Personality Traits in an Eight

A piece of writing by Mike Sullivan that has stood the test of time...

Sully's Personality Traits in an Eight - Feb. 1976

"Here's my long awaited theory on personality traits of the different seats of an eight. This assumes a straight port-stroked stern coxed eight.

I would guess that a straight starboard stroked boat would be fairly similar, but that ports and starboards are as different from each other as men are from women - I know from personal experience being bi myself (sided not sexual). I've long noted differences in personality from port to starboard in myself. This for another day and perhaps when under the influence.

Therefore, a bucket rigged port stroked bow coxed eight is not included in this theory.

From the stern:
Cox: It's pretty obvious what traits a cox must adopt and tries to learn to do a good job in this most unique position in the athletic world. I'll pass on the leadership stuff, napoleon complex garbage, and point out a secondary characteristic or two that coxes unintentionally inherit after riding in the box for a while.
They can't drive a car anymore. They take 10 miles to change a lane, oversteer, can't find the brakes, and yell to the car a lot. This has nothing to do with the coxes' former driving ability. Stick Richard Petty in a cox seat for awhile, they'll take his driver's license away. Coxes also begin to squint a lot, no loss in vision, they just squint.

Stroke:'It's a tough job but only I can do it.' The meekest, most frightened non-rower in the world; when plugged reluctantly in the stroke seat, stays meek up until the first few strokes. The first few paddle strokes, a thought grows in the wimps' sniveling little mind that this job is his/hers for life. Back on the shore, the real personality will percolate back to the surface. 'I hope you guys could follow me ok.' In the boat they're thinking: 'stop rushing, you weenies!' Strokes are born and made to be the most competitive person in the boat by far, and if they stroke long enough, become overly competitive in everything they pursue, or don't pursue. Don't expect to finish a game of Monopoly, Risk, or Golf with a stroke. The only one that can beat him to the chow line is the three man (more later) because the stroke was delayed trying to put more oars away in the rack than anyone else.

Seven: the seat is the Bitch Niche. I don't know if whining, overly bossy, big-mouthed complainers are born, and I can't believe that the cosmic effect of this seat could possibly be so instantaneous, but you could teach Mother Theresa to row in a tank, stick her in an eight at seven for the first time, and as the stern four is rowing away from the dock, she'll turn around and yell at the bow four to 'set the f*cking boat.' The longer one rows at seven, the more sophisticated and complex the bitching becomes, changing from a crude verbal rowing suggestion to the six man in the early stages to long winded level- voiced reasoned treatises after every piece explaining why the crew is slower now than last week. Ever wonder why when a coach drives up shell-side to ask how a piece went he says: 'So how did that go, fellas? -not you seven.' I was a team captain, looked up to leader of my college crew, kept my mouth shut and did my job. I raced one week at seven, my coach told me to 'shut up Sullivan' in a post race meeting. Women who deal with severe PMS mood swings will find those swings totally disappear after some time at seven. Permanent OTR.

Six: If you bred Arnold Swartzeneggar with a Golden Retriever, you get a six. Six is also Seven's yin. The gentle giant, gorilla in the mist. Six absorbs most of Seven's bitching and keeps it from moving through to the rest of the crew. Six nods and agrees a lot. It is a hard thing for a normal person to row Six. It seems like such a great seat, your're in the stern, the boats more stable here, but when you are done with a rowing career at six, you find you have been used. Sixes are characterized by great competence in execution of rowing and life, but poor self confidence and a propensity to self-flagellation. Take your 3 year stroke out of the stroke seat and stick him/her at six for a week. This will be the first time you ever hear him/her say: 'My fault, fellas,' at the end of a poor piece. Sixes meditate. Sixes marry, go to work for, and lend their power tools to sevens. This support system keeps sevens with thriving businesses, mates they can walk all over, and a garage full of power tools at their disposal that they don't have to fix when they break.

Five: God. Yahweh. Allah. Buddha. It's not that the five seat IS those things, its just that's how (s)he gets treated. Five's stool don't stink, the catches don't hang. They're the older brother or sister that gets special treatment, and has no idea. If a photo is taken of the crew, five will look great, everyone else is caught with shirtails out, and snot on the lip. At heart and soul, five forgets to change oil, pay phone bills, and turn in forms to the IRS. Five is an example of what happens to a bum that is treated like a king, they act like one. Five has the greatest delta between image and reality. The fortunate thing is that the unearned unabashed worship lasts only as long as the time on the water. Five's on his own back at home. Five wears aviator glasses.

Four: The Amnesia-seat. Take a genius with a photographic memory. Row said genius at four. Listen to him ask for the third time in the same warmup, 'How many of these 500s are we doing?' Four seat is not stupid, just has immediate and catastrophic memory loss. At a start and 20, four settles at 21 because in the time the cox yelled 'settle in two,' he forgot. In a Novice boat where the seats have been removed and cleaned, it'll be four's that went back in backwards. Four will forget to tell the boatman about his(her) stripped rigger nut - usually from the time he is told by the coach, until he arrives at the boatman's bench wondering what he's doing there. On that first day on the water as the ice is breaking up, who is rummaging around the back of the boathouse looking for a sweatshirt? Four is why racing shirts are handed out on race day.

Three: Late in the water. Late to practice. Late to class. Late to work. Late out of the water. Late to his date. Late to the team bus. Late for everything but chow line. There is no competitiveness involved here, just an uncanny knack to have the first three rowers into the dining hall stopped by friends for a brief discussion while three breezes on by to the tray stack. Three generally gets assigned a sitter.

Two: Lean to the left, lean to the right, stand up, sit down, fight fight fight. Cheerleader. What is amazing, is to sit at four or five after a particular piece - seven is whining about the balance, the spacing, no swing, rushing: two is back there with pom poms saying: ALL RIGHT GUYS! LETS DO THAT AGAIN!... Two calls out names of power 10s. 'Awright guys - OAR CLASH TEN!' If he says something funny, he repeated something the bowman prompted him with.

Bow: Comedian. The bow seat creates a strange fatalism. They know that in a catastrophic collision, they'll be the only one to die or get paralysed. Consequently there is a constant quiet stream of one-liners that two or three could probably hear if two were not cheering loudly. If the bow is joined by a cox in a front-loader, this trait completely disappears, since someone is now likely to hear him joke about three being late, five not pulling hard, or the coxn's course looking like a signature. (S)he can be humorless and witless off the water, but on the water when there is breath to spare, you're sure to catch a chuckle if you listen.

Conclusion:
There is no possible use for this info. You don't necessarily stick your most competitive athlete at stroke. Stick anyone there and they'll get competitive. It takes a long time for some of these seat traits to manifest themselves in personality disorders, but you can usually catch subtle differences the first day.
Just this fall, doing a temp coaching for the first couple weeks of the season, one of the crew was sick one day. I'd laid out a plan of drills to reinforce what we'd spent some intense teaching time on the day before. We were also going to get a couple few hard miles in at a low rate by sixes. I had a sense that I'd do the crew more good by filling out a seat for them than by yammering from the launch. It makes the transitions go smoother in the sixes rotation and I figured I could watch them while not rowing. I told the crew what the work and goals were of the day. Then I told them I'd row four (missing port). I left the clipboard behind knowing what we were going to do. We rowed away from the dock, the cox started us going with what I'd verbally laid out. Halfway through the workout, she asked me 'what's next.' 'What's next what?' says I. 'What's next in the workout, coach?' (I honestly wondered why she called me coach at that moment, and couldn't remember the workout.)

I also suddenly remembered I was supposed to be watching rowers' blade depths while I was out and hadn't been.............. Four. "

I'm a self-professed rowing nerd. Rarely a day goes by that I don't check Row2K, Rowing Illustrated, or some other rowing related site. I enjoy catching up on the Boards at Rowing Illustrated every so often, and like this thread about who goes in what seat.

Filling a boat line up takes strategy. I like to think about both the physical and mental aspects of each rower when determining where they go. There is a lot to be said about technique and power, but sometimes it just takes a certain personality to make things fit. Also, the boat line up needs to end up working all together, so interpersonal relationships tend to influence how I set a boat.

Everyone can argue about who should the boat be built around -- the stroke? six? For me, one of the most pivotal seats to get "right" is seven. It may be the "bitch niche," but I also have come to think of seven as the bouncer of the boat or protector. Seven is in charge of stopping any rush from bow six -- the bodyguard that makes sure nothing gets to stroke. If seven isn't in time, the rest of the boat probably isn't either. It's a good seat for someone who needs to be in control.

In my entire college career, I was never stroke. I fully identify as combination of five and six (where I finished my career). Where do you fit in?