How will you be remembered?

Jerry Romano was associated with the Yale crew for 42 years. Through losing streaks and winning seasons, Jerry put the equipment together for the guys. He drove the boat trailer from New Haven to Tampa more times than most could remember. Several trips were also made across the country for the San Diego Crew Classic. He would always have the boats back for practice the next Monday.

When he finally retired, he was presented with this rigger tool that most Ivy League colleges used. Along with the Princeton rigger who served as long as he did, their retirement ceremony was held at Eastern Sprints, before the final races, in front of the entire Ivy League.

Jerry Romano made an impact, no matter how small, on the team he cared for most. After his death, this momento somehow made it onto Ebay, where Emily found it. She's always looking for Yale crew stuff for me, and I recognized what it was immediatly without being at the ceremony. Jerry retired long before I began rowing, but articles were posted about him around the boathouse, and Yale's current rigger had told us stories about Jerry. When I saw this, I had to have it.

For myself? No. It doesn't belong to me. It belongs with other bits and pieces of history, so the stories can be passed along to the next Yale rowers. I've had this for a few months now, but it's going in tomorrow's mail back to New Haven.

What a person achives during their time associated with a team also becomes part of history, good or bad. Breakthrough teams and winning seasons are remembered with pictures and stories passed along to younger rowers years down the road. Rowing, like baseball, is a sport that revels in its own history. Forge that history in your own crew and your contribution becomes more than a medal, it becomes part of the bedrock of the teams that follow.

These years are laying the foundation of the future of Fox Chapel rowing. Will the program emerge from its infancy to become a regional power, or will it recede to just another struggling Pittsburgh school crew? What happens over the next ten days may decide how this year's layer in the foundation is remembered.