row2k Features
Interview
Frank Biller
November 25, 2013
Erik Dresser, row2k.com

Biller carefully watching his crews at 2013 Henley Royal

It's a short week we for Thanksgiving, so we have a quick interview with the Virginia Men's Head Coach Frank Biller on the team's progress through the fall season, and his 'incident' at last month's Head Of The Charles.

row2k - Now that the fall racing is over, how do you assess where your squad is at?
Frank Biller - Fall racing is interesting and of course exciting for the guys. There are highlights for both the varsity and novices. The latter having their first races ever early on at the Occoquan and for the varsity of course, the Head of the Charles. Then we travel all together to the Head of the Hooch. For the novices we are starting to see who sticks around and how they develop, compared to other years. For the varsity we have an exact idea on where they stand in regards to their speed in spring, based on testing and tracking of data, on and off the water. This of course doesn’t include the “human factor” which is why half the job is an art form. At UVA, for men and women, we are always excited about spring, and we’ll bring speed! We love what we are doing – easy assessment there.

row2k - What's the typical make up of a freshmen class in terms of novices vs recruited athletes and what do you look for in potential novice rowers?
Frank Biller - About 2/3 of our novices are classic walk-ons with no prior rowing experience, but we do get good experienced kids as well. As a rare occurrence, we had two experienced novices that won the collegiate four at the Charles this year. Teaching from scratch has advantages as well, for example every novice at UVA learns how to scull, and sculling is a regular part of training all four years.

Of course you can’t coach height, so it helps to be tall. However, we are looking for the best overall athletes; they have to demonstrate strength and athletic ability on the erg, in addition to a series of physical tests. Once all that is checked off, it simply comes down to character and personality, which typically sorts itself out pretty quickly.

row2k - Great, shifting gears a little bit: You had a little bit of an incident while racing at last month's Head Of The Charles regatta in the director quad event. What was the make up of your quad and did the race go?
Frank Biller - Hahaha, you had to bring that one up… no worries, here’s the story: stroke seat Anne Cann and bow seat Gia D’Angelis, both accomplished masters scullers wanted to enter the Director’s Challenge quad, along with our assistant coach Ben Carr and Anne’s husband Jack Cann. Jack unfortunately had to have medical procedure done, so I was willing to sub in, despite being terribly out of shape. We had a few practices on the Rivanna and it went pretty good. We actually had a great race until a slower boat ahead of us wasn’t moving out of the way going into the Cambridge turn and in order to avoid a tangle we had to stop. I think that’s when Gia got a little unsettled – she is a fierce competitor, a beast! Hence steering was off just a wee-bit and bang, my port scull shattered to pieces. As Ben Carr described it: “Going into instinct mode," Biller dumped his starboard oar and jumped out of the boat, much to the enjoyment of the crowd around the bridge, but to the dismay of the three remaining rowers, who finished the race without him.”

row2k - So was 'the leap' was instinctual. What was going through your head as you went overboard? Have you had to bail from a shell before?
Frank Biller - Totally instinctual – I saw the smashed shaft and my only thought was “get out!”. Of course this is something you talk about with the rowers, like what happens if you can’t row anymore in a race, due to equipment problems etc., but just like a fighter pilot doesn’t practice pulling the ejection seat, I have never done that before. You just act, it all happens very calmly but fast. Once I yelled at them that I was OK, it dawned on me that this just happened in front of a huge crowd, but there was no place to hide for sure. So I just calmly swam to shore – I really had to chuckle about it, it was quite funny in retrospect. It’s the only thing you can do really – I just hope it never happens again… or in Hamish Bond’s words: “that’s the only thing you can do but it wouldn’t work in the pair!”

row2k - How awkward was the walk back to your boat, and did the three remaining sculler get any grief from the officials the rest of the way in?
Frank Biller - It wasn’t awkward, just unusual. I kind of had a smile on my jog back, as I never ever expected anything like that. It was a quite a bit to digest. The only awkward thing was the media and social media fall out and attention. This is actually the first time I am saying anything publicly – I enjoyed listening to the talking others did for once. One of my favorite comments was on the Dutch rowing website, saying something along the lines of “wow, look at this guy, his size and splash make a rhinoceros jealous” – too funny. Otherwise we didn’t break any rules except they kept missing buoys, haha. Of course there were a lot of good laughs Sunday night and Monday on the long trip back south. Plus I am not holding back when making fun of others so it’s a great time for payback!

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