I’ll always remember my first time in a boat. The older girls pushed off and I spent the whole session convinced I was about to be tipped out. Fast-forward through half of my life, as I write this from the boathouse before training, my love for the sport continues. Yet this (seemingly never-ending!) journey did not translate to my peers.
From the twenty five of us that started together in the first year of high school, only five remained by the final year. Throughout high schools in Aotearoa New Zealand that narrative is not unique. Compared to a national average drop-out rate of 20% in sport between the ages of 14 to 18, rowing has a rate of 70%. Is the sport’s attitude to what constitutes effective coaching a key part of this problem?
As coaches I believe that all of us want the best for our athletes. Yet I also believe, from hearing about my peer’s experiences, that high school rowers are leaving because of the very environments that we create. Wanting, knowing, and doing what’s best for our athletes are three separate factors, and without critically analysing our practices through a range of lenses, we may be failing to deliver on them.
At a high-school level we must ask ourselves: are we more passionate about supporting a few to win or many to develop? While rowing continues to grow in popularity at a high-school level, the sport remains vulnerable. How many athletes is our sport losing out on because by the young age of 17 they have already had enough? Intense programmes are disengaging athletes but they are seen as the bread-and-butter of our role.
Without boring ourselves with too much theory, tightly-controlled and intense programmes may be creating athletes who we can term “docile bodies”. This term comes from Michel Foucault’s theories on power and control. Docile bodies are individuals who can be controlled through disciplinary technologies. Technologies of docility work through enacting control over space, time, and our way of experiencing movement. It is necessary to have control as a coach, but the ways in which we exert that control are not always obvious or balanced. In unconsciously shaping our athletes in this way, we are controlling how they perceive and enjoy the sport.
Rowing is a unique sport, in that I would argue that coaches enact the strictest examples of control of any high school sport, both out of necessity but also because traditionally rowing demands that we uphold the highest level of discipline. But is this all our sport is capable of teaching us? And do we want the wins and the high-performers if it means we’re pushing away a large number of others from enjoying and benefiting from the sport?
If we look at how time (from Foucault’s theory) is controlled in high-school rowing programmes we can start to gain some insight into why high-schoolers disengage.
Timetables
It is common practice for sessions to be planned roughly as follows: eight a week, before and after school as well as weekends, with training running anywhere between one-point-five and four hours at a time. From their first season, rowers as young as 13 participate in a programme that runs similarly to a high-performance schedule. While other sports may build up to this level of commitment over the high-school years, rowing finds itself in a predicament where a high level of technical skill is needed to be able to actually enjoy being on the water and competing.
Unlike other sports, there’s no competition catering to ability. Instead of being in your year‘s ‘C’ netball team and playing in a matching-ability division, you find yourself in your age group’s third 8+, racing against everyone in the age group, and not progressing past the heats at any regatta. No one enjoys sitting on the sidelines, especially when you take into account the effort and organisation that goes into attending a full weekend of racing so coaches find themselves in the predicament of keeping up with the top programmes, running upwards of eight sessions a week, while retaining athletes who could more easily train three times a week in another sport, which would be enough to stay competitive.
Unfortunately, there are no obvious solutions to this problem and timetabling almost feels out of our control as coaches. It does mean, however, that other decisions under our control take on more importance as areas in which we should appraise our methods.
Temporal elaboration of the act, correlation of the body and the gesture, body-object articulation
A lot of long words to sum-up technique! The timing of a crew, parts of the rowing stroke, the movement of the body, and position of the rower in relation to themselves, their crew, and their oar, are all examples.
In the beginning, novice rowers need a lot of direction, how to stay in time, follow cox instructions, and not bang their handle on their knees. As someone just starting out, it can feel as though nothing you do is right and improvement is painfully gradual. As coaches then, it is our priority to include our athletes in the learning process and give them a sense of control over the small things. Sometimes slowing things down in the beginning actually allows us to progress more efficiently in the future. To be constantly told to do this, do that, go here, you’re doing this wrong, is tough day-in, day-out. Let alone as a teenager, a time of life where we feel like a lot of decisions, what we’re allowed to do and where we can go, are out of our control.
Can we try to give some of this control back? Can some sessions be choose your own crew or workout? Can coxes try rowing and rowers try coxing every now and again? Can we let crews choose their own technical exercises?
Exhaustive use
Through seeking a technique that is ever closer to perfection, coaches commonly refer to “making each stroke better than your last”. Time is precisely controlled by the coach, effectively “influencing how rowing is felt and experienced” and “removing the athlete from the process or act of being a rower”, a docile body.
To quote one of my old coaches: “I can’t give you the drive to win, you have to want it for yourself”.
But how can you “be” a rower, and how can you want something for yourself, if it’s being constantly subliminally reinforced to you that there is only one correct way to do this? If coaches are creating docile bodies over time from their pool of athletes, it is no wonder this pool becomes shallower over the seasons as athletes become apathetic.
While technologies of docility are employed by a coach because they want what (they think) is best for their athletes, without critiquing these practices more, the drop-out trend will continue. Eliminating these practises entirely is not the point, that would be unhelpful, but it is paramount that coaches are aware of how they create a controlled environment and the potential effects.
Coaches need to reflect on how they can support their athlete’s autonomy to prevent disengagement and allow individuals to experience the sport in a way that is positive for them.
Further reading:
Beattie, R. (2014). The experiences of adolescents rowing in New Zealand: An insight into the influences of attrition in school rowing (Masters). Auckland University of Technology.
Denison, J. (2007). Social theory for coaches: A Foucauldian reading of one athlete’s poor performance. International Journal of Sports Science & Coaching, 2(4), 369-383.
Foucault, M. (1979). Discipline and punish. Vintage Books.
Shogan, D. (2007). Sport ethics in context. Canadian Scholars’ Press Inc.
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