2. Building the 1963 Varsity

As mentioned previously, the entire starboard side of the Henley Crew graduated from MIT in June 1962.  In addition, our 2-seat oarsman, Steve Richards, had not been invited by MIT to return for the fall term. In other words, he had flunked out.  I do not remember knowing about this until I returned to MIT in September.  To his great credit, Steve carried the burden of this with him throughout our summer training and our trip to Henley, without appearing to be distracted in any way. To his even greater credit, I recently learned from our alumni web site that Steve was later readmitted to MIT and graduated with the Class of 1968.

These vacancies left us with but three returning oarsmen from 1962’s varsity boat-not good, at least at first glance.  However, this conclusion overlooks the fact that our own Junior Varsity boat from 1962 was just a few steps behind the Varsity all season long and was made up primarily of underclassmen and, in addition, our freshman crew finished in the top three at the 1962 Sprints.

JV oarsman Rick Metzinger rowed in the starboard seat in our victorious Spares-Pair race at Henley and was poised to move into the Varsity.  In 1963 he landed the 3-seat on the starboard side.  Senior Mike Greata had been bringing great energy and enthusiasm to the boathouse since his freshman year but was always considered to be too small to nail down a seat in the Varsity.  However, while we were at Henley, Mike was doing a bit of training of his own. He showed up at the boathouse in the fall of 1962 looking like a 139 pound version of Charles Atlas.  Mike literally muscled his way into the picture.  Gary placed him in the bow seat (1-seat) in the 1963 Varsity.

Junior Peter Staecker had never rowed at all until his sophomore year.  He had started the 1962 season in the Third Boat where he made amazing strides, finishing the season as one of the stronger oarsmen in the Junior Varsity.  Had we been able to take four spares to Henley rather than two, my guess is that he would have been one of the four.  Pete was about 6’ 2”, and strong.  He continued to build his strength over the summer and eventually landed the 6-seat in the 1963 Varsity.  Senior Dennis Buss, another veteran of the Henley Crew, was to row his third consecutive year in the Varsity, this year in the 4-seat.  

With our freshmen completing another stellar year, we had a great bunch of new talent moving into their sophomore year.  The strongest, John Proctor, took the 2-seat in the Varsity with three other sophomores landing seats in the 1963 Junior Varsity. 

With only Greata and Metzinger lined up for the starboard side, Coach Zwart came up with some more of his coaching magic.  He asked Herb Herrmann, our 4-seat oarsman from the Henley Crew to switch to the starboard side, a very difficult change for most oarsmen. But after a few weeks Herb rowed starboard as if he had done it all his life.  He won the 7-seat behind veteran stroke Mark Barron.  Both Juniors, Mark and Herb had rowed together since their first day at MIT.  We had our perfect stern pair.

This left only the 5-seat on the starboard side, a seat vacated by the graduation of ‘62 Captain, Jerry Manning.  Meet Ron Cheek.  Ron, a Senior, had rowed on the heavyweight squad his first three years at MIT. He was a highly skilled oarsman who had but one problem-at 175 pounds he was too heavy to be a lightweight oarsman and too light to be a true heavyweight.  In heavyweight rowing, a well-conditioned 175-pounder, frankly, is at a serious disadvantage to an equally well-conditioned 195-pounder.  In all likelihood Ron was destined to row his senior year in the heavyweight junior varsity.

I’m not sure who came up with the idea.  You might have to blame this one on me.  We decided to mount a campaign to persuade Ron Cheek to switch to the lightweight squad.  One thing was for sure-for this exercise, Gary Zwart had to remain on the sidelines, and did.  Coaches simply couldn’t get involved in pilfering oarsmen from each other’s squads.  However, I did learn unofficially that if Ron could meet the weight requirements for lightweight rowing, he was a lock to row in our varsity boat.

Ron clearly had the skill and experience we needed. The issue, quite simply, was weight.  Lightweight oarsmen have to weigh in the Friday before each race in the presence of the judges.  A lightweight crew can average no more than 155 pounds per man, and no individual oarsmen in the boat can exceed 160.

Much like a college wrestler trying to drop into a lower weight class, Ron would need to lose 15 pounds, quite a task for a guy who was already in great shape for rowing.  However, by midwinter he was already a couple of pounds below 170, and by early spring Ron told Gary and Jack Frailey that he wanted to switch squads.  I was in the coach’s office when this took place. I might have detected a very faint grin on Gary’s face, but that day was the last time Jack Frailey spoke to me all season.  [I have probably exaggerated this point.  Regardless, time heals all wounds.  Jack is a magnificent individual who has done wonders for MIT Crew over a long career, including coaching the 1954 and 1955 lightweight crews that won at Henley, before becoming Head Coach.  Jack was elected to the Rowing Hall of Fame and may be the only MIT graduate or coach to achieve this distinction.]  On the eve of our first race-while we all held our breath-Ron tipped the scale at 160 pounds.

I have compressed all of this into a single chapter.  The truth is that what I have described-that is, the competition among the oarsmen to win a seat in the Varsity boat-took place from the first day of fall rowing in September 1962 until spring training in 1963. What differed is that in prior years, the seat assignments changed almost daily, right up until the last race of the season.  In 1963, Gary established the Varsity roster in March during the second workout of spring training.  Although the fear of getting bumped out of the Varsity was always present, this group of nine worked as a unit every day and in every race throughout the entire season without a single change in the seating.

Another major difference was that the 1962 team had begun the season back in the pack but had improved in each and every race to emerge in the Sprints as the national co-champions. In 1963 we started the season at the top of our game. In every workout, in every time trial, and in every intra-squad race, we were recording times faster than any MIT lightweight crew that had gone before.1  Everything had fallen into place, suggesting that we were poised to have a great season, very possibly the greatest in the history of MIT rowing.

As mentioned in the Preface, I must have retired my camera in 1963.  I have fewer than a dozen photographs from the entire season.  However, while rummaging around for my old Henley programs, I unearthed several rowing articles from The Tech, MIT’s campus newspaper.  I will end this letter with the first such article, from April 1963.  It appeared just before our first race and lays out our prospects for the upcoming season for both the heavyweight and lightweight squads.  I hope you can read it, as the quality of the scan is marginal, at best.2

[The continuation of this article is on the following page.]

(Footnotes)

1 In order to simulate racing conditions, it is quite common for the heavyweight and lightweight squads to run time trials against each other in practice. Typically, the heavyweight varsity will trounce the lightweights. 1963, however, was not a typical year. The first time trial was held on the second day of spring training. Gary Zwart’s coaching log notes that the Heavies and the Lights lined up at Harvard Bridge, and raced from there to the Finish Line, a distance of about ? mile. The Lights won by almost a full length. Determined to correct what was surely an anomaly, the Heavies asked that we line up to race them again, this time from the Finish Line to the Bridge. Same result!! As I recall, that was the last time the Heavies agreed to race us during the entire season.

2As noted in the Preface, this journal was originally distributed as a series of emails in 2004. Many responses were received, several of which I am including as Footnotes to this journal. It was always a pleasure to hear from Peter Staecker ’64 who rowed in the 6-seat in the 1963 Varsity. In response to Building the 1963 Varsity, Peter wrote:

“Ah, the heart quickens…

Perhaps my biggest thrill of the 63 spring was the first day of double workouts as the newly minted varsity pushed off and took a few strokes to clear out of dock traffic…your command was to ride it out - with oars up. As we coasted to a dead stop, oars still dry, your comment of praise set the scene for the season to come.

Perhaps half an hour earlier, the peak of my personal surprise meter was that I was even in the 1st boat, let alone in the seat that Dennis Buss owned…In spite of the following: We all had just partaken of a nice lunch at Durgin Park on the first day of Spring Vacation, and somehow, Gary learned that I had eaten some of DP’s famous cornbread. With the ominous warning that cornbread was not an acceptable regimen for Lightweights, I was prepared to sit for a workout, a week, an eternity…in the coach’s launch.

I remember some other memorable Vernon quotes of that season, and will make sure that you don’t forget them as we progress.”