INDIANAPOLIS - USRowing is pleased to announce the winners of its 2005 Annual Awards, Executive Director Glenn Merry announced on Wednesday.
This year's recipients of the Jack Franklin Service Award, Julian Wolf Award, Ernestine Bayer Award, USRowing Man of the Year, Clayton W. Chapman Award, John Carlin Service Award and Jack Kelly Award will be honored along with the USRowing Athletes of the Year on December 3 at the USRowing Annual Banquet in Towson, Md. USRowing would like to congratulate all of the award winners and thank them for their contributions to the sport.
The Franklin and Wolf awards are given annually by USRowing and the Referee Commission to recognize the work of officials across the country. The Franklin Award is given to a referee for his or her lifetime contributions to the sport, while the Wolf Award is given annually to a referee for his or her contributions to officiating for that year.
This year's Franklin Award will be given to Matthew J. Ledwith. Ledwith, who passed away in May at the age of 64, was a driving force in the Philadelphia rowing community for more than 40 years. He served on the Dad Vail Organizing Committee and as president of the Philadelphia Scholastic Rowing Association. Ledwith began rowing in the early 1960s at La Salle College High School and continued the sport at La Salle College. A fully-licensed referee, Ledwith became a licensed official in 1978 and continued to officiate throughout the rest of his life. He had served as the chief referee for the Philadelphia Frostbite Regatta for past 27 years. In addition to the Frostbite, Ledwith helped to organize and run several regattas each year including the Manny Flick races, Philadelphia Catholic League Championship, Philadelphia City League Championship, Dr. Robert White Regatta, Stotesbury Cup Regatta, Scholastic National Championship Regatta, Head of the Schuylkill and the Dad Vail Regatta.
Dennis Smith is this year's recipient of the Julian Wolf Award. Smith has been involved in the sport of rowing since 1996, when his daughter began rowing at Holy Spirit High School and then Temple University. He became a licensed referee in 2001 and fully licensed in 2003. Smith has served as president of the Holy Spirit Girls Crew Parents Organization and is currently vice president of the alumni organization. In addition, he is a past vice president of the Philadelphia Scholastic Rowing Association, where he coordinated assignments of officials and the training of parent volunteers interested in becoming officials. Smith assisted his mentor and friend, Matt Ledwith, in running the Manny Flick Series, as well as the Catholic League, Dr. White and Philadelphia City Championship regattas, and he was instrumental in the starting the South Jersey Scholastic Rowing Association as a founding board member. He serves as the chief referee at the South Jersey Scholastic Rowing Championship on Lake Lanape in Mays Landing, N.J. Smith was nominated by John Kowal, in part, for his quick reaction, clear thinking and expert boatman skills during an emergency situation at the 2005 Dad Vail Regatta.
The Ernestine Bayer Award, formerly the Woman of the Year Award, is given in recognition of outstanding contributions to women's rowing. This year's recipient is former University of Washington women's head coach Jan Harville. As a rower, the Washington graduate was a member of both the 1980 and 1984 Olympic teams and won three world championships medals in the women's eight. As a coach, Harville won three NCAA team titles during her 16 years at the helm of the varsity women's program, the only NCAA titles in any sport in school history. On the national level, Harville served as a national team coach 10 times. She led her crews to several medals including three golds at the 1995 World Championships in Tampere, Finland. She was a nine-time Pac-10 Coach of the Year, the 2002 Collegiate Rowing Coaches Association Coach of the Year, a 1991 inductee to the National Rowing Hall of Fame and a co-winner of USRowing's 1994 Woman of the Year award.
The Man of the Year Award is given in recognition of outstanding contributions to men's rowing. This year's recipient is Penn Athletic Club's Ted Nash. Nash, a veteran national team coach, has guided athletes to numerous world and Olympic medals during the past 20+ years including coaching the lightweight women's double sculls tandem of Julie Nichols and Renee Hykel to a silver medal at the 2005 World Championships. Nash has coached boats to four gold medals, six silver medals and three bronze medals at the world level since 1986. As a rower, Nash won gold in the men's four at the 1960 Olympic Games and bronze in the men's four at the 1964 Olympic Games. He has represented the U.S. as a rower or coach at every Olympic Games since 1960.
The Clayton W. Chapman Award is presented annually to an individual who best emulates Mr. Chapman's 30-year stewardship of the Eastern Sprints and IRA Championship regattas and who consistently serves in a behind-the-scenes administrative role that has previously gone unrecognized. This year's winner is Jon Smart. Smart is the volunteer Vice President of Race Operations for the San Diego Crew Classic. After rowing at Harvard University, he was a member of the U.S. Navy SEAL Teams where he served under the late Captain Bill Robinson, a past president of the Crew Classic, who introduced him to the race. Smart initially served as one of the announcers, but his role gradually expanded to encompass his current duties as a member of the executive committee of the Board of Directors with overall responsibility for race operations. He is a founding steward of the Classic and has volunteered with the event for over 15 years. During that time period, the two-day regatta has grown to more than 90 events involving more than 3,500 junior, collegiate, elite and masters participants. When not volunteering or coaching his son's sports teams, Smart oversees a real estate investment portfolio for one of the nation's largest merchant banks.
The John J. Carlin Award is given annually to an individual who has made a significant contribution and outstanding commitments in the sport of rowing. This year's winner is Gary Caldwell. Caldwell has been a member of the rowing community for more than 30 years. He spent four years as coxswain of the men's heavyweight crew at Yale University, graduating in 1972. Caldwell's coaching career began as the lightweight coach at Yale. He then became the first women's coach at Trinity College and coached at Marist College and Northeastern University before going to Tufts University, where he has been for the last 16 years. Caldwell has been an active member of the rowing community at the administrative level as well. He was instrumental in organizing the first Champion International Collegiate Regatta in 1993. That regatta has continued to grow and develop and is now the ECAC National Invitational Championship Regatta, which spans two days and included 58 schools from across the country this year. Caldwell has also served as the ECAC Director of Rowing since 1999. During his tenure, he has expanded the role of the ECAC rowing program to include five national championships each season and has grown the membership to more than 150 schools with over 6,700 student athletes participating in an ECAC championship each year.
The Jack Kelly Award is given to outstanding individuals who represent the ideals that Jack Kelly exemplified including superior achievement in rowing, service to amateur athletics, and success in their chose profession, thereby serving as an inspiration to American rowers. This year's recipient is Anne Martin. Martin, a member of several national teams and a 1988 Olympian, has served as the co-chair of the National Rowing Foundation since 2003. She has been instrumental in the NRF's organizational, fundraising and grant-making activities associated with the national and Olympic rowing teams. Since 2003, donations to those programs have doubled. Outside of rowing, Martin works in the Yale University Investments Office where her job responsibilities include manager selection, analysis and oversight in the private equity and real assets areas. Prior to working with Yale, Martin spent three years as a general partner with Rosewood Capital in San Francisco, Calif., where she created, implemented and managed an investment program focusing on Internet, software and business services, and eight years with Deutsche Bank in San Francisco, where she was a senior banker in the company's media and technology practice. She is the co-founder and president of the Robert Packard Foundation for ALS Research at Johns Hopkins University. Martin graduated cum laude from Smith College in 1983 and earned her M.B.A. from Stanford Business School in 1991.