University of Virginia Library

Oldest Collegiate Sport

Crew's History, Terms Given

By Bob Tuke

While an infant at the
University, crew is the oldest
collegiate sport. The first race was
held between Oxford and
Cambridge.

America's counterpart of the
English classic is the annual
Harvard-Yale "Derby Day."
Harvard is the best crew in the
country today, having defeated
Penn by 12 inches in this year's
Olympic trials.

The sport of crew, not the
"crew team," has its own jargon.
An oarsman rows on a crew; with
an oar, not a puddle; in a shell, not
a boat; in a regatta, not a meet.

In a typical regatta, the crews
row down to the stake boats and
are pointed up the 2,000 meter
course. At the start of a race each
crew sprints at over forty strokes a
minute for about forty strokes; then settle down to the body of the
race.

Jockeying down the lanes, crews
often take psychological "power
tens," when the coxswain calls for
maximum effort from the eight for
ten strokes. A crew may also use a
mid-course sprint to break down
their opponents. Races are decided
in the last 500 meters, where each
crew goes into a half-crazed sprint
to the finish.

Northern Virginia has the best
schoolboy crews in the country.
This year Jeb Stuart, a club like
Virginia, won the world's
schoolboy championship at Henley
on the Thames. Washington&Lee
High School in the Arlington area,
is also a perennial power.

Virginia's Varsity Eight faces
Georgetown, Marietta, Temple,
Purdue, St. Josephs, and La Salle in
this season's competition. These
opponents are the best of the 31
teams that competed in last year's
Dad Vail Regatta, the
championship for small crew
colleges.