On Saturday at the 119th IRA, Coach Tony Johnson, now 81, launched what may be his last crew for a Grand Final: a Varsity Four racing as the sole representative of the Georgetown Heavyweight program he guided for 28 years before his retirement in 2014.
When the race was over, and the crew had powered their way up onto the podium with Princeton and Washington, Johnson joined the crew for perhaps the unlikeliest medal of his long and storied career.
This past winter, Johnson was asked to come back and shepherd the team through a coaching transition, and he found the experience both energizing and--he confessed--pretty tiring. Yet, clearly, Johnson's spring with the 2021-22 Georgetown squad left his mark on yet another generation of Hoya oarsman--and, equally clear, he still knows a thing or two about rowing well and fast.
Including these past few months, Johnson--himself an Olympic silver medalist in the Pair--has now coached the heavyweight men at Georgetown for a total of 29 seasons (1967-69, 1989-2014, 2022). He also coached at Yale for twenty years, from 1969 to 1989, where he won the 1982 National Championship. As Coach Emeritus at Georgetown since 2014, he also stepped back into the launch to help the women's team, in 2018.
At the end of this last day of coaching (again), row2k caught up with the coach to get his thoughts on this spring, the day, and the sport writ large.
row2k: First of all, congratulations on the performance of that V4 today. There's been a lot of speculation that that boat may truly have been your last crew, and this weekend your last IRA. What are you thinking about right now, in terms of where you are today?
Tony Johnson: Right, I think I'm retired again [laughs]. You know, when I agreed in the winter to fill in this spring, in my mind--and the mind of the guy who was principal in hiring me--it was through the IRA. So, we're done. I'm back into retirement!
It's been great. It's been invigorating. But it's time for Georgetown to find a new coach and new leadership, a new leader. And I'm here to support that person.
row2k: In terms of the long arc of your career, and not just through the lens of of this IRA here, but looking back your many years of of rowing and racing, what are the things that that you that you remember most?
Tony Johnson: It's interesting, it's an interesting question. I guess, right now, and the lens may change six months from now, but for right now, I think of the quality of the guys on the team this year. I thought it was very high: there were really good kids. They were a long way from the kind of training, the kind of work needed to be done to be really good, which is what they all want. They're no different in that regard from other bright kids going to good schools that we all know well. That's who they are. On the one hand, while they want to do well, they were just a long ways from that.
I feel pretty confident in how I was received, how they tried things that I wanted them to do, how they listened to me, followed direction, etc., and that had an impact. I know it did. I get that feedback in many ways, including from their parents, for instance. So it's been a good spring; it's been good for me. It was invigorating. It got me back active again, and especially after a few years of retirement, plus COVID, and that's been good. There's something good in human nature, when you can get nervous, like I get nervous before a big, big race. You know, we all know what that was, like in rowing. It's just been great.
row2k: What in your mind sticks out as a few of the positive things that you've experienced in rowing over the years, the things that have really that have struck you? And what are some of the things maybe we ought to be looking at or thinking about, in terms of making sure that rowing stays healthy and productive for as many people as possible?
Tony Johnson: When you think of your own rowing experiences, any of us that have gone through a year, or two-or two dozen-with a college rowing program, you think of the relationships: really, really positive and strong personal relationships that people develop. That's great. That's wonderful. That's sport. That's teamwork. There's just so much of that in rowing: you have something in common with those people that you train with, you work with--you laid it on the line with them.
The kids that I was dealing with this spring were going through the same thing--even though I felt like we were behind the eight ball the whole time, or not the whole time, but we sure were behind an awful lot of the time, trying to catch up. But just because from a training perspective, from thinking of your teammates, remembering who the other people are, and what that means and knowing full well, that those relationships they have, like this Four of ours today: the relationship that they are going to have with those guys 20 and 30 years from now is going to be as meaningful as it was for us, what we remember from our own college careers.
That's the strength and backbone, I think, of rowing: it's the commonality of rowing. If you go to a party and meet somebody new that rowed, you've got something in common with them: a perspective, you understand. As a parent, you want your children to do any sport. You realize how important it is-the teammates that they're with-whether that's 11 year olds or college age kids. It's that teamwork, those friendships. They're terribly important, especially on the college level: they're really meaningful.
One other aspect, which I hadn't even thought of until right now as I'm answering that question for you: There's so much more rowing in this country now than there was 30 years ago. And so you go to a regatta, and the stroke of my four knows so many kids on other teams, because he rowed with them in high school. That's the other thing: all these guys rowed in high school now or club, whereas before some of them only started in college. Anyway, it's just the relationships: they magnify. I think about the kids in the IRA out there on the shoreline of Lake Mercer and it's something in common that they have with so many other people. I think it's really neat, and meaningful. So that's one aspect of our sport that I hope never changes. We lost the freshman experience, but we don't have to lose experience of having good teammates.
row2k: Now that you're on the cusp of stepping away, is there anything you would want to nudge those of us who are still in the sport on? To say, "hey, guys, watch this, this could be trouble" or "We need to do this in order to keep rowing a thing for as many people as possible"?
Tony Johnson: I haven't gone that far, but I do worry about where sport is headed, in general. The kind of conversations folks are having: there's a restaurant in Georgetown, The Tombs, and folks are saying we had to get the Tombs to be a sponsor of Georgetown Crew. What are we going to do? Row down the river in a shell advertising The Tombs on the side of it? I mean, that's maybe something we think of in other sports but it's so far from rowing. I hate to think about that.
row2k: So you don't think you don't think that the Georgetown stroke has much to gain from from the latest name image and likeness discussions going on in college sports?
Tony Johnson: I have a hard time with it. I wish I could remember the detail of a brief conversation I had with Harry [Parker] when one of the sponsors for Oxford or Cambridge was going to be a liquor sponsor, for The Boat Race. And Harry was saying, "I'm not so sure I would want to go there if Dewar's Liquor, or whatever it was, is sponsoring the race. Is that what we really want?" I'll leave that to others to worry about. I am old fashioned enough to like a lot of aspects of rowing, as I knew it as I grew up with it, as I coached it - so I hope we don't lose the good things of it, that's for sure.
row2k: Tony, thanks so much for for taking the time today and congratulations on this final podium at the at the IRA.
Tony Johnson: The 4+ at the IRA is pretty small: it's a "low" podium, but I'll take it! For what was going on this year, it was wonderful for these kids. A great experience and it's been fun. In the big scheme of things, the eights races tomorrow are the ones that people will really remember, but the kids are going to remember the racing they went through today, that's for sure. And that's important!
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06/05/2022 10:30:30 PM