An Ongoing History of Rowing at William and Mary

The Birth of Rowing at William and Mary

William and Mary is the second-oldest college in the United States. It is the only one to still retain its Royal Charter. It had the bad sense to take the wrong side in both the Revolutionary War and the Civil War, and as a result of the second it was occupied by the Federal Government, which closed it down for twelve years. When it re-opened, it did so as a public institution, even though Virginia already had a flagship liberal arts college (the University of Virginia, founded by William and Mary graduate Thomas Jefferson). It is possible that these little set-backs inhibited the formation of a rowing program back in the days when other traditional colleges were starting theirs.

Of course, we do not really know why rowing never got started here. The College takes its traditions seriously. Yet despite the image it cultivates, and despite the fact that there is water everywhere around here, it did not have a team competing in one of the world's oldest sports - and the oldest intercollegiate sport - for nearly three hundred years.

All of that changed around 1985 (we think), when a student named Glenn Grossman put in the effort to form a club. He benefited from the guidance of Ed Hornsby, a Yale graduate and former member of the US national team. Hornsby had been on the ill-fated 1980 Olympic squad which had its dreams dashed by Jimmy Carter's silly boycott. At least one major book has documented the psychological trauma suffered by the rowers that year, and Hornsby apparently took the boycott even worse than the others. He retreated from society to Williamsburg, where his family lived. The opportunity to help out the fledgling club gave solace in the last two years of his life, and the club will always fondly remember his name. Hornsby committed suicide in 1987.

Another Yale graduate, Steve Carlson, also aided the team in these early years. Carlson had previously been instrumental in building programs at Imperial College, London, in the mid-1970s and the University of Michigan in the late 1970s, and he helped underwrite the Tribe's first years.

Getting Started: the Martell Era, 1987-1991

After Hornsby's death, the program was fortunate enough to find Tom and Heidi Martell, who had both rowed on national champion varsity crews at the University of Wisconsin and who happened to work in the Williamsburg area - Tom as a silversmith in Colonial Williamsburg, Heidi as a school teacher. The Martells lovingly nurtured the program along in the early years.

The team got its first boat in 1988. We are not really sure how it managed to exist for three years with no equipment, but apparently its motto was “We’re William and Mary Crew: we run stairs."

In the late 1980s, old equipment started to trickle in: several ancient Schoenbrods (at least one from Harvard and one from Princeton), a Kaschper, and an even older Pocock affectionately known as the "Duct Tape Eight" because of its main structural component. The club also picked up from UVA a bunch of wooden oars and a set of aluminum oars (an experiment gone awry from early-1970s England). The first proper fully-carbon equipment did not arrive until later: a set of Dreissigacker oars in 1991 and a Vespoli four in 1992. The Tribe competed mostly in eights and stayed almost exclusively within Virginia.

With the arrival of equipment, the crew needed a place to practice on the water. Jamestown Marina provided the first home to the program. The Marina was obviously not set up with rowing in mind. Boats had to be handed by one set of people on the land-level dock over the pilings and down to another set of people on two different (and different-height) floating docks. At low tide, this task became even more difficult. To get out of the Marina under a bridge required some very precise steering from the coxswains. Most of the people who hung out at the Marina were bass fishermen and mechanics, and got amusement from watching the goings-on.

The Martells left the program in 1991. They had started to have children, and the demands of a growing family became their primary concern. They had coached here for four years without receiving a penny, and had left the program vibrant and boisterous. Soon afterwards, they moved away from Williamsburg.

Transitional Years, 1991-1994

The departure of the Martells left the program in a hole. The seeds had been planted, but the program desperately lacked the nurturing hand of its two full-time coaches. Sean Hart, a recent graduate, took on the job of Head Coach in 1991-92, until it was decided to find money to hire a coach to relocate to William and Mary. Richard Ruggieri, a graduate of the University of Rhode Island and then the novice men's coach at Coast Guard, became the program's first professional coach in the Fall of 1992. At about that time, the program started looking for a permanent home. A search uncovered one possible site for a boathouse as part of a new development, and an architectural firm willing to donate time pro bono drew up a preliminary design which took into account historical zoning requirements and environmental concerns. The failure of the College to back the plan combined with the protests of a group of Williamsburg locals scuttled the idea in the public hearings.

Instead, Governor's Land, about ten miles away, stepped in. Governor's Land was expanding its development, and envisioned wealthy land owners sitting on their back porches sipping tea and mint juleps and watching the crews train. They allowed the team to build itself a temporary tin and wood boathouse until a full-scale boathouse could be bundled into the construction of a new marina. Unfortunately, the Chickahominy River proved unrowable for most of the year. The cost of dredging proved too great, and so Governor's Land decided to shift its marina to the James River. Concerns about the distance from the College to the boathouse and about the unprotected conditions on the James led to the Club deciding to end its relationship with Governor's Land. The Club remained in the tin boathouse there, however, until it could find another site.

Kelly Crace, the Club's faculty advisor who lived in Governor's Land, facilitated contacts between the Club and the development. Crace was a sports psychologist who had rowed at North Carolina and had counseled the US Olympic team, among other people. He was instrumental in providing sound guidance, often smoothing the tricky relationship the Club had with the College and with the local community.

Spring 1994 saw William and Mary's first medal at a national championship regatta, achieved when the program stacked its women's novice four and finished second at the Dad Vails. The varsity women also stacked a four, which won at the GW Invitational and at Mid-Atlantics and continued on to attend the old Cincinatti Division One national championship, where it finished sixth in the 3V 4+.

In these years, the club appears not to have solidified its position or come up with any positive plan for future development. Membership was up, there were even some competitive crews, and indeed the scanty records indicate that the club should have taken off at about this time. Yet aside from those two women's fours and the 1992 men's freshman eight which finished fourth at the Southern Intercollegiate championships, most results were not competitive and the Tribe avoided fielding the big boats even if it had the numbers. Most students quit after their novice year. The Club went into chronic debt and lost most of its members. From the sound of it, this was not due to lack of effort, as the officers appear to have worked themselves silly. William and Mary Rowing seems to have been suffering from the direction-less malaise which afflicts many young rowing programs in the Deep South.

The New Foundation, 1994-1996

In 1994, the Club replaced Ruggieri with Gene Jeffords. Jeffords, who had left a career as a nuclear engineer to coach the sport he loved, had a proven track record of laying foundations for southern collegiate rowing programs, starting way back in the late 1960s at his own alma mater, Florida Tech. Under Jeffords, the program purchased new equipment and found a site to row from that was convenient to campus. During the Fall of 1994, the Club moved its dock to the Kingspoint Community Center on College Creek, just two miles from campus. College Creek provided four miles of protected water shared with only the occasional canoeist, and emptied into the James River which allowed for unlimited mileage for crews able to cope with conditions. The Kingspoint Community is populated by a fair number of faculty, and the residents often stopped by our dock to offer moral support and good cheer. However, the Club could not build a structure there because an underground gas pipeline required that the ground remain clear of all non-movable property. The Club's trailer doubled as a boathouse.

Jeffords' development work was crucial for the future survival of the program. Although the number of athletes dropped precipitously, only those who showed seriousness and individual qualities remained. By 1996, the program had shrunk to two varsity women's fours, two novice women's eights, one novice men's four, and a lone healthy varsity man. The majority of these did not return for the 1996-97 season. But the foundations were there on which to build a competitive program.

Unfortunately, Jeffords could not stay long enough to see that development, the fruit of his labor, materialize. When his military wife got transferred, Jeffords had to move off to Northern Virginia in the Summer of 1996. Kim Snyder, who had been the women's novice coach in 1995-96, replaced him in the interim.

The Three-Year Development Plan, 1996-1999

In the Summer of 1996, George Livingston and Charles Ehrlich moved to Williamsburg. Livingston was a retired banker who was a national champion sculler for three years in the mid-1950s and who had won the Canadian Henley nine years in a row in three different boat classes. Ehrlich was a political historian out of Oxford who had coxed, rowed, and coached at many levels on both sides of the Atlantic and specialized in program development. Ehrlich was assigned the task of building a men's program essentially from scratch, and began by coaching the novice men in September of 1996. Livingston took the helm of the women's side of the program in November.

One of the first things Ehrlich and Livingston set out to do was to change the focus of the program, to push it ever upwards. The program began a three-year-plan, the bar set to rise each year until William and Mary could become one of the most competitive programs in the mid-Atlantic region. They scrapped the old racing schedule which had consisted of regattas strewn across the south with travel expenses so high that the club could not afford to take everyone to every regatta. The new concept was to stress maximum participation, to make rowing the most rewarding learning experience at college, and to emphasize that every crew had to conform to the same high standards of dedication and character. William and Mary withdrew from the Southern Intercollegiate Rowing Association and shifted its attention northward. The focus in 1997 was very much on the freshmen, the groundbreakers upon whom the program would be built. But a varsity women's four composed of Jeffords protégés remained and was a dominant force. The Tribe did not compete in Mid-Atlantics due to exam conflicts, but three crews - the women's varsity heavyweight four and the men's freshman heavyweight and lightweight eights - had been favorites.

Livingston stepped aside after the 1997 season to spend more time as a retired person and with his wife and young son, and Ehrlich took charge of the women as well as the men. Livingston did however spearhead the drive to restart the dormant Friends of Williamsburg Rowing. The Friends had been a booster organization which also had as its original goal to encourage rowing in the local community and to found a Williamsburg Rowing Club which could work in conjunction with the College club and could even be an independent source for a boathouse site and funding. The organization had been founded in about 1993, but had done very little previously - buying the team things it did not need or want and often quarrelling with Jeffords. It had last held a board meeting in 1995, and since then had failed to raise money, failed to move ahead on the local Williamsburg community issues, and had even failed to allow the team access to the money it had previously raised on the team's behalf. The existence of this organization was imperative if the team was to be able to grow, yet the Friends showed no interest. Failure to meet for over a year voided the old officers by law, and thanks to Livingston and others the organization got back up and running in September of 1997 and wasted no time in getting back to work bringing in donations for equipment purchases, reopening the search for a boathouse site, and relaying the groundwork for a community-based Williamsburg Rowing Club.

Meanwhile, an overwhelming return from the 1997 squad produced the largest and most competitive varsity squad William and Mary had ever seen for the following year. And these students, in turn, provided the inspiration for another intake of freshmen. With positive leadership from the top and an intensive training routine, William and Mary could start new traditions on its ascent. Priority went to varsity eights for the first time in years. The first varsity women finished their year ranked eighth in the country for Division III, the highest-ranked unfunded crew in the whole United States. The first freshmen men finished second at Mid-Atlantics, where both men's and women's second varsity crews took bronze. The first freshman women, early-season favorites, were struck down by injury and illness mid-season, but even so emerged the fastest William and Mary novice women's crew ever. The cancellation of the semi-final and final rounds of Dad Vails due to unsafe river conditions put a kink in the end of the season, but could not prevent crews from around the country taking notice of the Tribe's rapid rise. For more detailed results from the 1997 season, click here.

The team's commitment to success in the classroom as well as on the water received special recognition after the 1998 season when the United States Rowing Association named three students to its Collegiate All-America teams - two to the First Team and one to the Second. This marked the first time rowers from William and Mary had ever received this honor. We were also the only club-status program to have anyone so honored, with three of the thirty-two awardees.

By the end of the 1999 campaign, William and Mary Rowing had fully developed as a program. Several years of hard work on the women's side paid off, with the women's program becoming one of the most feared in the country at the Dad Vail level. The men, a long a step behind the women, took a big jump to become one of the most competitive programs in the Mid-Atlantic and on the verge of matching the women in accomplishments in the 2000 season. Both the men and the women finished 1999 ranked in the top ten in Division III (Dad Vails): the men finished tenth and the women finished sixth.

The Tribe also set several program milestones at the 1999 Mid-Atlantic Championships: the program entered more crews than ever before (ten), had more crews than ever before reach the finals (eight), had more crews than ever win medals (four: men's varsity - Silver, men's second varsity - Gold, women's varsity - Bronze, and women's first novice - Silver), won its first ever Gold medal in an eight (the men's second varsity), and had its first ever medals in the men's and women's varsity event. Other highlights from the year included the varsity women winning the Club Eight event at the Head of the Schuylkill, and the varsity and first novice women carrying undefeated records through the first half of the season up until the GW Invitational, which had its strongest field in recent years. The first novice women went on to capture the Bronze at Dad Vails - the first ever medal for a Tribe eight at that regatta. Meanwhile, the USRA named three additional Tribe rowers to its Collegiate All-America teams.

One of the keys to the year's success was the first complete full-time coaching staff in the program's history. The success of the program in previous years had attracted coaches to relocate to Williamsburg in Fall 1998 despite no promise of salary, and once here they were able to make their mark. As a result, each of the four squads had its own full-time coach, compared to previous years when full-time coaches had to cover more than one squad or squads needed to be looked after by part-timers. Ehrlich was able to concentrate on bringing the varsity men up to speed, while Scott Belford, out of Rutgers, took the varsity women to the next level.

Consolidation, 1999-2001

The 1999-2000 season saw great consolidation in the program. In the Fall, the Tribe made its first-ever appearance at the Head of the Charles Regatta. The Spring 2000 season was marred by bad weather which caused the cancellation of many races, but the Tribe crews, under the guidance of new Head Coach Todd Haynes (a successful Canadian club coach), left the Mid-Atlantic Championships with a record medal-haul: five eights came home with medals, the highest total number ever won by William and Mary. The Varsity Lightweight Women and First Novice Women each took Silvers, and the Varsity Men, Varsity Women, and Second Varsity Men each got Bronzes. The finish propelled the Varsity Lightweight Women into the Division One national rankings, where they found themselves #20 in the coaches' poll. The Second Varsity Men and the First Novice Women also reached the finals at Dad Vails.

While the team's performance on the water demonstrated that it had consolidated its position in the Mid-Atlantic region, it was events off the water and behind the scenes which helped solidify the long-term survival of the program. Good news came from an increasingly active Friends of Williamsburg Rowing organization. A Williamsburg meeting of Douglas Turner (1956 Olympian and former W&M parent), Crace, and Livingston, at the house of Tim Bodine in June 1999 led to renewed momentum in the search for a long-term home for William and Mary Rowing within the context of the Williamsburg community. Ehrlich also exchanged his coaching hat for a long-distance role in the Friends. By the fall, Turner assumed the presidency of the Friends, and the organization entered a new pro-active phase. A community meeting in February 2000 engineered by Crace, Bodine, and Livingston, produced a substantial local interest in rowing, on-going searches for a boathouse site on good water turned up several possibilities, and the Friends increased exponentially their web of contacts.

This momentum carried into the 2000-2001 year. After extensive examination of all bodies of water in and around Williamsburg, the Friends selected a new site for the team at the Little Creek Reservior in Toano. The reservoir, operated by James City County and owned by the City of Newport News, would provide a dependable, sheltered 2000-meter racecourse six lanes wide, with two adjoining arms of a mile and a half each for practice, as well as a site on which the Friends could construct a boathouse. The project was launched with the full enthusiasm of the local government, and the course was first put to use at the home regatta with Virginia Tech on 31 March 2001. Because of environmental restrictions which banned the use of gasoline-powered engines on the reservoir, the Friends set to work to develop an environmentally-friendly electric-powered launch suitable for coaching (researched and arranged by new Friends Director Stanley Lewis, a former US national-team member and retired engineer, and by Livingston). The Friends organization determined to lead the world in its move to silent, wakeless, ecologically friendly coaching launches, believing that a prestigious, traditional community like Williamsburg with one of the most highly rated institutions of higher learning in the country in W&M should rightfully be leading the way in preserving our natural treasures.

On the water in 2001, under Head Coach Alia Reese, highlights included a bronze medal for the women's varsity eight (racing, as usual, in the NCAA Division One event) at the Mid-Atlantic Championships, and a gold medal for the women's second varsity (racing in the event for crews not in NCAA Division One). The varsity men defeated up-state rival George Mason in a 2000-meter regatta for the first time in the team's history, when the two programs squared off at the Occoquan Sprints. Soon after, the team dedicated its first-ever brand-new men's eight, donated by alumni (men and women) from the Class of 2000.

In the spring of 2003, led by head coach Brent Figg, the Tribe made a dazzling appearance at ECACs where the Women's Lightweight 8+ took first. Around this time, the team once again changed locations to the Chickahominey Riverfront Park on College Creek, where they remain today.

A new Head Coach, Rob Montague, joined the team in the Fall of 2003 from the University of Conecticut and led the Tribe through many sucessfull years. Most of the results from these years can be viewed here. In the summer of 2006, the team made its first steps toward making the Riverfront Park their permanent home by constructing a shed to house oars, slings, tools, and other equipment.. The team continued to grow and develop under Rob Montague until the Fall of 2006 when new Head Coach Lisa Milne took his place. Also in the fall of 2006 the Tribe purchsed a new bow-coxed four. At the Head of the Occoquan Regatta in 2007 the boat was named Robert J. Montague by former members of the team in honor of their coach.

The Fall and Spring Seasons of 2006 and 2007 were full of many small victories and many small defeats as the team experienced a drastic shrinking of both the men's and women's teams. Despite the challenges, however, the team continued to make a strong showing at regattas with five out of six boats placing at Mid-Atlantic Collegiate Crew Championships and three of four boats making it out of heats at Dad Vails with one boat making it to finals. The Men's Lightweight 4+ made club history as the first men's boat to place at a major regatta when they took 3rd at Dad Vails.

Fall 2007 presented the team with many challenges including a depressingly small novice class as well as poor weather and a hard race schedule. However, the team pulled through starting a lightweight sculling team and having solid showings at all the regattas they attended. The men's team also had the opportunity to row a lightweight men's boat at the Head of the Charles regatta in addition to their Varsity 4+.

The origins of Rowing at William and Mary remain clouded in mystery. What we know has come down to us through legend. If you have any information about the clubs activities from 1985 to 1996 or after 2001 please contact us at rowing@wm.edu.