Varsity Crew
	For over 80 years Salisbury School has been training young men in what many consider to be the ultimate team sport.  Those who have been involved in rowing here at any level have developed deep and lasting friendships, strong bodies and minds, and self-discipline which have served them throughout their lives.  Countless Salisbury oarsmen have gone on to row on top college crews and many have attained national, international and Olympic heights.  The Salisbury coaching staff is highly dedicated with deep experience both as coaches and competitors. A spring training trip to warmer climes is an annual event in March and we often compete in international regattas, most notably the Royal Henley Regatta in England. Our lake with a three lane, 1500 meter course, is the envy of many other rowing schools.  It is pristine with very few houses and is virtually private in regards to disruptive boat traffic.  The boathouse is a state of the art post and beam architectural wonder that must be seen to be believed. Salisbury School has long been a major strength in schoolboy rowing and will continue to grow in that role for years to come. Interscholastic Crew Roster The 2012 Salisbury Crew consists of more than forty boys from eight countries and twelve states.   While some of these oarsmen had rowing experience prior to Salisbury, the vast majority took their first strokes on Lake Washinee.   Several contenders for the top four boats took their first strokes on Mission Bay in San Diego this spring.    Name Year Home Town Felix Allard 2014 Pleasanton, CA Brandon Bagwell 2012 Shreveport, LA Dylan Brodie 2012 Greenwich CT  Jack Carey 2013 Costa Mesa, CA Lion Creel 2012 New York, NY Mike Cuozzo 2013 North Caldwell, NJ  Preston Davie 2013 Steamboat Springs, CO  Theo Elmore 2015 Emmaus, PA Alex Errington 2013 London, England Bobby Feeney 2012 La Jolla, CA Cameron Fitch 2012 Southborough, MA Chad Goldberg 2012 Agoura Hills, CA  Jasper Graebner 2013 Bad Homburg, Hessen, Germany Alec Grant 2014 Lakeville, CT Chris Hamilton 2014 Laurel Hollow, NY John Hibbard 2013 Winchester, MA Nick Hyman 2013 Stamford, CT PK Isacs 2013 Goshen, CT  Tim Johnson 2012 Darien, CT Yeskendir Kazhmuratov 2013 Almaty, Kazakhstan Wyatt Ladd 2012 Hillsborough, NC Jonathon Mahoney 2013 Lexington, MA Alex Mirza 2013 Tuxedo Park, NY Taylor Ogan 2014 Denver, CO Brooks Oler 2012 New York, NY Mike Proctor 2013 New Canaan, CT Zack Pryzbek 2012 Niagara on the Lake, ON Nicholas Rambusch 2013 Madison, NJ Donald Reed 2013 Lakeville, CT Matt Rote 2014 Larchmont, NY Rex Rubin 2014 Darien, CT  Luke Rubin 2013 Darien, CT  Sam Soule 2014 Brooklyn, NY  Rui Tao 2012 Shanghai, China Nick Turecamo 2013 Toms Brook, VA  Thomas Welsh 2013 Burlington, ON Kyle Winston 2014 Kathmandu, Nepal Joseph Yoon 2013 New York, NY Coaches Dick Curtis:   rcurtis@salisburyschool.org Dick began coaching at Salisbury School in 1981 and has been the head of the rowing program since 1998.   He teaches in both the English department and Philosophy and Religion department.   Dick rowed at Boston University where he was co-captain in 1969.  He also spent a sabbatical year coaching the crew at St. Andrews University in Scotland.   After college he rowed for Vesper Boat Club in 1970 where he placed 3rd in the World Championships in the quadruple scull.   Between 1985 and 2012 he has won over 25 medals in various veteran boats in U.S. National and World Championships and has won 18 medals in 44 Head of the Charles Regattas.   He also rowed for Union Boat Club of Boston and the New York Athletic Club.  He finished second in the 1972 Olympic trials in the pair without coxswain and rowed in the pair semi-finals at the Royal Henley Regatta in 1978.  He was a member of the 1979 U.S. Pan American rowing team and was training for the 1980 Olympic team when the boycott was called.   He competes every year in veteran rowing events.  He holds the 24 hour world record on the Concept 2 ergometer for the 40-50 age group.   Set in 1988, it is the longest standing ergometer record.  At Salisbury his crews have medaled many times in many regattas.  Dick and his wife live on campus and frequently welcome home their two children, both former collegiate rowers themselves.   Christopher “Tote” Smith:   tsmith@salisburyschool.org Tote has been a faculty member at Salisbury since 2004.   In addition to his responsibilities as a rowing coach, he currently chairs the mathematics department and is Director of the Entrepreneurial Studies program.   He has also served as the varsity squash coach since 2005. Tote rowed for four years for Yale University, where he was on the varsity lightweight eight for three years, twice earning First-Ivy League recognition as the undefeated league champion.  In 1990 his eight earned the gold medal at the Eastern Sprints and won the IRA National Championships.    Tote has competed overseas in England at the Henley Royal Regatta, and in international competition in Cuba.  At Salisbury, he has coached at all levels.   His crews have earned gold medals at the Mercer Sprints, Founders Day Regatta and the CT State Championships, have earned bronze and silver medals at the NEIRA Championships, and have competed at the US Rowing Youth Nationals in Cincinnati and the Henley Royal Regatta in England.  He lives on campus with his wife, a former rower herself, and their three children. Toby Ayer:  tayer@salisburyschool.org Toby has been teaching physics and coaching rowing at Salisbury since 2008.  In his first year, he coached the 3rdboat, containing four novices, to a bronze medal at the New England Championships.  Toby grew up in Burlington, Vermont, and has a misty memory of seeing a sculling shell in a protected bay on Lake Champlain.  He learned to row at MIT where his freshman crew, made up entirely of walk-ons, won the Division II National Championships.  He was in the varsity heavyweight eight for the next three years, winning the Club Eights at the Head of the Charles and competing twice at the Henley Royal Regatta.  In his senior year he was voted the team’s Most Inspirational Oarsman and won MIT’s Scholar-Athlete Award.  Continuing to row while pursuing graduate work as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University, Toby rowed against Cambridge four times in the Boat Race, finally breaking a seven-year losing streak in 2000.  After his time abroad, Toby spent two years as an assistant coach for the heavyweight team at Harvard.  He then spent four years as the head boys’ coach at Brookline High School, where his 2ndboat made the finals at the New England’s for the first time ever, and his 1stboat qualified for the Youth National Championships.   During this time he taught physics at MIT, and linguistics at Harvard and Northeastern.   Toby has continued his own rowing in the last several years.  He won the Masters division of the World Indoor Rowing Championships in 2006 and has medaled two other times since.  He won the Club Fours at the Head of the Charles in 2004 and the Senior Four at Canadian Henley in 2006, and won a silver medal in the Coxed Four at the 2007 Elite National Championships. Hugh Cheney: hcheney@salisburyschool.org Growing up in Colorado, Hugh was far removed from any active rowing programs. His athletic experiences were primarily in lacrosse and rugby that he played through his high school and college years in Colorado at Fountain Valley School and Colorado College. At the outset of his teaching career he coached Varsity Lacrosse at the Marvelwoood School in Connecticut for thirteen years and was pleased to be part of teams that won three league championships. As a boy Hugh’s father took him to the Yale-Harvard boat race, and a tour of the Yale boathouse on the Thames, in New London. He was immediately taken in by the grace and power of the sport and the profound beauty and craftsmanship of a racing shell, yet he never had an opportunity to row in high school or college. His brother was an accomplished oarsman at Dartmouth and also competed as an elite oarsman in a double. These associations truly sparked Hugh’s interest and after college he rowed periodically in recreational programs in Seattle, Cambridge, and out of the Dartmouth boathouse. While he never had formal coaching as an oarsman, nor did he compete, Hugh came to love the sport. Upon arriving at Salisbury Hugh expressed an interest in learning more about rowing and how to coach. He have been fortunate to be an apprentice under accomplished coaches in the rowing program here; gleaning the expertise of Dick Curtis, Tote Smith, Toby Ayer, Matt Fitzgerald, Drew Kesler, and other incredibly experienced and sage coaches. All of these good men have passed on their wisdom about the art and subtlety of rowing technique, and the character that rowing instills in our boys. Hugh has learned from the best, and he feesl privileged to pass this experience on to the boys who are just starting to learn about rowing in the recreational rowing program.    Recent Alumni Check Back Soon Salisbury in the Olympics:            Looking out from the Salisbury boathouse you might well think yourself in northern Maine or even backwoods Alaska. There are days when the Taconic Range, a mile to the west and almost 2000 feet higher, is reflected on the surface so that the view is the same whether you’re standing on your feet or on your head.         At its most severe the lake throws up foot and a half milk tooth waves, which may make a workout non-productive, but can’t compare to the fangs through which shells on the Hudson or Severn have to plow. Our lone boathouse is a far cry from the dock-to-dock gridlock of Boathouse Row in Philadelphia or the rowing equivalent of L.A. freeways, the Charles.  In its unpretentiousness and Zen-like demeanor our lake would seem to be anything but the incubator of greatness, the cradle of Olympic grandeur, but so it has been five times and in all probability will be again.       If Salisbury has ever made itself known in international athletics it has done so through rowing. In addition to the many Salisbury oarsmen who have strengthened the ranks of major rowing colleges and a handful who have gone on to make U. S. teams, both junior and elite, five have pulled their way to Olympic finish lines.       The first to attain the heights of Mt. Olympus was Hugh Stevenson, ‘68, who helped power the l972 U.S. eight to a silver medal in the Munich games. Fresh out of the University of Pennsylvania, Hugh was in the first U.S. eight ever to be selected from the camp system. The best oarsmen from the nation’s schools and clubs are invited to camp and from that elite group is drawn the even more elite group that will become Olympians.        The 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles had two Salisbury representatives: Tom Kiefer ‘76, was in the four with coxswain and Greg Montesi ‘78, was seated in the quadruple scull. Tom’s silver medal boat led for much of the race but was just overtaken at the finish by the British. (That British boat had Steve Redgrave in it, an oarsman who made rowing history by winning gold medals in four consecutive Olympics.) Greg’s boat battled hard but was not able to make the finals. It was the first U.S. quad to ever race in the games. Before coming to Salisbury Greg had already made a mark in the rowing world by winning a medal as a single sculler in the World Junior Championships.      The most recent Salisbury Olympians were Porter Collins ‘93, who rowed in the 1996 games in Atlanta, and Elliot Hovey ’02, who represented the U.S. in the 2008 Olympics in Bejing. Porter’s eight was highly touted, but on the day of the finals their best could not win them a medal. Porter was a reigning world champion at the time, having won that title in a four the previous summer. Porter returned to Brown University to finish his last year of studies after that, having taken a year off to concentrate on Atlanta. Four years later, Elliot battled his way through a grueling process to win the honor of rowing for the U.S. team in the 2008 double sculls event. The competition was scorching and Elliot and his partner ending up winning the C finals of that event.           And so the cycle continues. What scrawny, bright-eyed novice may lope down the rocky road to Lake Washinee this spring and after a metamorphosis of four, eight, twelve or sixteen years appear on our televisions, a brawny, fierce-eyed stalwart pulling for his country’s glory in future Olympiads?   OARS: Organization for the Assistance of Rowing at Salisbury.   Founded in 2011 following decades of tireless organization and enthusiasm by contemporary parents, OARS is the formal parent-led organization that supports the race-day entourage and other important day-to-day needs of the rowing program at Salisbury.    Recent results.  www.row2k.com NEIRA:  http://www.neirarowing.org/