Cinderella Squad
The Phenomenal Feats of N.U.'s First Crew
By Jack Grinold
In the spring of 1990, guests had assembled in Northeastern's spanking-new,
best-in-the-nation boathouse to celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary
of rowing at N.U. I had just finished speaking when a large, meaty paw
grabbed my shoulder and turned me around. "You made me cry, Jack,"
the man in front of me blubbered. "You made me cry for the joy of
it all."
The man standing there, tears streaming down his face, was Ernie Arlett,
our first crew coach. First crew coach and godfather to a boatload of Cinderellas.
It's a tale to match any bedtime story, and, like the best fables, it bears
retelling.
The first two heroes in this tale, though, are Harry Paulsen, BA'64,
and Northeastern itself. The university had been expand-
ing year by year, both in numbers of students and in size of the campus.
It was suddenly a major player in the Boston educational community. Yet
it was on hold athletically. N.U. participated in only seven sports, and
of those, three-cross-country, indoor track, and outdoor track-were realistically
only one. The last sport added had been football, and that had happened
in 1933. Northeastern athletics was ripe for growth.
In 1962, Paulsen was a junior. He hailed from East Haven, Connecticut,
and he was aware that an institution nearby, Yale, was savvy about boats.
He may also have been aware that Northeastern's three closest neighbors-Boston
University, MIT, and Harvard-had been patrolling the Charles River for
decades. Paulsen decided that he wanted to leave behind a legacy for the
class of '64. That legacy was to be the sport of rowing. Paulsen approached
athletics director Herb Gallagher with a student petition-signed by 1,666
of his classmates (out of a student population of 7,200)-to launch rowing
at N.U.
Herb was impressed and immediately delivered the petition to President
Asa Knowles. Now we all know that just about any endeavor, no matter how
meritorious, can weigh heavy until it takes wing on a bit of luck. Twice
blessed, Paulsen's effort soared. Knowles had spent a number of years at
Cornell. He was knowledgeable about rowing. He knew that all the Ivy colleges
had been glorying in it for years, and he was not averse to seeing Northeastern
rub shoulders with Ivied institutions. Across the board table from Knowles
sat an old Brahmin named Chandler Hovey, who loved water sports of all
kinds. He not only wanted Northeastern to start up crew; he was ready to
bankroll it.
The decision was made. Start crew. But how? Once again Hovey stepped
to the front line. "Don't try to save a few dollars by getting a part-time
coach," he said. "Get a good one." Athletics director Gallagher
had his orders.
The rowing world in the sixties was smallish. In the Eastern Association
of Rowing Colleges (that's the big boys), there were fourteen heavyweight
crews, and in Dad Vail (that's the little guys), there were about twenty
rowing colleges. Everybody knew everybody, so when a major university announced
plans to embark upon the waters, there was great interest. Herb was inundated
with requests for interviews. But one résumé piqued his interest
particularly. It was not from a young, hotshot, freshman coach; it was
from a middle-aged sculling coach and boathouse supervisor. And it was
from Harvard.
Herb well remembered his call to Harvard's athletics director, Tom Bolles.
He had already questioned Bolles a number of times about the feasibility
of starting a program. Bolles, a god in the crew world, had been positive
and supportive. Herb explained that he had received a résumé
from Ernie Arlett, supervisor of Weld Boathouse. Bolles's reply was instantly
defensive: "Oh God, not our Ernie." Herb thanked him, hung up
the phone, and immediately hired G. Ernest Arlett. Herb, a former hockey
and baseball coach, had scored a hat trick and hit a home run, all in one
phone call-and in a sport he knew absolutely nothing about.
On May 13, 1964, with President Knowles in charge, we announced the
launching of crew at Northeastern and simultaneously introduced our coach.
It was a great success, especially Ernie. "The coach is an Englishman
who has been around," stated the Boston Globe. "His name is Ernest
Arlett, who quotes Graham Greene and Will Shakespeare as easily as he discusses
stroking and laybacks."
Ernie was the find of a lifetime. He was not only from England, he was
from Henley-on-Thames, the birthplace of rowing, the oarsman's mecca, the
river where the sacred waters flow. He came from the age of the professional
waterman. His grandfather had rowed for prize money. His father had been
one of England's great oarsmen, second only to Ernest Barry, the world
professional single sculls champion, 191220. Ernie's elder brother,
Harry, had succeeded his father as one of England's best, and Ernie himself
had won a pound or two along the way. Early on, however, he learned that
his forte was coaching. At age seventeen he became boathouse supervisor
at Henley's Leander Club. Known as the Pink Palace, it is the world's most
aristocratic boat club. As snooty as Leander is, it is rightly as famous,
and it annually hosts some of the world's greatest scullers and fastest
shells. It was a superb proving ground for an aspiring coach and Ernie
stayed from 1930 until 1939, when all the shells were permanently stowed
away. There was shelling of another nature in Europe: World War II was
under way.
After the Allied victory, Ernie returned to coaching, both on the club
and college levels. In 1959, however, Ernie faced a crucial decision. He
loved England and he loved coaching, but couldn't have both. "In the
English system," he explained, "coaching opportunities are limited.
Professionals serve as advisers to amateur crews, but there are no permanent,
full-time appointments. If a professional wants a good situation, he has
to go abroad."
In the spring of '59, Ernie was coaching at a high school outside Philadelphia
and at the Bachelors Barge Club on the Schuylkill River. A season later
he was freshman coach at Rutgers, where his 1962 boat took second at the
Eastern Sprints. His reputation having reached Harvard, Ernie was soon
drawn into the coaching empire there. Two years later Gallagher would come
calling.
Ernie was just what Northeastern needed-probably what any novice crew
program needed. Mike McLaughlin, LA'71, who rowed on the Huskies' freshman
crew second year and went on to become the MVP of the 1969 eight, put it
succinctly: "When we hired Ernie we not only hired a great coach,
we hired two hundred years of tradition."
Ernie was everywhere at once. Arrangements were made to row out of Union
Boat Club, beside the Charles River Basin. Equipment was borrowed from
Harvard, MIT, and BU. Students were solicited, meetings held, and 120 able-bodied
students signed on as future oarsmen. Things were going too smoothly.
On the first day of practice, the program came to a "flying standstill."
The Charles River harbormaster, concerned to protect sailboats in the Basin,
refused to allow eight-oared shells to enter the river from the Union boathouse,
except in the early morning hours. With that declaration, the Husky oarsmen
were not only stuck in a rowing barge, but the barge was tied to the dock.
There's not a lot of romance or excitement in a stationary barge, and Ernie
was afraid his students would drift away.
He decided to do something a bit daring. He'd spied an old eight-oared
shell in Union called the Hecht. It was sitting and the oarsmen itching.
Ernie finally succumbed. He gathered his eight best oars and said to hell
with the harbormaster. When he started, the afternoon was beautiful, but
then a summer squall popped up. "I've never seen the river like it
was that day," Ernie recalled. "The waves were four feet high.
There was nothing to do but get off the water. It wasn't just a squall,
it was almost a hurricane." They headed for land and had just got
the Hecht ashore when a gust of wind caught it, lifted it, and smashed
it to the ground. The incident was immediately termed "The Wreck of
the Hecht." Ernie was shattered, but Vince Goglia, later to be elected
captain, broke the silence: "Don't let it get you down, coach. We
won't let it get us down." And they didn't. The event lives on in
the Hecht Award, a prize received for committing a glaring error and awarded
when it's unfortunately merited.
"The Wreck of the Hecht" was the low watermark. Leaving Union's
disadvantages behind, N.U. signed a new agreement with Riverside Boat Club,
upriver by Magazine Beach. The next few months proved fruitful. A good
crop of freshmen was recruited in the fall, and the summer novices were
growing into veterans. In late October, they were ready for a taste of
rowing, and Ernie scheduled a brush with two MIT shells and Harvard's Eliot
House. "We beat one MIT crew and Eliot House," said Ernie. "I
knew that day if all went well in the winter, we might do a pretty good
job in the spring."
The winter, however, posed a big problem: how to keep the oarsmen interested.
How to keep on teaching the subtle art of pulling an oar. All the other
colleges had sophisticated tanks that could simulate an eight-oared shell
rowing through water. Northeastern had nothing.
Ernie was not to be thwarted. He had noticed the emergence of a new
kind of backyard swimming pool-not the sunken cement sort but a freestanding,
cheaper version. Ernie bought one of those twenty-foot circular pools and
built a box across its middle that could seat two oarsmen. He then divided
the pool in half to curtail the turbulence caused by the rowers. It worked.
It didn't match the equipment at Harvard or MIT, but our novices didn't
know any better anyway. The odd structure was housed in the basement of
the Building and Grounds workshop. Total cost of Ernie's solution: $250.
The makeshift tank and some time-sharing in the weight room of Cabot Gym
were enough to get the program through the riverless months of the winter.
That first fall and winter taught Ernie a lesson, and his insight turned
into a blessing for the entire rowing community of the United States. Rowing
is a spring sport. That means the fall and winter can get very long for
aspiring oarsmen. Why not make the fall more competitive? Why not dangle
the carrot before Johnny in the fall so that he'd be going his fastest
when the bleak days of winter set in? Why not a head-of-the-river race
on the Charles like they had in England on the Cam and the Isis? In the
old, old days, when the boats were sturdier, those races were called "bumps,"
and you actually rammed the boat ahead of you to declare your superiority.
At the end, the survivor was called the Head of the River, like King of
the Hill. Ernie's idea made sense to the area's other rowing colleges and
clubs, and in the fall of 1965, the first Head of the Charles Regatta was
held. Now the single largest two-day regatta in the world, it attracts
rowers from all over the globe and a quarter million spectators annually.
It is also mimicked on the Merrimack, the Connecticut, the Schuylkill,
et cetera. It was Ernie's-and Northeastern's-first gift to American rowing.
Now came the selection process: the careful construction of eight people
in the right seats that would make the boat go its fastest. Because rowing
is akin to a three-legged race, tying the two fastest runners together
does not generally create the fastest three-legged entry. In rowing, the
sum of the boat is always greater than its parts. The piecing together
of the best eight men is almost a mystical exercise and the true measure
of a great coach.
Ernie selected his stern pair at the outset. The first to pull the oar
on the port and starboard sides, they set the pace. Since no one in the
boat could go faster, they had to be aggressive. Ernie settled on two sophomores:
Tom Waite, the lightest man in the boat at 167 pounds, at the stroke seat,
and Don Moodie, second lightest at 175, at the 7 seat. For the 6 and 5
seats, the muscle of the boat (also known as the "Engine Room"),
Ernie was fortunate to have two six-foot-five-inch, 200-pound recruits
available, sophomore Roger Borggaard and senior Bob O'Loughlin. Borggaard
would go on to be the MVP of the '66 boat, the captain in '67, and a member
of the U.S. Olympic selection camp in '68. Gary Kilpatrick, a senior, won
the 4 seat. He would take the MVP honors in his only year as a rower and
would go on to become a successful coach at Princeton for more than two
decades. Glen Schuhmacher, a sophomore, rounded out the Engine Room at
the 3 seat. Two sophomores rowed the bow pair. They had to produce power
and balance, since a tipsy shell does not move swiftly. Vince Goglia at
2 and Dick Linck at bow were equal to the task. Coxswain was Frank Baker,
an oddity of sorts at five feet ten inches.
Never one to tinker with success, Ernie would stay with this eight for
the entire year. All novices, they would feel the warm breath of the equally
novice sixteen behind them in the junior varsity and third varsity shells
throughout the season.
Ernie's philosophy that first year was to row at a moderate rate (from
thirty to thirty-four strokes per minute) with maximum efficiency. But
efficiency was bought at a price: no pain, no gain. Roger Borggaard remembered
the day well. "Ernie took us way upriver where we would be alone.
He started us doing 500-meter pieces at full power, one right after another
for a full hour. I never knew I could hurt so much." Ernie, smiling,
simply reflected on the words of the poet John Dryden, "Sweet is pleasure
after pain."
The big day arrived sooner than a lot of us wished. I knew that Ernie
was always praying for that extra hour of practice. "So little time,
so much to learn," he would always quip.
First we had a little pomp and circumstance to observe as we christened
our new shells. We were all nervous as could be, both administrators and
oarsmen. Thanks to Ernie, we avoided the disaster that befell MIT the next
year, when an uninitiated athletics director, instead of pouring champagne
over the bow, christened a shell as if it were a destroyer. It spent the
next month in the rigger's bay with a smashed front end. Ernie was an old
hat at christening, and he made sure ours was proper. The varsity shell
was baptized the Chandler Hovey, for our benefactor, and the junior varsity
boat the Elizabeth Morss for Hovey's daughter. The honorees were pleased.
The oarsmen fidgeted.
The Boston Traveler said it all on Friday, April 16, 1965: "Northeastern's
newly formed armada hits the Charles tomorrow rowing its 500th mile in
quest of an opening day victory. The odds appear longer than the enthusiasm,
however. Nonetheless, at 4:30 Red and Black shovel blades will bite into
the oil slick water of the Charles Basin and history will be made."
The odds were long indeed. N.U.'s opponents were Marietta, Amherst,
and the Harvard third varsity. Marietta, always one of the best small-college
crews in the nation, had opened its season the week before with a defeat
of the reigning Dad Vailchampion Georgetown crew. Amherst, more than
respectable, had defeated Clark the previous week. The Harvard third varsity
was, well, the Harvard third varsity. For comparison, think of fielding
your start-up football team against Notre Dame JVs in its first game. We
had borrowed one of MIT's large inboard launches for the day, and our dignitaries
boarded, then proceeded up the Basin for the historic race. The varsity,
in their black tank-top jerseys emblazoned with a red "Northeastern,"
launched the Chandler Hovey and rowed slowly downriver into the choppy
Basin. The day was sunny, but a brisk headwind would tire the oarsmen over
the one and five-sixteenths mile distance.
The traditional start boomed forth: "Ready, ready all, row."
But row Northeastern did not, at least not very well. After forty strokes,
N.U. was down a full length. Steadily maintaining a low stroke count of
thirty-two, however, the team slowly recovered. Passing Amherst, then Harvard,
they ran down Marietta at the Mass. Ave. Bridge, approximately halfway
home. The Ohio eight had not come all the way to Boston for nothing, though.
They responded with a power twenty (twenty strokes as hard as you can pull)
and regained the lead. Refusing to panic, stroke Tom Waite led the Huskies
to the finish at 7:12.2, a full length and a half over Marietta.
The Boston Sunday Globe commented, "Books are filled with tales
of a rookie hitting a home run his first time at bat in the majors, a brand
new boy running for a touchdown the first time he gets his mitts on a football,
and a tyro shooting a hole in one the first time he goes on a golf course.
Story book stuff, sure, but all those gee-whizzers were bettered Saturday
when Northeastern won the first crew race it ever tried." Yet the
Globe crew expert, John Ahern, would caution in that story, "Good
as it was, it is not an indication that Northeastern is ready for [major
races] Eastern Sprints, the IRA, and Henley." Mr. Ahern would regret
going public with his doubts.
It was a fantastic beginning, and when Ernie came ashore at the finish
line, I greeted him in tears. He would remind me of that moment twenty-five
years later when he greeted me in tears. Ernie said of that first row,
"It's the biggest thrill I've ever had. Nothing can ever approach
it." Ernie would have reason to qualify that statement in the months
to come.
Was the opening regatta a fluke? The following week's President's Cup
race at Poughkeepsie, New York, would tell. The number-one opponent was
Drexel; Fordham also posed a problem. Iona, St. John's, Trinity, and host
Marist caused no concern. It was the Huskies' first race off the Charles,
and Ernie was worried. The waters were rough, so N.U. had to drop its stroke
to thirty. Still, the eight managed sufficient power to defeat Drexel by
half a length over the 2,000-meter course; the other five trailed badly.
To further brighten the afternoon, the JV won their race, and the freshmen
finished second yet were honored as the heroes of the day. The freshmen
were well on their way to victory at 1,000 meters when the seven-oar crabbed,
not only unseating himself but also the stroke. The coxswain rescued the
stroke's oar but seven's was gone. The frosh raced the next 500 meters
with six oars, and the final 500 with seven, and still finished in second
place. "Those oarsmen just would not quit. Even when everything went
wrong they did not quit," said Ernie.
The following week's test would far exceed that of the previous two
weeks. The novices were challenging one of the big boys. Brown University
was not Harvard, but it was one of the best of the East. Ernie also had
to worry about bloated egos. The fledgling Huskies were emerging as media
celebrities. Sports Illustrated would refer to their spectacular start
as "one of the heartwarming stories of the crew season."
The race on the Seekonk River with Brown was, as the Providence Journal
described it, "a real down to the wire battle." The Huskies,
going out at a higher stroke than normal, thirty-four, jumped to a deck-length
lead and held it for the first 1,000 meters. Brown recovered and took a
half-length lead. With 300 meters remaining, the Huskies headed into their
sprint. They took back a seat every 50 meters until, for the final twenty
strokes, Brown was left with only a deck-length margin, which they held
for the five-foot victory. Brown was clocked at 5:41.8 to N.U.'s 5:42.3.
Equally surprising was that the Huskies' JV and freshmen were victorious.
The Journal would stress, "Northeastern crews gave the Brown rowing
fraternity quite a jolt-proving that their fine showings in earlier regattas
this spring were not flukes." Brown would go on that year to finish
third at the Eastern Sprints.
The following week was the big one: the Dad Vail Regatta for the small-college
championship of the nation, to be rowed for the twenty-seventh year over
the one and five-sixteenths mile course on the Schuylkill River in Philadelphia.
Twenty-one colleges would contest the title. The prerace favorite was a
toss-up among Drexel, with the home-river advantage; Marietta, with tradition;
Georgetown, with the '64 trophy; Rollins, with the '64 JV title; and the
novices from Boston.
On the Tuesday before the races, the N.U. News quoted Ernie saying,
"Everyone has been in excellent shape; spirits high; and there have
been no health problems." On Wednesday morning, varsity coxswain Frank
Baker fell ill and was ruled out for the Dad Vail. Ernie consulted the
regatta chairman. Could Northeastern use its JV cox in both the JV and
varsity races? The answer: yes.
That afternoon, a happy Dave Hingston, from Milton, Massachusetts, inherited
both jobs. At five feet five inches and 125 pounds, Hingston fit the traditional
image of a coxswain more so than the five-foot-ten-inch Baker. Though all
oarsmen share the same boathouse, the same shower, sometimes even the same
shells, there is a pecking order. Hingston was terrified. Not one oarsman
in that varsity boat had even spoken to Hingston, and now he was supposed
to guide them to victory. Stroke Tom Waite pulled him aside and calmed
him down. But at practice, Ernie screamed at him for not holding a straight
course.
Thursday the crew members loaded their shells and proceeded to Philadelphia.
That night Hingston roomed with two of the varsity oarsmen. He was on a
cot. He woke in the middle of the night with a strong case of nerves but
dared not move lest he wake one of the beasts he had to harness the next
day.
On Friday the varsity and freshmen had to row trial heats to bring the
number of shells down to twelve for Saturday morning's semifinal heats,
which would then send the final six shells to Saturday afternoon's championship
races. Ernie had two things to say to his oarsmen before Friday's races.
Number one, he told them, "Boys, in England we have a saying-'move
or bust.' If you had thrown caution to the winds in the last ten strokes,
you might have beaten Brown." Number two, "Do not waste strokes
in the trials. Save them for the finals. Race to place, not to win."
Both the freshmen and the varsity finished second in their heats to
move them into Saturday's semifinals. All three Husky shells then placed
second in their semifinals to advance to the six-boat finals. In the varsity
race, the opponents to beat were dreaded Marietta, which had surprised
Rollins of Florida, George Washington, St. Joseph's, and Amherst. Ernie
was, as usual, everywhere at once, making sure the boats were in tip-top
shape, oarsmen were ready, and the dispatch times were adhered to. In rowing,
to be late to the starting line is to be gone from the race.
The freshman crew brightened the day by coming from behind to defeat
Marietta by half a length. A half hour later, Dave Hingston steered his
junior varsity past Rollins to inch them out by five-tenths of a second.
Hingston had no time to celebrate. A referees' launch was waiting at the
finish line to pluck him out of the JV shell, speed him back up the course
to the starting line, and deposit him in the varsity shell. Secluded, the
varsity had heard no news, so Hingston informed them that the freshmen
and JVs had done their jobs. Now it was their turn.
The day was overcast, but a crowd of 10,000 was lining the race course
for what had become a highlight of the rich Philadelphia sports scene.
Marietta, still rankling over its earlier defeat by the Red and Black,
got off to a good start; after a half mile, they had a one-length lead
on the other five shells. By the mile mark, they had a length-and-a-half
lead on N.U., with the other four boats out of the hunt for first. Marietta
was rowing as high as thirty-eight; the Huskies were not to exceed thirty-four
in the body of the race. With less than a quarter mile to go, N.U. started
to close the gap while still understroking its opponent. By 200 yards,
the advantage was cut to a length. "Then the crowd of about 10,000
suddenly seemed to be cheering for us," said Ernie. "And all
of the graybeards of rowing in the Philadelphia area were amazed."
Once again N.U. was gobbling up seats with every other stroke. Marietta
had paid heavily for rowing high early in the race. With twenty meters
left, Northeastern pulled even and, by the finish line, surged forward
to win by a deck length. Gary Kilpatrick told Ernie, "Coach, all any
of us could think about in those last strokes was 'move or bust.' "
Officially it was N.U. at 6:45.8 and Marietta at 6:46.4. Unofficially
it was pandemonium. Poor Dave Hingston got a double dunking for his efforts,
one for each of his championship shells. Ernie, who had been craftily dodging
the same fate at the hands of his minions for twenty years, could put off
the inevitable no longer. His last act was to toss me his wallet. In went
the coach. I, in the meantime, commandeered the first camera I could find,
and hired a total stranger to be our official photographer.
N.U.'s achievement was nothing short of momentous, even historic. The
Dad Vail Regatta had been rowed for twenty-seven years, and never had one
team swept all three races. Thirty-two years later, the record remains
unmatched. What makes the achievement truly astounding, though, is that
every single oarsman in every single boat was a novice with only one spring
of rowing experience. Not only had Ernie performed this miracle in one
year; he had done it single-handedly. Most programs also paid a freshman
coach and a rigger to care for the shells. Ernie had handled all three
jobs himself. "Nothing like this first season has ever happened in
crew," Ernie told the Boston Globe. "I had great ambitions and
hopes for these boys, but I never expected anything like this. The credit
must go to the boys. This is even grander than the victory in our first
race." Ernie had found cause to qualify his earlier statement.
The victory created problems-but good problems. The Eastern Association
of Rowing Colleges (EARC) had to decide whether Northeastern should be
invited to the
following week's Eastern Sprints and/or the following month's Intercollegiate
Rowing Association (IRA) Regatta. The university had to decide whether
to send the Cinderella eight back to Ernie's hometown, site of the Holy
Grail of rowing, the Henley Royal Regatta.
The EARC ruled that there was not sufficient time to add N.U. to the
Sprints' elite fourteen. Seedings had been arranged and programs printed.
The IRA, though, wasn't locked up. The Eastern Collegiate Athletic Conference
invited the Huskies to become the fifteenth entry in the sixty-third rowing
of that prestigious event, to take place on Lake Onondaga in Syracuse,
New York. The Huskies would also travel to Henley with the blessing of
President Knowles. "We thought that they deserved a top-notch reward
for a top-notch effort," he noted.
The IRA is the oldest major regatta in America. It was first rowed in
1895, three years before Northeastern University was founded. It annually
attracts the finest crews from all over the nation, with the exception
of Harvard and Yale, who yearly do their four miles on the Thames River
in Connecticut. From the east came Cornell, Brown, and Navy; from the west
California, Stanford, and Washington.
Most of the colleges were finished with exams, so some shells had already
been on the lake for a week's time. Northeastern, with its quirky co-op
schedule, was just getting ready to enter exams, so for the five underclass
oarsmen, an exam proctor was sent along on the trip. Not only was N.U.
facing the best crews in the nation, not only had our boats alone never
competed in the IRA, but we were also the only team in exams. Thank God
for the resiliency (or stupidity) of youth, for it never entered the heads
of our boys that they were at a disadvantage. In fact, Dave Hingston, elevated
to official varsity cox, recalls that they were angry at Harvard and Yale
for staying away; our boys wanted to beat them too. Still, Hingston also
remembers he and his pals staring in awe when one of the famous shells
would glide by in practice. Among the other crews, N.U.'s rowers felt like
"pros," says Roger Borggaard. Here they could eat and sleep rowing
for an entire week.
It was a glorious Saturday that June 19. "The temperature was in
the mid-seventies, and the sun splashed its warm glow on the early arrivals
who picnicked on shore and moored their pleasure boats along the log boom
at the finish line," described the Syracuse Herald Journal. N.U.,
though, seemed to be in a fog-bank. The day belonged to Navy, with Cornell
second and Washington third. N.U. was twelfth, besting Syracuse, Princeton,
and Columbia. Only the realization that those three crews had been rowing
for a combined 267 years was sufficient balm for the wounds inflicted that
day.
While the oarsmen returned to the Charles River for their final week
of practice, their shell left for New York to start its slow trip overseas
to Henley-on-Thames. A small town about thirty-five miles upriver that
boasts eighty-nine pubs and one and five-sixteenths straight miles of water
bordered by long reaches of lush green grass dotted with ancient oaks and
weeping willows, Henley is a movie producer's dream of old England. On
the Buckinghamshire side of the river is the Phyllis Court Club, once a
Roman encampment and now an ultraexclusive club. On the Berkshire side
is the almost-as-exclusive Stewards Enclosure, which holds 10,000 of England's
upper crust during regatta. On race days, the old "oars," in
their tattered bright blazers and school caps of decades long past, crowd
the space, their elegant ladies in long skirts and floppy Victorian hats
by their sides. The assembled will eat pounds and pounds of strawberries
and thick cream and wash it down with gallons and gallons of Pimm's Cup
and champagne. In between the two shores lies an eighty-foot-wide, two-lane
course upon which it is the dream of every oarsman worldwide to row.
A weary group of Bostonians arrived in Henley on Sunday, June 27. Stepping
off the plane were the varsity eight plus cox and two spares from the JV.
Nonrowers included athletics director Gallagher, business manager Bill
Nelson, me, and Ernie and his wife, Edith. The Arletts, both natives of
Henley, had not been home in the six years since they had emigrated. They
returned not just to a place but to their family. Brother Jack ran the
Arlett Boat Livery; brother Harry was one of the area's more respected
coaches; mother Elizabeth, at eighty-one, was the matriarch of one of the
tiny hamlet's oldest families. This town embraced Ernie and Edith, and
it embraced Northeastern too.
That morning, the bishop of Oxon had delivered his annual regatta sermon
from his pulpit in the Henley Cathedral. This time, however, he was a little
partial. "Now we will wait and greet our Ernie," he said. "You'll
win, Ernie, you'll win. I know it." Ernie was welcomed home from all
quarters, as reported by the Globe: "Leander and the Phyllis Court
Club had plans for welcoming Ernie-the returning natives had other plans.
His reputation was made in a little barn-like boathouse on River Street
called the Henley Boat Club. It is old and decrepit and it is as sophisticated
and exclusive as the L Street baths in South Boston. Sunday night it was
the rowing capital of England." The Globe staffer writing that piece
from Henley was John Ahern. He happily recanted his April prediction that
N.U. would not be ready for the IRA or Henley.
Northeastern was entered in the Thames Cup, second only in importance
to the Grand Challenge Cup. The favorites in the Thames Cup were defending
champion Eliot House of Harvard, N.U., and the undefeated Cornell University
lightweights. The Huskies had drawn Queens College of Belfast, Ireland,
for their first row.
Before we knew it, race day had arrived. Each crew was allotted a small
number of seats in the sleek, ancient referees' launch. Herb Gallagher
invited Chandler Hovey, who had flown over for the occasion, Edith and
Harry Arlett, and me. Going up the river from the boat tents, past the
Stewards Enclosure, past Remenham Club, up to Temple Island and the start
line was like taking a time machine and turning it back. Turning it all
the way back to 1839, when the first Henley was rowed. Little had changed.
The shells were sleeker, and the launch had an inboard motor, but it sounded
ancient. The referee, J. Beresford, Esq., an English rowing legend, wore
a high Edwardian collar with a pink Leander tie and cap. After taking what
seemed hours to roll up his official's flag, he gave a quick, "Ready,
row."
The Huskies got a good start, took the lead, and were never headed.
They finished the row in 6:53 with a verdict of "easily." At
Henley, the time of the losing crew is never given, only the distance or,
if that is embarrassing, then the term "easily." To this eye
the embarrassing distance over Queens College was two lengths. Ernie's
crew had won handily, and John Ahern painted it thusly, "It's fashionable
here to give a 'Hip, Hip, Hooray' to a crew that is admired. And Northeastern
got more hips and hoorays than the visitor ever heard in a long lifetime
and when the cheering ended, the hand clapping started and continued for
more than a minute." Cornell also won that day and would be the Huskies'
next hurdle.
The next morning a friendly group of Huskies approached the Cornellians
about betting shirts, an American tradition not practiced in Britain. They
were promptly rebuffed and felt insulted.
The mood at the start line was tense. No smiles were exchanged among
the sixteen Americans. Once again the start was smooth, and Northeastern
pulled out to a half-length lead at the quarter-mile mark. By the mile
mark the Cornellians had run them down and proceeded to build a half-length
lead. Across from the Enclosures, with about 300 yards to go, coxswain
Hingston called for the old cure-all-"move or bust." The Huskies
responded, and twice cut into the Big Red lead only to drift back. The
large crowd of more than 20,000 clamored for more, but there was no more
to be had. Cinderella lost her slipper. The Big Red won by half a length
and would go on to win the cup. The Stewards Enclosure echoed with, "Well-rowed,
Northeastern." A shining chapter in sports history had ended. Ahern
of the Globe would add the final summary: "Indeed every soul should
feel elated. This was a tremendous achievement, a Cinderella story that
may never be equaled, and for someone who has experienced all the sports
thrills, this season-long story of Northeastern crew tops them all."
Ernie Arlett steered N.U. crew for another dozen years, retiring in
1977. By the time of his death in February 1997, crew had solidified its
place in the Northeastern pantheon with the completion of the Henderson
Boathouse in 1989. The boathouse for the first time firmly planted Northeastern
on the shore of the Charles. The Huskies now had a home befitting their
twenty-five years of tradition, which had opened in such a blaze of glory.
But glory is not just measured by races won or races lost; it lives
too in the quiet moments. Early mornings spent in a pair, way upriver where
the banks close in and make you feel one with nature. Or, in the big basin
of the Charles on a fall evening as the sun sets, its last rays bouncing
off the State House's golden dome. For as Ratty said to the Mole in The
Wind in the Willows, "There is nothing-absolutely nothing-half so
much worth doing as simply messing around in boats."
Jack Grinold is Northeastern's sports information director and associate
athletics director.
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