When she yells, rowers listen
Coxswain Laura Dunn of Andover is mastering how to call the shots
She doesn't row a stroke, doesn't dip an oar into the water. Mostly it seems like she just yells. Loud.
Laura Dunn started her career as a coxswain in ninth grade and within weeks she was running the boys varsity boat at Community Rowing Inc. in Boston. Now, as a senior, she has developed her skill -- and her pipes -- well enough to earn a partial scholarship to a rowing program ranked second in the country.
She's headed to Michigan.
''They're definitely a team that's going somewhere," said Dunn, who lives in Andover and attends the Pomfret School in Connecticut. ''Who knows? Maybe someday I'll want to cox nationally or go to the Olympics."
It's an interesting role, coxswain. Isolating, perhaps. Different, certainly.
''I think it's a connection of the rower and the coxswain in the race [that's] really special," Dunn said. ''You're telling them they can give more and push harder when they can't. You're really pushing your rowers to do something incredible. You can really feel the stroke and there's something amazing about when the blade enters the water and you can feel the boat pushing against it."
Coxswains -- small where rowers are broad -- claim responsibility for steering their boats and keeping themselves and their rowers safe on the water. They instruct their boats, act as an authority figure.
But becoming a secondary coach in a boat can correspond to an awkward position. One of Dunn's former coaches, Tom Spooner, used the word ''tattletale" to describe the role into which a coxswain is sometimes placed. It's halfway between the rowers and the coaches. That's not easy. Welcome, politics.
''As a rowing coach, what I value in a coxswain is someone who doesn't need a lot of supervision," Spooner said. ''The thing I tell a coxswain is, 'The less I notice you, the better.' Everyone thinks the coxswain just sits there and yells, but essentially they're assistant coaches."
The image of the wide-shouldered rower doesn't apply to the coxswain. Many of the coxswains of top men's teams are, in fact, women. Smaller is better. Louder is better.
''The rowers, they're the pistons," said Buzz Dunn, Laura's father. ''All they have to do is get in the boat and when the coxswain says row, they have to row. You don't talk back to the coxswain; that's the confidence they have to have in the coxswain."
Confidence. Her rowers have had it in her. And she's clearly got a measure as well.
That's what it takes to leave home for an internship in a strange city before even graduating from high school. Dunn took off for Junior National Team Development Camp in Connecticut the summer after sophomore year and Washington, D.C., the summer after junior year.
Not that it's all that surprising she didn't go home to Andover. Between last summer and the end of this school year, Dunn will have spent just 10 days in her own bed, her father said. Credit boarding school, mostly.
But Dunn doesn't mind.
''Going down I was really scared to be in a city I had never been in before," Dunn said of her time in Washington. ''At the same time, I was equally as excited. It was phenomenal. I was really lucky that I had the opportunity to live on my own. It's something that's really special. You learn a lot about yourself while living in a city on your own. You can't be so dependent on your parents to wake you up in the morning.
''I couldn't quite figure out the microwave at first, but after that, it was all downhill from there."
Awakened every morning at 5 a.m. by the birds in her air-conditioning vent in the apartment she rented from George Washington University, Dunn would grab a Pop Tart and head out to early-morning crew practices on the Potomac. She had joined the nationally contending Thompson Boat Center, making the first boat soon after her arrival in Washington. Only one or two rowers come to Thompson each summer. Most of the team comprises athletes from high schools around the area.
They don't have to live on their own.
Squeezed between the two practices that marked most days was Dunn's internship, working in a law office and dealing mainly with issues relating to education and disabilities.
It was a resume-booster that seemed more suited to coming after a junior year in college.
But Mark Rothstein, Michigan's rowing coach, will take it. He'll take Dunn, too.
Dunn said she realized that there might be posthigh school opportunities for coxswains after attending the Junior National Team Development Camp in the summer of 2003. ''If I'm thinking about doing it in college, I really need to work on it these next couple of seasons and get my name out there. It takes a lot of self-motivation. You really have to want it; you need to say this is really what I want to do and I'm going to do everything I can to get there."
Most coxswains walk on to collegiate programs. Getting a scholarship as a coxswain is fairly rare, though the Michigan program has 20 rowing scholarships. With an eye to her leadership ability, Rothstein deviated from standard practice to give out the scholarship, though he did say Dunn will need to continue her technical development.
In the end, Rothstein said, a combination of Dunn's willingness to commit to Michigan early in the process and a need for coxswains allowed him to offer partial tuition.
''It really depends, program to program," Spooner said, on the likelihood of a coxswain getting money for college. ''It sort of depends on their year-to-year needs, I think. But when a place like Michigan is looking for a coxswain, they're looking for the best in the country." 