Good evening and thank you all for coming tonight. I am John Chatzky, CHATZ to most everyone in our sport. Thank you for this long overdue but fantastic honor. It is really flattering and thrilling and makes me feel that my body of work for US Rowing, an absolute labor of love, is appreciated.
Although Marty read a list earlier, Ted Nash, who was like a father to me and many others in this room, passed last July. I cannot speak tonight without mentioning Coach Nash. To Ted I simply say, "Thank you and we Miss YOU. There will NEVER be another like you."
At an event similar to this one a few years ago I had carefully crafted remarks including just a few Thank you's to some very special people in my life. DESPITE my APPARENT composure in front of a huge audience that evening I was actually slightly nervous during my presentation, rushed the ending a bit and failed to turn the page for the last paragraph—A Final Thank you. In order to avoid that mistake tonight and the never ending and painful consequences that would follow let me start with this: I am sixty five years old and, from time to time I announce on a Wednesday evening that I will be getting up before 6:00 on Friday morning and driving to Princeton, good weather or bad, in order to cox either one or perhaps two rows in an eight with a bunch of twenty-five year old women training for a spot on our National team or Olympic squad. Breakfasts with up to two dozen women at the Princetonian Diner or a group dinner once a year at the Witherspoon Grill are encouraged. October weekends always include the Head of the Connecticut, the Head of the Charles and the Head of the Schuykill, no questions asked, and trips to San Diego or Amsterdam or Sarasota NEVER meet with any resistance. All of that is because I am lucky to be married to a woman who understands how passionate I am about rowing and how much those events mean to me. So please show your appreciation and gratitude and a bit of love to the woman who puts up with and even encourages all of that, my wife, Dr Deborah Mullin. In order for me to start speaking a few definitions and guidelines:
When I say "athlete or rower" I mean ANY rower, male OR FEMALE, lightweight, heavyweight or para---it makes no difference to me.
I had a comment about US Rowing planned, but Amanda Kraus is absent due to Covid and Josy is still in the Netherlands so I will only make this suggestion from tonight's honoree - In the future please consider selecting and naming all boats, including the eights, EARLIER and allow the athletes to row together. Perhaps a few extra weeks in their actual line-ups, as opposed to a few extra seat races with no clear results, might mean more speed!!!
Speaking of Potential Speed:
When I say "On The Podium" I am referring to the dream of our current national team candidates, some of whom are here tonight, to do what many others in attendance did back in their day and receive a medal at a future World Championships or Olympic Games…. And maybe even hear their Anthem played. Would those Princeton Training Center women please rise and allow the room to applaud your journey?
Applauding speed is great, but When I say "Penn Heavyweight crew" I refer to a program that has underperformed for the past twenty years and broken my heart repeatedly but somehow believes that a three time Olympian and gold medalist can turn the program around and convince international studs to come to Penn instead of Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Brown and, apparently, Dartmouth these days. Dartmouth!!! Good luck to Volp!!
And when I say "Steve Gladstone" I mean God and the Holy Spirit. All knowing, all winning, all recruiting perfection and with the voice to pull it all off. Steve will be the first to admit he doesn't know the names of his top recruits in any given year. OK, let's move on--
Who is CHATZ?
I am pretty confident that I have ridden in more boats including members of this audience or against members of this audience or coached by members of this audience than anyone in this room or anywhere else---It's what I love to do most in this world.
I started competing in the seventies. The sport was different then. The boats were heavier and the blades were less effective. A really fast men's (college) eight could break six minutes but not by half a minute. Women rowed 1,000 meters and most people thought they were not capable of more. Coaches yelled and coxswains swore and no one gave a shit. Harvard would often win the Eastern Sprints leaving opposing coaches to wonder why Harry's boat always SEEMED TO GET the favored lane...
I used phrases that today are not simply socially inappropriate but they now would have me thrown out of school. I was not always the smart, sharp, confident, perhaps bordering on arrogant seasoned veteran you see tonight. I walked onto the team my sophomore year at Penn the quintessential novice. I knew nothing. The Varsity program had three plus eights of athletes and three coxswains including me. There was no time on the barge, no coaching or tutorial or guidance, no YouTube. Ted read the line-ups, eight undergrads heard my name and groaned, and off we went.
Having heard all of the roasting comments by several of my teammates I openly make this admission: I was NOT good. In fact, I was very bad initially and I won't even stand up here and claim that I was skilled enough to be selected for the National team in the late seventies. I was not.
I hit buoys.
I hit docks.
I hit bridges, and blades and other boats, and branches, and rocks, and ducks, and refrigerators and single scullers, one in particular whom I suspect was never the same. There is, I claim, a blind spot for a coxswain directly in front of the bow ball and if that's not true I have a lot of apologizing to do. I announced "last ten strokes", a cardinal sin if you get it wrong, with twenty, or thirty or more strokes to go on more than one occasion.
But I loved it and I stayed with it and I learned.
One brief aside : In fact, lest anyone here tells the story before me, in 2007, at the San Diego Crew Classic, on a course that I had steered at least a dozen times, I got "confused" and called 350 to go when there was 850 to go for a crew of somewhat out of shape fifty-year olds who didn't have even 350 left in their bodies. OOPS.
I counsel and tutor young coxswains all of the time and this is what I tell them: Fake it until you make it. Convince yourself that the boat is FASTER because you are in it, and if you can start to believe that yourself, then the Athletes will believe it and IT WILL BECOME TRUE. It is not more complicated than that.
I HAVE TRIED TO teach my children, "To really enjoy your life, you must find a passion. If you don't, you simply can't live as happy and as fulfilling a life as you want."
For me, and for so many in this room that passion is rowing.
There is certainly something beautiful and heavenly about swinging along silently in an eight as the sun rises above flat water with no one else around, and there is something similarly satisfying about absolutely emptying your tank and having nothing left as you squeeze out a victory over equally skilled competition.
But the beauty of our sport comes from the many lessons it teaches all of its participants simply by being in a boat:
Lessons about teamwork and trust
Lessons about commitment and sacrifice
Lessons about effort and discipline and pride and discomfort
Lessons about RESPONSIBILITY and COURAGE
And lessons about what the body can do beyond what our minds expect.
"There is advantage in the wisdom won from pain……."
We row because we love to race.
We row because we NEED to measure ourselves constantly
We row for the satisfaction achieved through effort and through excellence;
We row to fulfill SOMETHING inside of us that would otherwise be incomplete, AND
WE ROW BECAUSE THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NOTHING BETTER THAN HOW IT MAKES US FEEL!!!
THANK YOU.
John Chatzky Penn '78
A request from John: If any attendee at the Power Ten took a video of the sspeech please send to johnc @ prcny.com