Zander had noticed me fiddling with the rudder and urged me to not worry about the rudder too much – the makeshift racecourse was essentially a straight line.
The race started well. We took an early lead, in part because Zander had started off a little faster than was sustainable for the rest of the boat. I urged the boat to ease into a doable pace and save some for the final stretch. I was confused, as no one seemed to respond to anything I was saying. I looked down at the cox box, and there was no light, no life. The cox box’s battery had died, leaving us with no way to tell time or measure strokes per minute. Most importantly for me, I had no way to amplify my voice. My voice naturally gets higher (or as my brother would say, “goes sharp”) when I get stressed or excited. As I heard grumbling in the boat about why Ezra wasn’t saying anything, I yelled that the cox box had died and that they would have to listen to my voice. As this all happened, it began to rain and water droplets clung to my glasses, pixelating the course in front of me. What happened over the next five minutes was a blur, though clearly, we were going slower than Zander had wanted. Zander, breaking rowing etiquette, began to yell at me, and I tried to yell directions back, but sounded shrill. Our boat, seeded to win this impromptu in-house competition, got second place. I steered the boat back to the dock, confused and hoarse.
Zander was frustrated. He didn’t hit me, but used his right fist to hit left palm over and over. Linda urged Zander to calm down and reminded me to keep better track of the battery of important equipment. Zander used words like “unorganized,” “flustered,” and “annoying.” A natural baritone, Zander urged me to use a lower pitch voice. It was hard for him to take me seriously.
I also found myself feeling disappointed that we’d lost. I, too, had been excited at the prospect of winning, and knew I had what it took to win, but I also knew the rowers and coaches noticed how I had worked under pressure – not well. A few weeks later, there was an invitational race at Dartmouth. The two coxswains with athletic backgrounds were invited to go and I was given a weekend to sleep in. In the coming weeks, I also was left behind when the team went down to Princeton. I continued coming to practice, filling in where I was needed. Many of the walk-on rowers had already quit and the numbers soon dwindled down to just enough rowers to fill two competitive boats, with a few alternates. 18 rowers and two coxswains were invited to the winter training camp in January in Florida. Linda told me she looked forward to seeing me in February back at school. At this point, two of the other coxswains who had not received the invite to the training camp threw in the towel. Sure, I would miss rowing in manatee-infested waters of Florida, and the guys would come back to school with more pronounced tan lines than me. Yet, without skipping a beat, I wished Linda a happy winter holiday and told her I looked forward to seeing her at the boathouse in early February. I had figured out how to make crew work with my school schedule, and realized I had very little to lose by staying on the team.
Without a doubt, my style on the water was an acquired taste. When we would take breaks for rowers to hydrate or take off a layer, most coxswains would turn down the volume on their microphones and just be quiet; there were times though when I couldn’t contain myself. Here we were on the Charles River and the reflections of the changing New England leaves had lit the surface of the water on fire. Canada geese flew by, their wings gently grazing the surface of the water. As everyone would be enjoying a quiet moment, I would channel my inner weatherman and say things like, “What a beautiful day in Cambridge, Massachusetts. We are rowing through a screensaver!” A couple guys would look up from picking at their calluses on their hands, quickly glance at each other, and then get ready to continue rowing. Usually there were a couple rowers who laughed, but then realized others weren’t laughing, so they would quiet down. With more time, perhaps the rowers would become accustomed to my idiosyncrasies. I took comfort in the fact that they really couldn’t “un-acquire” a taste they hadn’t even grown to like. I would assure myself that it simply wasn’t a taste they had grown to like yet.
Winter training proved tedious. Forced to stay indoors, I was in charge of running core workouts to end practice, recording their times on particular workouts on the rowing machines, and taking their weights, allowing some rowers on the edge of not being lightweight eligible to take off their socks (or whatever else) to squeeze under the 160 pound maximum. The boathouse, especially at that time of year, had its own scent; if the crew team had wanted to bottle it and sell it as a fragrance, I would have called it Eau de L.L. Bean Male Model. It smelled like sweat, disinfectant spray that was used to clean the rowing machines, and old musty wood of the floors and the walls. The boathouse was part athletic training facility, part of museum, and coaches had actively chosen to maintain an old school feel to the space, and adorned the walls with old oars and headlines of Harvard victories. By this time in the spring semester of freshman year, most coxswains had invested in some Harvard gear, a baseball cap, or maybe a crimson windbreaker. Many coxswains would wear athletic clothing to practice, even though they weren’t expected to participate athletically. Given that I had never felt like I had been brought entirely into the fold, I figured that wearing clothes that would visibly help me blend in would not make any substantial social difference – it would have just been superficial in every sense of the word. Instead, I wore what I found most comfortable. I wore tie-dye t-shirts I had made at Jewish summer camp, corduroy pants and my favorite green winter jacket. When we got back on the water, I wore my favorite Mr. Peanut baseball cap, even though I had no official sponsorship from Planters Peanuts.
One of the first big away races of the spring racing season fell on Passover. One of the coxswains was a very religiously observant Jew, and chose to stay behind. As a result, they needed one more coxswain. Linda invited me to travel to Ithaca, and gave me a rowing jacket that I had seen many of the rowers and top two coxswains wear. I had asked Linda if this were mine to keep. She nodded, smiled, and walked back to her office. The next day, we made it to Cornell. The night before the race, a few of the rowers had urged me not go to the bathroom when I woke up. Instead, I should wait to go to the bathroom until after the coxswain weigh in, and in fact drink a lot of water right beforehand to artificially boost my weight. As a result, I would be given less weight in sandbags to reach the 125-pound weight minimum. Afterwards, I could go to bathroom, giving the boat a few pound advantage.
Of course, weight was important, but those few pounds were not that important. Many coxswains on the team easily exceeded the weight minimum. Nonetheless, I complied with the rowers’ demands. Although not entirely in line with the spirit of the rules, it was a relatively easy thing to do to show the rowers my commitment to the team and desire to win. The next morning, all went as planned, and I took one final trip to the bathroom just before going down to the dock, happy to take whatever advantage possible.
I was in charge of the boat, which many anticipated would come in second place, beating the boats from Penn and Cornell and only losing to the top Harvard boat. The race began and, as predicted, we settled into our race pace, comfortably in second place. I noticed that the other Harvard boat was having a hard time. Their lane assignment was closest to shore, and I heard one rower yell that his oar hit the riverbed. Although not in our race plan, it seemed like a natural time to make a move to get ahead of the boat struggling in the mud. Over the course of the next twenty strokes, we had gained two, then three seats. As I looked to my left, I realized that I was actually even with the other coxswain and that we were over performing. As we entered the final 500 meters, I urged the rowers to stay focused and to dig deep and found myself barking in a lower voice. The rowers responded accordingly, but I noticed that many of the rowers begin to display strain in their necks and I heard their breathing became more labored. Eventually, the other Harvard boat, stacked with stronger rowers, regained their lead, and won, but by a much smaller margin than they should have. While we rowed lightly to cool down, I looked up and saw that one of the rowers had exerted himself to the point that he threw up.
I never thought that I could actually motivate someone to exert himself enough that he actually threw up.
After the Cornell race, Linda gave me more opportunities to coxswain stronger rowers. The coxswain who had been observing Passover was back in the mix though, and as the final regatta of the normal season approached, it looked like four rowers and I, who had stuck with the team the whole season, would not have that one last chance to race. Linda made a few calls to the regatta organizers and got us a slot in open race for four person boats. With no weight or experience restriction, we had no expectation of winning, but we were each glad to have another opportunity to suit up. For one last time, I put on my Harvard spandex uniform and my Mr. Peanut hat. I got to direct a boat of guys I had gotten to know well and addressed the rowers by their names instead of calling out their seat numbers. I listened to the low rhythmic sound of the oars catching and entering the water together and emerging out of the water all at the same time, as if the blades of the oars needed to take a breath. I stayed focused on the race, but still took a second to peak at the geometric wake we left behind. As expected, we didn’t do exceptionally well, but it was some consolation that we finished ahead of two heavyweight boats.
At the final regatta, one of the Harvard boats won, coxswained by one of the guys with a strong athletic background. As tradition goes, when a boat wins, the crew picks up the coxswain and throws him in the water as way to celebrate and to playfully pay back the person who had been yelling at them for months on end. Everyone clapped as Alex landed in the river and the rowers in his boat all joined, jumping into the river as well. A lingering butterfly in my stomach morphed into a swarm of angry bees, unsettled and unsatisfied at not clinching a win.
I was a good sport though, stayed on dry land and applauded the Harvard victory.
After freshman year, I stopped competing with the Harvard men’s team. There was no incident or Bad Thing that had happened, but I realized that the time I was spending with the crew team was time I could be spending with people I cared about more. For many of the rowers, their social lives off the water revolved around the rowing team. When practice was over for me though, I felt most comfortable unwinding with my roommates, and performing with my improv group.
I still continued to coxswain through the intramural (IM) rowing program at school for the remaining three years of college. While I had gotten used to being a second fiddle coxswain, all of a sudden in the world IMs, many treated me like an expert. I found myself in a position thinking about line-ups, leading workouts on and off the water, and teaching others who wanted to give coxswaining a try. The IM program was as a competitive as one made it; a decaffeinated, virgin margarita compared to my time with the Harvard team. After a year of experience drinking the strong stuff, for me, the IM experience was light and refreshing. Each IM team had an A and B boat, which allowed for people of different levels of fitness, past rowing experience, and investment in the IM program to find a good match. In the more relaxed environment, all of sudden, my commentary had found an audience. I had became one of those overly enthusiastic pilots who gives more detail than the passengers care about regarding the route and cruising altitude, or in our case the temperature, the curves of the river and the acoustics of my voice as we passed under bridges. I got laughs when I complained to the rowers I felt stiff sitting when they were out of breath after finishing an interval at a fast pace. After we were done with our workouts on the water, which were early in the morning before the Harvard boats went out, I actually had fun chowing down on breakfast with the team in my dorm’s dining hall as I got ready for the day.
My senior year, the IM team I had been with was doing quite well, and had remarkably gotten the top time in the qualifying round and was seeded first going into the final. Another team had gotten a time only a few seconds slower and they had been in a different qualifying heat with different conditions, so the scene was set for an exciting morning on the water.
The morning of the race was cold; my knuckles were white. When we got off the water later that morning, I ran my hands under cold water and the usually icy water felt like it was scalding my hands. I wore my Mr. Peanut hat, and we had a strong warm up. No one messed up during the race, but about half way through, the other boat began to pull ahead. We had a respectable finish, but we didn’t win. After we crossed the finish line, the rowers caught their breath, disappointed but happy with their finish. On the return back to the boathouse, rowers can mentally check out a bit; the coxswain ‘s job isn’t done yet, though. I had to direct the rowers and steer around the many boats all eager to dock. We made it back smoothly, and put back our oars and the boat back on the racks. Rowers went back to the dock to collect their shoes and water bottles they had left behind for the race.
At that moment, the winning boat flung the coxswain into the water. I wanted to look away, but didn’t. I had spent four years in some capacity steering, weighing, timing, steering and docking. I had woken up early, learned the sport specific jargon, gotten familiar with the sharp turns on the Charles, and sometimes shouted until my voice was hoarse. I never experienced the exhilaration of being thrown in the water though because I never won a race.
The rowers from my boat were going to grab breakfast and had begun to leave the boathouse. I told them I would be there in a second. I wished that I had had the opportunity to cross the line first and as the crew locker room saying goes, be with a boat that “gets their cox wet.” It dawned on me that I had never felt this sort of disappointment. That said, I would have done little differently though and I found comfort in realizing I also had never felt this type of investment in athletic competition before. I wanted to win because I wanted to win, not because of what that victory might mean for my future, or what others expected. After these four years of crew, I no longer felt removed or scared of athletic, competitive grit, like I had on top of the monkey bars at recess, so many years ago. I had made it to the blacktop.
I gave the winning boat a wave and a congratulatory thumbs-up as the coxswain climbed out of the water. Then, for the last time, I left the boathouse.