Coxswains Not Above Making Waves Leaders Of Cougars’ Varsity Eight Keeps Boat Heading In Right Direction

“ONE! Just lengthening it, Two-Oar, relax; TWO! Kristi, get your blade! You got it; THREE! No problem; FOUR! You got it, let’s go!”

Hunched over in the bow of Washington State’s Varsity Eight shell, Stefanie Magill grunts with each surge of the boat and then barks out cadence and words of encouragement to her crew through the microphone on the headset she is wearing.

She checks the readout from an on-board computer that tells her the crew’s number of strokes per minutes. She glances left, then right, sizing up the progress of rival shells, then determines that her crew needs to pick up the pace.

“FIVE! All right, we’re down … SIX! … on five of the crews, lengthen it out; EIGHT! Uumph! OK, relax; UUMPH! Settle it down; TEN! Bring it down two beats, find that rhythm. ONE! Let’s go, you guys!”

Her commands become laced with four-letter words as she verbally coaxes stroke after powerful stroke from her exhausted teammates. She slides her hands along the sides of the shell, moving a pair of handles connected to the rudder back and forth to keep the shell on line.

“TWO! Stand up and tall, lean on it! THREE! This is the one; FOUR! Settle; FIVE! That’s it, we’re coming back! SIX! Yes, this is it! SEVEN! We’ve got to bring it down two beats … UUMPH! … instant focus now, listen to me … UUMPH! … we’ve got to do this together; TEN! Relax, relax!”

Never once during the course of a 2,000-meter race does Stefanie Magill raise a megaphone to her mouth and shout “Stroke! Stroke! Stroke!”

“That’s still one of the biggest misconceptions about our sport,” WSU crew coach Tammy Crawford said. “Contrary to what people think, I can’t ever remember one of my coxswains yelling, ‘Stroke!’ And if I ever did, I’d probably tell her to knock it off.”

The duties of the coxswain in today’s modern eightperson shells have become incredibly complex. As the “skipper” of WSU’s Varsity Eight, Magill is expected to steer the boat, check her crew’s rowing technique and correct mistakes, keep the crew aware of where it stands in the race, let the crew know what it needs to do to win and keep her coach - who is watching helplessly from the shore - from going off the deep end.

“Coxswains are like jockeys on a racehorse,” Crawford explains. “The minute the boat leaves the dock, they’re in charge. Race Day is hell for a coach because you can’t do anything once the race starts.”

But having a coxswain who knows what’s she doing can help ease the anxiety. And both Magill and sophomore Ann Hoang, who handles the Cougars’ Junior Varsity Eight boat, are those kinds of coxswains.

Both will be on board this weekend when the two boats compete in the Collegiate National Rowing Championships on Lake Harsha in Cincinnati.

“The coxswain is kind of the mediator between the coaches and the crew,” explains Magill, who had no athletic experience prior to becoming the coxswain on the Cougars’ Novice boat two years ago. “Once you’re out there on the water, you’re pretty much in control of the race strategy.

“Every time you go into a race, you’ve discussed strategy with your coach, but sometimes you need to improvise and change your strategy because of what happens on the water. The coxswain is kind of the brains of the boat and keeps the crew together or brings them back from the dead.”

Almost as demanding as the job is Crawford’s task of finding someone who is qualified to do it.

“It’s an incredibly tough job,” admits Crawford. “I don’t think I could do it, and I know an awfully lot about the sport.”

What Crawford looks for normally is a motivator who is more slight of build than other crew members but every bit as aggressive and competitive.

“I would like to find a way to recruit coxswains,” she says. “A lot of them tend to be track athletes, really - people who understand what it takes to compete and who can articulate that to their crew during a race.”

Neither Magill nor Hoang are averse to using profanity to get their points across.

“It’s funny to listen to Ann,” said Cougars assistant Jodi Winchell, who helped talk Hoang into trying out for coxswain’s position on the Novice boat two years ago after she accompanied a friend to a team meeting just so she had an escort on the way home. “If you meet her on campus, she’s friendly, polite and articulate.

“But get her out on the water in the middle of a race and she talks like a drunken sailor.”

And when was the last time a drunken sailor yelled, “Stoke! Stroke! Stroke!?”

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