Sue:

At Yorktown HS, we have had a rower with a similar disability for several years. He can read a watch, dial on his cellphone, etc. from an inch away, but has low vision of anything beyond. As a freshman, having never played other sports or trained athletically, his learning curve was steep. But there is essentially no adaptive rowing community in the Washington, DC area, certainly nothing available for an under-sized high school oarsman who came mainly for the social and recreational aspects. So we agreed to take him on.

I found that, as he was learning to row and was relegated to the bow or three-seat of most shells (rationale: less kids to follow his occasionally disastrous timing), it helped to have the rower directly in front of him wear a brightly colored shirt. This improved his vision (and visualization) of the swing and helped his timing issues immensely. We were in eights, obviously; in fours, you might spend a lot of time in pair pieces to help reinforce timing.

Erg technique was focused on keeping him upright, since he had a huge tendency to hunch and collapse his body, having never truly "seen" what a good rower should look like. On the water, I repeated "silent rowing" and "eyes closed" drills ad nauseum, along with plenty of pause work -- a universal necessity for freshman boys in the first place, but a huge help to this particular rower.

As for feathering and bladework issues, Scott is right: keeping lateral pressure on the oar was a serious challenge, because he was always tempted to pull the button AWAY from the oarlock at the finish. It took a long time for him to string ten or more decent strokes together but, as you might expect, his heightened senses of hearing and touch eventually overcame the other difficulties. He figured out which clunking sound equated to a feathered blade, which one was square, and -- after a few nasty crabs -- what happens when it's under- or over-feathered. His boatfeel is now among the best on the varsity. To whit, he stroked the 3V to a first place finish earlier this spring.


It will take individual coaching time and energy, likely to the detriment of your other rowers at the outset, but eventually the handicap can be minimized. There are days he doesn't row, i.e. when there aren't enough varsity or novice double-rowers available to make the 3V, but he accepts this and is glad to have stuck with the crew into his junior year. There were times we didn't think it would be safe or appropriate to keep him with the varsity, but I think everyone agrees it was worth it in the long run.

Luckily we had eights to train him in. Hopefully your rower will pick up the technique quickly enough so that you aren't sacrificing too much training time in the smaller boats.

Regards,
Drew Thiemann
Yorktown HS - Arlington, VA





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Drew Thiemann
Crew Coach
Yorktown HS / Potomac River, DC
Capital RC / Anacostia River, DC
(571) 331-0095