SAN DIEGO — Megan O'Keefe described the anguish in their faces. The eight oarsmen faced her in a sailing vessel 62 feet long and 26 inches wide. She had just pushed her crew to the brink. Maybe she pushed them over edge.
"Different people have different expressions," O'Keefe recalled of her days as a coxswain on the UC San Diego men's novice 8. "They look like someone is pulling their limbs off. Some look like they're going to cry. There were times when I couldn't look my strokes in the face. I had to look right past them because it looked like they hurt so bad. And I felt bad because I was asking them to do more when all I was doing was sitting on my butt."
O'Keefe was a woman in a man's world. But she was not alone.
Female coxswains directing the men's eight-man shells are not unusual in crew. That should be apparent today and Sunday on Mission Bay when 49 colleges and 40 clubs gather for the 18th annual San Diego Crew Classic.
"Parents get a kick out of it," said Mike Shannon, UCSD men's coach. "Especially the moms. They see these 6-foot-4 guys and this little tiny coxswain telling them what to do. There's not very many chances in life where a little person tells a big athlete-type to stand on their head and they do it, especially when it's a female and a group of college males."
UCSD women's Coach Jack Vallerga estimated that on the West Coast, 60 to 70% of the coxswains in the men's divisions are women. Size is a major consideration. The minimum weight requirement for a coxswain in the men's shells is 125 pounds. Anyone less than 125 must bring along weights to compensate. Anyone heavier than 125 simply adds unnecessary weight. At the collegiate level, there just aren't enough 125-pound male athletes to go around.
That opens the door for women, who still must overcome obstacles they might face outside of college.
"If she's an engineer at General Dynamics and she has to get a bunch of men to acknowledge her authority and get them to work as a team, she can't waste time fending off advances or being treated like she's someone's daughter or niece," said Vallerga, a former coxswain at UC Santa Barbara.
"In crew, all the same pressures are there. You have big men, athletes, who are having to take instruction from a diminutive female their own age. This is not to say it works well straight across into the business world, but if she can get through that, she's got a pretty good idea of how to work her way past the stereotypes that are going to be present in a law firm. Her leadership, her ability to handle (her own) authority, the artfulness of earning respect, that's a lot of what being a female cox on a men's team is like."
The relationship between the coxswain and the crew is special. She must know the different personalities and how to motivate them. And in getting to know those personalities, there are times when relationships go beyond that of being teammates. That is frowned upon by coaches.
Junior Annette Branger is the coxswain for UCSD's varsity 8. She dated one of her crew briefly in her first season three years ago.
"It was very short and very abrupt," she said. "I was new (to the program) and quickly put in my place (by Shannon). It's not a good idea. Instead of having a relationship that's equal, one relationship becomes more important than the other seven. It would ruin the balance. . . . I look at them as eight big brothers."
Last year, Dana Cohen coxed the UCSD varsity to its first City Championship. She was dating oarsman John Burke, who is currently in his fourth year.
"As long as you can separate crew and your relationship, it's OK," Burke said. "I was able to do that. It has its good and bad sides. One year, the novice crew all liked their coxswain and the guys started disliking each other."
Not exactly the right attitude when perfect harmony in the water is required.
For Branger, there's a fine line. Be a friend of the crew, but not too friendly. She establishes a professional distance.
"I can't hang out with them the way they hang out with the rest of the crew," she said. "They have to have a respect for the position. If they lose that respect, they won't obey your orders. If you're just an authority figure, you can't ask them to push themselves and at that point, you become the enemy. But when you're a friend and you know them, you can ask more of them."
And coxswains ask for every ounce of energy. Throughout the season they must be part slave-driver, part Norman Schwartzkopf.
"At full pressure, racing against another crew, the cox's goal is to have the whole crew horizontal at the finish--where the tank's empty--to get the boat to go its fastest," Shannon said. "The cox's first job is steering, but she also implements the race plan, notes the position in relation to the other boats and follows the strategy to get them in proper position."
And the coxswain, ultimately, is the reason for those anguished faces.
"The oarsmen have to be masochists, the coxswain has to be a sadist," Shannon said.
