Rowing Club
NEVER BEFORE has the Connecticut River been such a highway of traffic for eight-oared and fouroared shells as it has this autumn. The rowing club, with a membership of almost 90 students, has been busy five days a week, teaching novices the art of rowing and organizing the more experienced oarsmen into squads for the intramural races.
One sunny afternoon the crew broke all existing records by getting 77 different men out for practice between the hours of one and six. The coach, Jim Smith, never left his coaching launch for the full five-hour stretch, but met each boatload a half-mile up the river and instructed the men on the straightaway, often letting two rival eights race together for a while to relieve the monotony. One coxswain, Bill Hartman by name, sat cramped in the little stern seat all afternoon and had to be lifted out as the supper bell rang.
The number of fairly accomplished oarsmen that has been developed is gratifying to the club executives. Two complete varsities and two freshman eights have been plying the waters daily with an eye to the schedule of intercollegiate races being planned for the spring, so that next April Coach Smith will have a group of 20 or more capable rowers from whom to choose his first varsity. In that group will be at least four men from last year's varsity that beat Williams and Boston University and lost to Yale's third and fourth varsities.
With its fall membership for 1937 triple that of last fall, the club has been hard put to accommodate the large turnout. One setback came when an over-anxious yearling rested his foot on the fragile bottom of the training barge, leaving two four-foot cracks in the one-eighth of an inch thick cedar hull. Two students and Coach Smith worked three days to patch up the damage.
The club plans to row as long as weather permits and then plans a lay-off until February, when indoor practices will commence for the spring season. Meanwhile a benefit performance of some kind will be presented to start a fund for a new shell which will be needed before spring.
