Every coach I know has a hiccup story - even the legends. It usually involves some combination of outright defiance, or, more heartbreakingly, of athletes making the regrettable miscalculation that their youthful resilience is unlimited. Here are a couple of variations:
A superbly talented varsity eight knocks on the door of victorious greatness all season, finishing a very close second at regatta after regatta to another superbly talented crew (one that will ultimately be named "Crew of the Year," in fact). In the weeks leading up to their last opportunity to knock off their nemesis, the eight is making remarkable progress, gaining speed and poise all the time. Guys who haven't mastered rowing in pairs start making breakthroughs in the small boats. The eight starts to jump in ways that it previously has not. This already-fast crew senses that it can go even faster, and does. Then their college's traditional spring party weekend rolls around. Five guys and the coxswain abstain from beer etc./staying up all night etc. Three guys get drunk and are found carousing in that state, at the boathouse, after hours (of course, right? Everyone knows the boathouse is the right destination for the end of a great, blotto collegiate evening). Two weeks later, the crew loses to its nemesis by a few tenths of a second in their final opportunity, at the biggest championship regatta they attend annually. Even if they had stayed sober, they might still have lost, but that's not the point - those three guys wilfully and with forethought threw a hiccup into the process. As it turned out, the coach never would have found out had the campus police not told the assistant athletic director about the incident at the boathouse. That, of course, is not the point either. Their hangover hiccuped the crew's preparation. It's unforgivable, even though it happens all the time. But it permanently branded that crew an also-ran who threw away their shot, and gave them all something to regret. Had those three stayed sober, they could have crossed the finish line a deck down and known they did everything they could. Since they didn't, they're stuck forevermore as the crew that might have broken through and conquered but chose not to. Irrespective of the outcome, the difference is huge.
Story 2: A pair of high school crews, one of each gender. The boys have been chasing their archrivals all year and getting closer all the time, the girls haven't lost all year but have seen their rivals close the gap recently. Both are looking forward to a huge out-of-town regatta at which they are fast enough to medal if not win. Before the penultimate race of the season, several of the boys sneak out after curfew. The only senior in the boat tries to dissuade them from doing something stupid, but the muddle-headed juniors prevail, probably saying "dude - coach is already in bed - he'll never know" or something even more sophomoric if not vulgar. As icing on the cake, they then break one of the crew's very few non-negotiable rules of away regattas: no boys in girls' rooms and vice-versa. They get caught. The coach and the school have no ethical choice but to prohibit them from going to the out-of-town championship race. The members of the crew who had no part in nor knowledge of the transgression can't compete either because there aren't enough of them to fill the planned entries. Rotten luck for them to have their fates dictated by somebody else's hiccup.
Of course it will happen again, countless times this year, in fact. That's not the point. The point is that such hiccups, in contrast to the literal kind, are entirely preventable. Don't choose them and your crew won't get them. Guaranteed.
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