Will It Make The Boat Go Faster?

Most of us who competed in athletics as kids would agree that there were life lessons to be learned from every sport. Every sport requires a specific skill set and presents different challenges, but one sport taught me more about teamwork than all the others. It’s a sport that has helped me be a better firefighter and teammate many years later: the sport of rowing, also known as crew.

Those who row refer to it as the ultimate team sport, where every member must pull their weight if the team hopes to win. Trust is the single most important component for the team’s success. If one rower is out of sync or if the coxswain — the person in charge — steers a bad course, the team fails to perform to its utmost ability.

To achieve rowing success, each member of the crew needs to see themselves as one piece in a puzzle. They need to be willing to become part of something bigger than themselves. When one crew member puts their entire effort into a stroke, they are counting on each of the others to do the same, every stroke.

If one member becomes tired, that individual needs to find an extra burst of strength to pull harder so they won’t let their teammates down. Somehow, everyone knows when one person in the boat isn’t giving their best effort.

When a crew rows well together, there is no better feeling. From the sound of eight seats sliding in unison to the sound of the oars entering and exiting the water together, it's a thing of beauty.

At the same time, the sport is unrelenting, requiring a high level of discipline and pain tolerance. Yes, rowing is a painful sport that requires you to push the limits of your body from the first stroke of a race to the last. There are no breaks and no injury timeouts, just effort, pain, and exhaustion.

This could be overwhelmingly daunting and dismal if you are suffering on your own, but not when it's shared with a team of determined warriors. Who wouldn't love that?

In my senior year in Kearny High School, I had the honor of rowing in one of the fastest boats in America. We were a team from a working-class, blue-collar town in northern New Jersey who practiced on the polluted Passaic River. Our competition included the privileged prep school kids who called swanky boathouse row in Philadelphia their home. We used to joke that those kids received oars on their first birthdays.

My lightweight eight team was one of the most successful I have ever rowed with. I’ve spent a lot of time analyzing why and have come up with three reasons.

First, we set the goal of being the first crew of eight from our school to make it into the national championship heat. Second, we had complete faith in one another. Third, we constantly asked ourselves one unifying question: Will it make the boat go faster?

The way we trained on the water was always effective, but as a team, we began to think about what we were and weren’t doing when we were not on water. When it came to our land training, when we wondered if we’d run enough hills or needed to run one more, we’d ask that question: Will it make the boat go faster?

Every member was so committed to that goal that we rarely made any decisions without thinking about the rest of the crew. What are you eating to keep your weight down? Are you going to the prom the weekend of the regatta? Should we go for a run on our day off?

Will it make the boat go faster?

That was how our daily decisions were made. Individually, none of us felt very powerful, but as a team, we felt invincible. The confidence, the camaraderie, the humility, and the effort were all there.

We didn’t beat every team we raced against. But we beat most of them, and we were within a seat-length or two of beating the others. I remember we were feeling great as we approached the national regatta that year.

We were sitting in the locker room when our coach, Andy, came in. He had just come from a meeting with the head coach of the program and the look on his face told us all that whatever was about to come out of his mouth was not anything we we wanted to hear.

“Coach wants to split us into two teams of four again this year,” he said. There was a collective groan in the room. This was our biggest concern — a worst-case scenario.

During our junior varsity year, we wanted to be the first eight to make it to the national championship heat, but just before the event, we’d been told we needed to split into two fours because the head coach thought that would give us a better chance of winning.

We came back for our senior year more determined than ever to make our mark as an eight. We’d spent our entire time bonding, and now we were going to have to split up and compete against each other, again. We would never know if we were good enough to make the finals as a complete team. No one would ever know. All that work would be for nothing.

Then, one of the boys on the team spoke up and said what we all felt but didn’t dare say. With one word, he summed up our collective thoughts: “No.” The room fell silent, then came the words I will never forget him adding: “We would rather go down and lose as an eight than win as a four.” The entire crew agreed. We wanted to keep this crew intact.

We were more than a team – we had become a family.

“Okay, I’ll tell him,” Coach Andy said, with a proud smile that let us know that he knew how we felt about the situation. He left the room to relay the message.

To our delight, we received permission to go to Virginia and compete as an eight. No one apart from us thought we had a chance to make it into the championship heat to compete for a national title.

But we won our qualifying heat in dominant fashion, breaking the course record and entering the championship as the fastest boat in the country.

I would love to tell you that we went on to win the national title, but we didn’t. That year, the top prize went to a more experienced, more-deserving team. But 20 years after that race, our boat crew reunited to be inducted into the Kearny High School Athletic Hall of Fame as one of the best sports teams in the school’s history.

As we sat there in the auditorium, along with many other great teams from various sports, I looked around at the faces of the men with whom I’d shared that experience and realized what had made our team so great. It was simply a matter of priority. We put the boat and our mission first.

Consider for a moment the parallels between rowing and firefighting. In either arena, in order for the team to perform at the highest level, there must be total commitment from every member, as well as a high level of trust and belief in one another.

Imagine, for a moment, what would happen if your firefighting crew were to operate with the mindset I’ve described. You’d set your goals together, and every action you took thereafter would be with specific intent.

Before they acted, everyone on your team would answer the following question: “Is what I am about to do going to help us accomplish our goal?” If the answer is yes, they’d do it. If not, they wouldn’t do it. It’s that simple.

Whatever your goals are, if you are trying to make your boat go faster, every action you take or don’t take must be attached to that goal.

Poking holes in a boat will not make it go faster. You are either trying to help your team win, or you are preventing them from doing so. The same can be said about every member of the team.

The next time you are contemplating what your team needs to work on in order for you to achieve your goals, take a moment to sit back and consider whether anyone on your team is poking holes. And who are the hard chargers trying to make the boat go faster?

Sit down with your team to set expectations and make sure everyone is aligned with the goals and the mission. And then start rowing together.