Lyal Davidson

Rowing is categorically painful and there are very few reasons to mount an ergometer again. While developing recognition for USNA Class of ‘76’s 50th anniversary since graduation, I had the good fortune of the Example provided by the Class of’75. The rowing Class of ‘75 helped the Navy rowing program by improving the ergometer environment in Navy’s boathouse on College Creek in Annapolis, Hubbard Hall. Aside from being the bicentennial class, the Class of ‘76 rowers were the beginning example for all 38 years of Coach Clothier’s strong Navy rowing program. Of course we didn’t know it at the time and Coach Clothier will only admit that we were his starting point for his Navy legacy when asked, but reflections on our experience makes the ‘76 rowers stand out. Coaches Resch and Ulrich started us off and drew in a large aspiring group of ‘76ers. When Coach Clothier took over the program in the Summer of ‘74, he already knew what ‘76 needed to do to start a champion tradition. It was an Olympic year,  it was a year in which voluntary participation in the Intercollegiate Championship led to a first place four with cox, it was graduation, it was the bicentennial year, and it was 1976.

It is not a difficult stretch of the imagination to see that enthusiasm for commemorating and supporting the rowing community in an effort that both coincides with the Navy’s 250th birthday, the Class of 1976’s anniversary, and the remarkable support the USNA Class of 1975 is showing toward ergometer training that led me to mounting the ergometer again to endure the pain.