Time to grow a pair

Monday. Gluckman. Lineups, in order to save time:

Fox (A. coxing)
D.E.
Steve the pirate
Pat
Paul Luther
Mr. Poland
Drew
Alex G
Tosh

Endurance (E. coxing)
Mikey
G.T.
Brother X
Adam
Foxbat
Berry
Crack
G.C.

Also, the novice 4+.

For those in our wider audience, I'm volcanic. Our scrimmage today against Central and North Catholic went well except the varsity 8. I won't repeat everything I said here, but suffice it to say I lit into the guys. It's not an issue of talent. There is plenty of talent on this team. The problem seems to be courage, will, mental toughness, whatever. I'm not used to dealing with that sort of problem. Toughness is something I take for granted.

More than anything, I hate losing to Central. It's because of the whole Yale-Harvard thing with the Central coach. While we are on very friendly terms, there is a natural rivalry there that I can't ignore. Besides, Central is the top dog in town and one always guns for the top dog.

Losses suck. However, certain losses are worse than others. If you're simply outmanned and outgunned, that's a loss most can accept. If you're caught in the last 250m, it hurts and you're miserable, but you can accept it. Losing like the varsity did this morning isn't something I can accept. That's not how I've trained my crew, that's not how I lost races and I won't abide that kind of ugliness.

I'm going to kill them this week. If toughness is the problem, there are ways to assess the oarsman. There are ways to improve toughness.