It was about a week before the NCAA Championships, and something was just not right with Virginia's Varsity Four Crew.
The quartet of talented rowers, who all happened to be freshmen, were nagging each other during practice, and their inner-boat rivalry was reaching a head. Assistant Coach Veronika Platzer had seen enough.
"Veronika just came up to us and told us to row like big stupid athletes," Libby McCann said. "We always had too much talking -- it brings too much into it. All this technique -- we know it, we don't have to verbalize it."
And thus the secret formula to the crew's success was born. All they had to do to ensure success was visualize their hair a few shades lighter.
"During that practice we stopped and said 'Let's just stop thinking and nitpicking. Let's all row like blondes,'" Kerry Maher said. "After that we knew we were a team. It turned from a sibling rivalry to us working together."
This uncommon approach worked perfectly for the crew of Renee Albers, Ashley Jones, Maher, McCann and coxswain Launa Forehand, as the group raced to first place at the NCAA Championships May 30 in Rancho Cordova, Ca. As a team, the Cavaliers finished tied for sixth in the event.
The Varsity Four boat opened the race with their patented quick start -- an Ohio State coach likened it to a shooting cannon -- and maintained the lead throughout, crossing the finish line a full three seconds before the second-place University of Washington crew.
It should come as no surprise that this group would make "row like blondes" their core philosophy coming into a championship race. As much as they were known for their lightning-quick starts and ability to maintain a lead from start to finish throughout a race, they were also famous for their lively antics and sense of humor.
"A lot of times when we were sitting on the line before a race we would be hocking loogies, spitting, singing songs -- just trying not to be uptight," McCann said. "None of the other teams would do any of that stuff."
The young rowers never seemed to have a hard time finding ways to relax themselves before they went on the water. McCann in particular was known for her joke-telling skills that kept the crew smiling, even if they may have been laughing at her instead of with her.
Here are a couple of McCann's more popular gut-busters:
Q: What sits at the bottom of the ocean and twitches?
A: A nervous wreck
Q: What's brown and sticky?
A: A stick
Maybe not award-winning material, but enough to keep the team loose and smiling during tense moments.
Their playfulness and tendency to goof around was more than just comic relief for these four. It served a practical purpose as well. In addition to their strategy of "rowing like blondes" to avoid overanalyzing their performance, they used "leopard energy" to come through at the end of a race.
With the Varsity Four crew's tendency to jump to a quick lead, maintaining enough strength to close out the finish of the race was crucial. That's where leopard energy comes in.
"In a race, you always want to pull your brains out," McCann said. "But, you need to have some energy at the end of a race, just in case a leopard escapes from the zoo and you have to run away from it."
McCann wore a pink leopard print slap bracelet during races to remind her teammates about it during each race.
Such antics might not have gone over as well with a less tight-knit group, but a big part of the Varsity Four crew's success was their ability to get along.
"We bonded a whole lot and we were always seen together," Jones said. "Chemistry on a boat really matters a lot."
Their chemistry was strong despite the fact that they had only been placed in the same boat together a couple of weeks before the postseason. With rowers getting faster or slower throughout the season, head coach Kevin Sauer often shuffled his lineup to fit the changing performance of his athletes. As a result, the four freshmen found themselves together in the Varsity Four. The group wound up having all the intangibles necessary to win a championship.
There was their coxswain, Forehand, who was described by her teammates as a "really feisty girl," among other things. The job of the coxswain is to keep the rowers aware of their competition behind them as well as encouraging them to keep rowing strongly. The comparably diminutive Forehand (measuring 5 feet 6 in a boat of four 6-footers) always made sure her voice was heard.
"Launa always had a fire under her whenever we got into the boat," McCann said. "Right before the start of the championship race she screamed 'Bring it!' at the top of her lungs, and that really pumped us up."
At the front of the boat was Maher, who along with Alberts in the third spot was more of the quiet, serious one. Jones (second spot) and McCann (rear) provided more of the comic relief and, according to McCann were "goofy all the time."
The crew had their rough moments early on but in the end it was their differences that helped them get along so well.
"We were all extremely stubborn girls who were unwilling to let anyone take anything from us," Maher said. "We were all perfectionists, but we were there together to fight for something."
The fight proved to be successful that Sunday afternoon two and a half weeks ago. But it wasn't what you would call an average championship experience. Seconds after they clinched the title, Maher collapsed from exhaustion. Although her teammates were scared at first, after they realized she was OK, they were beaming with pride.
"That's the goal of a rower -- to pass out at the end of a race," Jones said. "It shows that you were able to exert everything you had."
And what was Jones's first emotion after she saw her teammate was all right and realized they had won the championship?
"I needed food," Jones said.
Not your common, run-in-the-mill answer. But then again, this was not your common, run-in-the-mill crew.
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