With 750 meters to go in the 2008 Olympic women’s eight final, the U.S. boat was in the lead. But Romania and the Netherlands were only two seconds behind and starting to close.
Coxswain Mary Whipple knew she needed to inspire her rowers. So she called “a power 10 for the women of 1984” — 10 of the hardest strokes the rowers could do.
Before flying to Beijing, the 2008 U.S. Olympic women’s eight had watched a video of rowing at the Los Angeles 1984 Olympic Games. They saw how the U.S. women’s eight was in the lead, how Romania pulled ahead mid-way through race (then a 1,000-meter event), and how the U.S. women fought back in the final 200 meters and won.
“It was pure emotion and pure heart going into every single stroke,” Susan Francia says, remembering the power 10 Whipple called (Francia sat in the sixth seat in the 2008 Olympic women’s eight). “It was honestly just amazing. It was such a great feeling.”
The U.S. women’s eight won the 2008 Olympic gold medal by 1.88 seconds over the Netherlands. It was the first gold medal for the U.S. in the women’s eight since 1984, and Whipple played a key role.
Over her 16-year career, Whipple, 30, has not only steered her boats straight and ensured that the rowers in her boat followed the race plan (key jobs for the coxswain). She has also helped motivate the rowers in her boat to dig deeper than they ever thought possible.
Since 1994, she has coxed women’s eights to two NCAA Division I titles, three world championship titles, six World Cup wins, and Olympic silver and gold medals. Now, after taking a year off to earn a masters degree in education, her near-term goal is to be selected as coxswain for the U.S. women’s eight competing at the 2010 World Championships in New Zealand in late October. Then she would like to compete in one final Olympics: 2012.
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Whipple grew up in Sacramento, California, and with her identical twin sister, Sarah, watched rowing on Sacramento’s Lake Natoma. They enrolled in a learn-to-row class before their freshman year in high school and were invited to try out for Capital Crew’s novice program — but as coxswains, not oarswomen. (Capital Crew is a rowing club for high-school-age students in Sacramento.) At 5’3” and 106 pounds, neither Mary nor Sarah faced a bright future as a rower in a sport where the best athletes are closer to six feet in height.
The coach, Sam Sweitzer, explained to the Whipples that the role of coxswain falls right below that of coach, and the twins were sold.
Sweitzer then spelled out the duties of the coxswain — steer the boat straight and execute the training and race plans. But he also encouraged them to take it a step further. Don’t be an observer, Sweitzer said. Be a part of the team.
After competing with Capital Crew for four years, Mary matriculated at the University of Washington in 1999 while Sarah went to the University of California-Davis. Both continued in crew, and Mary made varsity her sophomore year. The following year, the UW Huskies won NCAAs in Division I. In 2002, Mary helped her team defend the NCAA DI title. That same year, Sarah coxed UC-Davis’s women’s eight to the NCAA Division II title.
Mary made the U.S. national team in 2001 and was the coxswain for the women’s eight that won a gold medal at the 2002 World Championships. Over the next six years, she won two more world championship titles in the U.S. women’s eight (in 2006 and 2007), a silver medal at the 2004 Olympics, and the gold medal at the 2008 Olympics.
Although the nine women in an eight-oared shell are each responsible for that boat’s success, the coxswain has a unique role, and Mary Whipple’s teamwork, intuitive sense of what makes a boat go fast, and her insight into each rower have led to her success in the coxswains seat. She strives to identify with the eight women in her boat and find one key phrase that will resonate with all eight — such as the “power 10 for the women of 1984.”
Women’s rowing coach, Tom Terhaar, says that Whipple not only steers straight (a point he emphasizes), but she is also a great teammate.
“She doesn't elevate herself above her teammates and really respects their efforts to make the team,” he says. “Even though her seat has been all but guaranteed in the past, she is still very respectful of her teammates and continues to grow as a competitor.”
“Each person has a job to do in their seat,” Whipple says, “but we all have to come together to make the boat go. I’m just one little piece of the puzzle.”
In fact, Whipple wants to be known as a teammate, not as the coxswain. A philosophy of “we’re all in this together” has helped her gain the respect of her teammates.
She shows her cohesiveness with her team by participating in every practice — running and lifting weights during dry-land training, and if the women are rowing smaller boats that do not have coxswains, she rides in the launch (motor boat) with the coaches to see the rowers from another perspective.
Whipple cares about the details, and that is another attribute that makes her a great coxswain, says twin sister Sarah Puddicombe, now an assistant rowing coach at the University of California-Berkeley.“She is the first to arrive and the last to leave practice,” says Puddicombe. “She cares about the team on and off the water and has learned how to be a manager as well as a teammate. By paying attention to the details she keeps things simple and is always prepared and that makes her a fierce competitor. She is always on her game.”
The women in her boat agree. “I consider her one of the team,” says Francia. “But more than that, she’s a great team leader.”
Whipple also has an eye — and a feel — for identifying what the rowers need to improve and when to change it.
A good coxswain, she says, is “the catalyst of change” and “an initiator.”
“I identify the problems and I offer a solution,” Whipple says. “But more importantly, I tell them ready, on this drive, do it now.”
“Obviously, we are pulling our [butts] off, so we want to have the best row that we can,” adds Francia. “[Mary is] really just fantastic at keeping us on task, really focused, and moving fast.”
Although one of her most memorable races is the final at the 2008 Olympics, one of her proudest moments — and an example of the feel she has for the boat — was at the 2004 Olympics, when the women’s eight finished second to Romania.
For the first half of the race, the U.S. and Romania alternated in the lead — each shooting ahead at the end of a stroke. At 1,000 meters, the U.S. had the lead by 0.26 seconds.
But Romania picked it up in the second half of the 2,000-meter race and won its third consecutive Olympic gold medal in the women’s eight.
“Certain crews would have just unraveled and would have just come off the track and faded,” Whipple says. “But we never stopped fighting and we never stopped believing in how we wanted to finish it. If we were stuck in, ‘Oh, there goes Romania, let’s have a pity party,’ we would not have won a medal.”
When asked what she did to keep the rowers from unraveling, she says she was just doing her job and following the race plan.
“I was doing what I was feeling back,” she says. “I was responding to the tenacity of the rowers. I knew that they weren’t giving up, and I wasn’t going to give up either.”
Coach Terhaar credits Whipple with getting “in the moment” like the rowers and making the right calls at the right time.
“She races with the passion and confidence of her teammates and never separates her performance from the boat,” he explains. “She's positive and has faith that everything will work out — even when all looks like it won't.”
In the 2008 Olympic final, Whipple could feel the energy in her boat and knew they had a good shot at the gold medal from the moment they came off their high starting strokes and settled down to their base pace. She told the team how great it felt and kept motivating them. At the 500m, 1000m, and 1500m time check, the U.S. women’s eight was in the lead.
After the 2008 Olympics, Whipple launched a website, www.9thseat.com, to help other coxswains. The “9th seat” is a term she used to explain her role in the boat to the uninitiated. “I would always begin by saying, ‘Well, there are eight rowers and I’m the ninth person in the boat,’” she told rowingnews.com in April 2009.
“A lot of people have asked me to do coxswains clinics and a lot of coxswains email me questions,” she said when asked why she started the site. “They are pretty typically the same questions over and over again.”
She offers tips and tricks on the site and also answers questions and gives a glimpse into why she has been so successful over the past 16 years. One coxswain asked for tips to motivate her rowers. Whipple wrote back: “Think about what you would want to hear if you were in a world of pain and needed encouragement to finish the workout.”
She also suggested that the coxswain consider the team goals and goals for the workout. Or create scenarios of “walking through your rivals boat.” Or use inside jokes.
Although her goal is to eventually coach an NCAA Division I program (from June 2009 to June 2010, Whipple completed a masters in education at the University of Washington with a focus on intercollegiate athletic leadership), her immediate goal is to make another Olympic team and earn another Olympic gold medal.
She has to “compete for the seat” with Katelin Snyder, 22, who coxed the women’s eight to a gold at the 2009 World Championships. Whipple says that Terhaar usually asks the rowers to vote, then chooses a coxswain based on the votes.
But for now, Whipple is just happy to be back trying for that ninth seat.
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Peggy Shinn is a freelance contributor for teamusa.org. This story was not subject to the approval of the United States Olympic Committee or any National Governing Bodies.
