Using a Rowing Machine to Make One : Small Team Is Winning With Computer-Enhanced Efficiency

It isn’t unusual to see rowers gliding through the calm, predawn water around San Diego, but what happens in the garage of Peter Mallory nearly every evening is.

Mallory’s five pupils supplement quiet mornings on the water with the whizzing of a rowing machine called an ogometer. Instead of being strapped into a scull, they are connected to a computer. And they concentrate on a monitor rather than the pace set by a stroke man.

Mallory uses high tech to try to get the most from his athletes. Small by rowing standards, the group has reached new heights in junior rowing.

Mark Skirgaudas, Bret Casady, Jimmy Warmington, Lars Caroe and Mike McCormick average 6-feet and 154 pounds. They usually face crews that average 6-3 and 190 pounds. And they usually win.

Skirgaudas, Casady, Warmington and Caroe won the junior men’s quad sculls by 18 seconds at the U.S. National Rowing Championships at Indianapolis in late June. The four will now set their sights on the Junior World Championships, which will be in Milan, Italy, on Aug. 7. McCormick is the spare for the quad team.

Because his pupils lack the bulk of most top rowers, Mallory designed a high-tech training operation that uses perfection as its standard. Mallory, who is a certified public accountant, designed a system that incorporates a color-graphics computer with an ogometer, which simulates a scull.

“We work out very hard so we can exactly trace what I consider an ideal curve so they can match each other,” Mallory said. “No coach’s eye can catch this as accurately as the computer can. We also videotape virtually every day since school is out, and we review the tape, frame by frame, looking for the slightest abnormality.”

Mallory set up a computer program to identify what he feels is the ultimate power curve, or performance goal, for a rowing stroke. His rowers try to emulate the curve while rowing in perfect unison by watching themselves on a monitor.

“Our disadvantage is that the size of our athletes is not great,” Mallory said. “We try to make up for that by rowing to a level of technical expertise not seen by American juniors. Pound for pound, no one has come close to us in the U.S. We’ll see if that is enough.”

The rowing team may have its biggest challenge when it faces the top junior rowers in the world at Milan, but it already has successfully cleared its biggest hurdle. The crew needed to meet the National Rowing Assn.’s qualifying standard of 4:38 on a 1,500-meter course to qualify for the Junior World Championships. Its last shot was at the U.S. trials at Princeton, N.J., on July 16.

Although the crew missed the mark by rowing a 4:41.8, the National Rowing Assn. agreed to allow the team to advance to the Junior World Championships. The association committee took into account the fact that the crew raced alone and one of the rowers’ oars hit a buoy.

The crew also had the handicap of not having a 1,500-meter course on which to practice in San Diego. And it normally races 2,000 meters, the international standard.

“On Mission Bay, we have a problem with currents and sharing the water,” Mallory said. “We don’t have an accurate course that is 1,500 meters long. We have the speed to go 4:38 if we put everything together.

“The main thing is that in the last two weeks, we have improved. We can look at it another way. In order to do a 6:12 over 2,000 meters (which is comparable to a 4:38), our four little high school kids would have to be able to row faster than any of the college eights. If we ever get cocky, that brings us down to earth.”

One of the biggest problems preparing for the rowing season has been that Warmington lives in Newport Beach, while the rest of the crew is from San Diego.

Warmington, who will be a senior at Newport Harbor High School, practiced on the weekends and is now staying with friends in San Diego so he can work out full time with the crew.

This is just one of many obstacles the crew has had to overcome. But these rowers are used to being the underdogs.

Although the five crew members come from different high schools and became involved in rowing for different reasons, they all point to one reason for continuing the sport.

“I’m just addicted to it,” said Skirgaudas, who just graduated from La Jolla and will row for Yale next season. “It’s very addictive. But there are times when you just hate it. It’s been difficult for (Caroe and him) because we are seniors, and there are a lot of social activities.”

Getting up for early workouts, followed by school and then more training in the evenings, cuts into one’s free time. All the members have made the sacrifices necessary to excel at a sport that gets little recognition, especially in high school.

But the crew members have found other reasons to justify their addiction.

“It’s a big thing at East Coast colleges,” said Casady, who will be a senior at Point Loma. “It could help you out when you’re trying to get in a good school. It’s something they might see in you over somebody else from the West Coast who doesn’t crew.”

Caroe, who graduated from Coronado and will row at Orange Coast College in Costa Mesa, pointed to the camaraderie of the sport.

“It’s challenged me,” Caroe said. “The team makes you feel as if you belong somewhere.”

The crew members have been rowing together for two years, and none of them has been rowing longer than three years. Casady and Warmington won the state junior title in double sculls, and Warmington is the state single sculls champion.

But Warmington is quick to note that just because you have success in singles and doubles does not guarantee success in quads.

“Quad is the most difficult because the oars are so close together,” Warmington said. “In eights, the oars are alternated, and there is more room in doubles. The bigger the boat, the faster everything gets.”

Said Casady: “You can get two guys who are great at rowing singles but you can’t just put them together and assume they will do well automatically. It may never be right. It’s like chemistry.”

So far, good chemistry has been the main reason for the small crew’s success.

“We do get intimidated,” said McCormick, a junior from La Jolla High. “And that gives us an excuse (to not win), and that’s bad.”

The crew hasn’t had to come up with many excuses this year.

It once faced a rather large team at an event in Northern California, which has some of the best junior rowers on the West Coast.

“They must have had the worst football teams, because all the big guys were rowing,” said McCormick.

“They were totally willing to bet their shirts that they would win,” Skirgaudas said. “We had two lengths on them after 10 strokes.”

The size disadvantage is just another challenge for the crew. Besides, it enhances their victories, as they know they have defeated a physically superior team with technique.

“It makes it all worthwhile when you look up at someone while shaking their hands . . .” said Skirgaudas.

“And,” Caroe said, finishing the sentence for him, “you’re the winner.”