Happy Thanksgiving

Just a quick post to wish you all a wonderful Thanksgiving with friends and family. Many people ask the question "For what are you most thankful?" and I would probably respond with ideas of my family, friends, health, work environment, safety, etc. However, a stronger question might be "What are you DOING to demonstrate your gratitude for all that you have been given?"

I don't believe that anybody is purely self-made and so being aware of your natural talents and gifts as well as the opportunities that you have earned by using those gifts is important; verging on spiritual.

Happy Thanksgiving all!

Floor Care

Unbelievable - LG and I went to work on the exercise room floor today with a cleaner, sealer, and finisher using one of the big floor buffers. It gave me a total new found respect for the people who maintain really nice buildings and floors...Our outcome was a little less than uniform but still much improved. The whole place looks brighter and cleaner and we'll complete the edges of the room probably on Friday.

A great weekend of football action as well - every team that I was rooting against on Sunday won and won big! I was looking forward to the following:

• Titans defeat the Jets - I love the idea of a perfect team or a team that is preparing at a high level all the time.
• Dolphins to defeat the Patriots - Bill Parcells bringing a team to the playoffs after going 1-15 last year is a testament to great coaching and personnel moves.
  
• Eagles defeat the Ravens - I just dislike the Ravens and want the path to the playoffs for the Steelers to be easier.

Instead...none of those things occurred and the Jets, Pats, and Ravens all looked pretty indomitable and impressive (especially those g******m Ravens). As for the Steelers, they're heading to Foxborough this Sunday and I can't wait to see how our defense tries to lock down Randy Moss and have James Harrison and Lamarr Woodley attack Matt Cassel. For having the most challenging schedule that the NFL has seen in the past decade I think the Steelers are doing a pretty nice job (winning and losing some really close games).

Swim Meet and Squash Matches

The weekend is upon us and we just mopped out our aerobics room for usage by the swim team who will have a home meet tomorrow - best of luck to Kate, Madison, and Theresa as they go to represent Trinity IN the water versus ON the water. The two-sport athlete is alive and well at the College and I love that they are keeping their athletic experience broad and competitive.

Also just watched Trinity women's squash play the Stanford Cardinal - how amazing is it that a NESCAC school can compete with a university as large as Stanford and come out on top. There's something pretty exciting about the high expectations that our scholar-athletes have and how there's absolutely no intimidation factor. In fact, I don't know too many colleges that are eager to come and play on our home courts.

Question for all of you: What drives you to do better? Where does that impulse come from and what areas are you striving for excellence?

Thursday Update (written on Friday)

Short and sweet - worked out in the gym and on the squash court (humbled very badly by the men's baseball coach...) and had a couple of great conversations with our athletes who are continuing to see great progress. It always amazes me to think about how people gauge improvement...is it going faster over the same distance? Going the same speed but for longer? Is it going the same speed but with less rest? Is it going slower but feeling like it's so much easier? Okay, probably not the last one...going slower isn't an option but I think our athletes can gauge improvement in many ways as long as they think about them first.

We have some recruits on campus now and I'm really excited for both of them. Their academics are top notch and they seem like really thoughtful engaged athletes.

Olympic Lifting & Progress

Great fitness class today - short and sweet where almost everybody exceeded their expectations doing pull-ups and push ups. People were ripping their hands open on the bar and proudly displaying a little bit of red and I couldn't help but think of what a huge change that was from the beginning of the semester.

Tried my hand at some Olympic snatch lifting and put up more weight than I have before without thinking too much about it. I think if I can focus on extending more I'll be able to go up at least another 10-20 lbs. I'll keep my very modest max to myself right now.

As for progress we're starting to have some very excited rowers coming by the office to talk about their new found progress in strength and conditioning. The more the better!

Equipment and Opportunity

Overall a productive day - our entire erg fleet is now operational and we're still manipulating our facility and equipment to give our athletes the maximum opportunities to train. A word of advice: when receiving large shipments of fitness supplies pay for indoor shipping as we had a huge palett of equipment left outside.

Also, had a great conversation with one of the other head coaches of a woman's team on campus - we discussed the differing challenges that female scholar athletes face when choosing a college experience and then some of the differences between sports. My argument is that rowers, swimmers, and track runners typically cannot get by on pure skill and need to back it up with disciplined effort; hence if you don't have a certain level of discipline you're not going to enjoy those sports or experience success.

Another question for everyone else: how much can we learn from other sports? We have three athletes that are also swimming for Trinity this winter and I love picking their brains about what we can learn from their training methods, approach to competition, team atmosphere, etc.

Good few games of squash today - a few days of ankle rest and I was far quicker on the court than I have been or perhaps that was just a product of moving better between shots. Boathouse Team Store Link

Boathouse Sports Team Clothing Order Page

To all students, recruits, parents, alumni, and friends - you can order amazing quality authentic Trinity Rowing gear via our new team ordering page - there are some new items that we've added from last year including knit caps, the Solaris Pullover, Men's and Women's Steeple singlets, as well as mesh shorts and Dominator sweat pants. All of the items are shipped directly to you from Boathouse Sports and will arrive in 2-3 weeks after your order.

Just in time for Thanksgiving and Christmas these items are all great for the race course, working out, or wearing casually. You can click on the picture or click here to purchase your gear at the Trinity Rowing Team Store

Vespoli Conference Recap & Team Meeting

6:00 AM Departure from New Haven - 9:30 AM Arrival in Philadelphia - 11:00 to 4:30 PM Vespoli Conference - 4:30 PM Departure from Philadelphia - 9:45 PM Arrival in New Haven (5 hours and 15 minutes - somebody should have taken the Tappan Zee Bridge) 10:40 PM Arrival in Hartford - yeah travel! Special thanks to Pat Tynan and Ryan Sparks for doing all of the driving.

Listened to great presentations from Steve Hargis, US Junior Development coordinator, Todd Kennett, Cornell Varsity heavyweight coach and program director, Chris Clark, varsity heavyweight coach at Wisconsin, and Will Porter, varsity women's coach at Yale University. I think it can be really difficult for coaches to talk about what they do to make their programs successful and all four of them did a great job. The common threads I picked out were that they were concerned with the fitness of their athletes and how to recruit and identify better ones (not that much of a surprise I suppose). Perhaps the most interesting aspect of all of their talks is what type of team atmosphere they like to create and how success is very often cyclical in nature depending on the athletes.

We had a great team meeting where we introduced some key flexibility concepts and enjoyed a great birthday cake in honor of Nini Case and Natalie Jones who are celebrating birthdays this week. Nothing makes a meeting better than the promise of baked goods at the end. We're also completing our JL order which allows us for the first time to pay for our rowers' uniforms.

Thank you Mr. and Mrs. Gittleman for the great batch of cookies!

Tanks: The Unknown & a Senior Lunch

Lots of progress today and some excellent workouts - had a great discussion with the senior leadership group over lunch at the Trinity Restaurant as well. We're trying out a number of mechanical changes in our tanks to try and standardize the work and make it more repeatable over time. At this point we have 20 Model D and E ergometers in our tanks and another 24 ergometers in our slide center. The number of training options are really increasing!

My fitness I class did a great workout today on the ergometer and a couple of other activities that were awesome to watch - a couple of guest students joined in and I was surprised to learn that they had never even been in the tank room or known that it existed! It just goes to show you that the general student population just may not understand exactly what rowers do or even where they do it! Anyway, the two guest students, a junior woman and a senior man went head to head and finished absolutely tied despite doing exactly the same distance and type of exercise. I thought it was tremendously inspiring! Neither had any rowing experience prior to today's workout.

Looking forward to the Vespoli Conference in Philadelphia on Sunday - should be interesting to hear coaches talk about their successes in the past year.

Workout & Big News

Slowly getting back into working out with daily activity - did some dead lifting, squat high pulls, pull-ups, a little bit of isometric core work and then a solid 60 minutes of squash against a wily master's player. So much of the sport is about movement and sharing the court and I think I'm slowly understanding that each strike of the ball doesn't end when the ball leaves the strings but rather after you've taken position based on the type of shot your opponent is (hopefully) forced to hit next. My huge weakness appears to be that after an aggressive shot I simply can't follow up and position myself for the volley, drop, or killing rail.

Also, huge news! My brother asked his girlfriend to marry him last Friday and she accepted! She's a really wonderful person and I don't think I've ever heard my brother's voice be any more excited or happy than when he called to relay the news. Congratulations and bravo Derek and Kristen!

NCAA Field Hockey results

Our field hockey team won their NCAA tournament first round game against Neumann College by a score of 7 - 0. Using the wonderful sports writing cliché that the score didn't reflect how much Trinity dominated the game. Seeing those athletes apply continual pressure on their opponents was great to see but it also made me wonder about the tactics of the other team. There didn't seem to be any flexibility to their game and looked like they kept doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result.

Took a day off of training today to rest a bum ankle and wrist so hopefully I'll be a little sharper in the weight room and on the courts tomorrow. Great to see our two sport athletes Kate Bress and Madison Helies in the pool today!

Squash & Leadership

There's been a great initiative amongst the Athletic Department here to start a squash ladder and there are nearly 25 people signed up from coaches, to GAs, to athletic trainers, etc. Finally an outlet for all of the working out that we all do on a daily basis and a means to measure improvement. That's probably what I miss most about rowing in college - the sense of purpose and mission that required my friends/teammates to commit to one goal.

Squash is one heck of a humbling game though and I believe it's particularly analogous to rowing in that the work you put in does not necessarily result in improved performance right away. That's what I'm finding now as I'm trying to add variety and depth to my game - because I'm not good at those skills my opponents are able to take advantage of my attempts at better shots. However, if I only shot the same way every time because I knew I could do it my game would never expand and never develop to a higher level. In some ways, it's kind of like early season races - I think athletes tend to overuse those results as a barometer of future projected performance as opposed to a mirror for their current level of preparation.

Next up - a discussion about leadership - what ways can you exhibit it?