Transcript: Coach Clark talks Eastern Sprints, season closer

May 11, 2015

MADISON, Wis. -- Wisconsin men's head rowing coach Chris Clark met with the media today for the season's final press conference at Camp Randall Stadium. Being nothing shy of hilarious, Clark left his sentiments on how he imagines the 2014-15 season wrapping up for his Badgers.

THE MODERATOR: We close our final press conference of the year with men's rowing coach, Chris Clark. We will have opening comments, and then take questions.

COACH CLARK: Thanks, Brian, I always like to be the closer, the brewers would use me about now. I said that for Andy but he wasn't listening.

It's a big weekend coming up and it almost always is during finals which is always interesting. In some ways the schedule is easier since they don't have to go to class all day long but we keep our practices short, this morning was 6 a.m. to 7:20, random time, go this afternoon for about an hour, keep doing that throughout the week.

With line-up changes, we're probably not the only team in the world that if you don't get the results you change the line-up. In rowing often, but it's true in any sport, line-ups have a tendency to select themselves, at least the good ones, if you give it enough time. Because of our lack of water we probably need two months often to find what you want and this particular final line-up is all seniors except for one junior.

I can't get in their head but I think it's a little, "Coach, are you kidding me? Took you this long to figure out I was the man all the time?" And we have two fifth year seniors in there, like, God, sometimes this old guy misses the boat. They appear to be pretty good.

We don't have a course that's easy to get times.

Imagine track and field, if the 400 meters wasn't always the 400 meters or there was always wind or mud so it's hard to get times but you can tell by spacing, when you see the four oars go in the water on one side and you can measure it between the two.

Spacing is good and they are relaxed, and mainly sophomores in the second boat, which is probably where they belong and third boat is populated with all different ages.

I almost missed this because we had a crisis in school. My first grader, I got a desperate text from my wife that his shorts were falling off and I had to deliver some shorts, which is unusual because he's 90 pounds in first grade and it seems like a fantastic development to me that anything can fall off a 90-pound frame when you are in first grade. I got here in time, he's okay, his shorts are all right. I wouldn't miss this for anything, Brian.

Q: We're happy you're here.

COACH CLARK: I feel a little less inhibited because Coach Alvarez isn't here and I granted him the right to speak last and he appreciated that. I told him once a year he gets to speak last so I'm glad I didn't have to pull rank on him this time.

Q: So you are feeling good about this team?

COACH CLARK: Feeling better than I did about a week ago. Two kinds of performances, either look good but slow or faster but look bad and fall apart. That's the brief explanation. That's not good, either one of those.

Looks can matter, but in rowing it's more about speed.

This team has at least a number of the individuals they have associated really pressing --in other words-- going for it, with sort of a temporary condition that you do until the collapse comes.

And you don't have to know anything about rowing except that rhythm is involved and working together and usually go about half the race at best, until they fall apart or they would not go very hard and feel good the whole way except for the fact that they lost.

I had one guy say it was a good race, "I thought it was really good," except for the fact that you lost by 14 seconds on Sunday, it was great.

It's like the Titanic, it was a great voyage, until the iceberg thing. That's an old cliche phrase, I didn't invent that. I've been waiting to use it for a while.

Q: The 90-pound first grader has size, is he going to be a rower?

COACH CLARK: It's ironic, I have two other kids, he's the most football oriented, in flag football he's a terror, he scores a lot of TD's, just because they get away from him and he's fast. He's embarrassingly called the leprechaun because he has strawberry blonde hair and Kurt Rambis because he wears big, black thick glasses but he loves football. So I think coach Chryst should be here a long time so hopefully that will work out.

Q:What's this Championship like with all the national ranked -- its basically half the country is at this championship.

COACH CLARK: Yeah, it is, most of the best teams.

It's been around since 1946 and I don't know where the first few were but this is in Worcester, Massachusetts, which is about 45 minutes from Boston which is handy for those Boston crews, like running the rock river, which we often do.

Probably about as far as the race up at Devil's Lake, but it's a one day operation, there is anywhere from 16 to 18 boats and two advance out of each heat to go to the grand final, which is six.

It's difficult, we have had a great tradition there, there was a period there, over a six-year period the worst we did was fourth and the last two years we haven't been in the grand final which is 1st through 6th, and it would be nice to get back there, we have a tough heat. Rowing is strange, you can literally go over night if you have constituent parts to paint, the same way you would see on another team, maybe a big upset, like wow where did that come? Well they pulled it all together. You have to believe it as well, when you have been beaten down as much as we have, I swear some of the guys don't believe that they even deserve to be that good, it's not that you're not telling them that, but they're used to -- you see it all the time in any team, and they're going, well, we're not bad, the coach has been telling us that for four years but they didn't believe it.

So it's happening. It helps to have Beau Hoopman on the staff, my nickname for him is crusty the coach, because he's kind of tough, but it's nice to have a guy that's won Olympic medals, gold medals to tell you the truth because they know it's unvarnished from him.

I could exaggerate a bit, I know that's a surprise, but Beau does not do that. He's plain spoken.

Q:What has to click for them -- over the years?

COACH CLARK: This doesn't help anything but this sort of physical expression of my expression for the past three years, if I rub it enough maybe the genie will arrive and grant my three wishes but I don't know.

Generally, to get here -- five of these eight were novices before they got here which helps and they go from not believing and they were athletic to begin with but you have uncovered people who like to race and they race a lot in the summer, most of them will go 25 to 30 times down the course, that means, just like it sounds, that many starts whereas in a college season you might have 11.

I found the most important thing is you need to race, you need to race a lot. Usually if you lose if you're competitive, well, they have more experience what's that mean, not to mention chronologically they may be older, but they have raced more and they do what they're told and these guys, we had a class day two months ago and there was an entire boat except one person, the seniors.

There is a little bit of -- when I'm talking I can say, I told you so, which is fine, I don't care, you can tell me anything you want, just go fast.

Coaches are never wrong -- or they can't lose, that's a better way to put it. Either they have low expectations of you and they don't think you're very good and you continuously prove that point or they are dead wrong and -- and they are way better than you think and they provide success. Sounds good to me. I would rather be wrong and I haven't made rash judgments on these guys but as individuals they never did too much now as a collective, they are, which is outside of rowing it sounds totally normal but not in the boat house where you haven't won much in three years. It's the ultimate team sport, only when you row as a team, which is not that often.

Q: Chris, if I gave you the opportunity to be the athletic director for a day here, you could do one thing, what would you do?

COACH CLARK: Man, you know what I think of our AD, he's the best in the United States, best we've ever had, he's incredible. I'm not saying this because I'm coming up for a new contract and there are bonuses involved, the guy's incredible, I have the highest esteem for him and what we do here. I've said this before, one of the reasons our athletic department stays out of trouble, North Carolina has had issues, plenty of other ones, our athletic director is clearly the man in command here and because of that, everybody falls out of line, that's the way a chain of command should work, basketball coach, football coach, they don't run the athletic department, the AD does, which is fantastic.

I would probably just talk the whole day so even as an exercise it wouldn't be a great idea. So I would do nothing different -- yes, I would decline the honor and say thank you, I appreciate it. Anyway our athletic department is great just the way it is, but that was an interesting question, thank you.

Q:One boat that has been successful this year is the freshman eight. Can you talk about them? They're seeded highly for this weekend.

COACH CLARK: They've got some real studs, biggest guy is 6-11, and most teams are bringing those guys up but I wanted to keep them together as a unit, you have to get used to winning and being successful it's a lot easier. If you get beaten down early its hard to come out of that, you start to expect that. Hopefully that's the case now, just watching them today I was able to see them up close and personal because of what we were doing and they're racers. They like to be in the lead and they're uncomfortable when they're not which matters a lot, remember, rowing you're looking back on somebody who is behind you, it's not like running where you can stalk them. That's great as far as I'm concerned.

They're tall, a lot of big guys, three of whom are novices this year which is great and two of those guys are big AAU basketball players. It's another motivation I use, they're racing all these Europeans -- come on those guys cant play basketball, they probably can't even make a lay-up. I wouldn't be afraid of those guys on the line.

Q: You talked about rowing as a team. In a lot of other sports, basketball, you have ball hogs, baseball or football you have bad locker room guys, when you say if you're not rowing as a team, what does that mean, necessarily?

COACH CLARK: It could be just talent, someone isn't sophisticated enough to feel the way the boat is supposed to go, could be a coaching problem, in other words, it's all our responsibility. Especially when they first start, teaching them what are the most important things, so -- and if they focus too much on feel, which a lot of rowers do, especially scullers in particular, that doesn't sound funny to you but anybody that knows rowing, yea. Sculling is like Greco-Roman vs freestyle, similar but not the same.

And if you focus on feel, if you want to feel good in rowing, don't get in the boat, don't row. Rowing, it's miserable when it's cold and the water is splashing you, realize you get splashed almost every single stroke and when the water is 35 degrees, that doesn't feel good, so a lot of guys will focus on that and meanwhile they're getting beat when the speed of the boat or winning is what feels good.

Beau gives our feel good speech to the high school kids that come here and I said all right, guys, we're going to get touchy feely here, all right.

Beau, you won the Olympics, how did that feel? Good!

That's our touchy feely speech, don't focus too much on it -- I don't think I answered your question completely but you got the point.

I think I said something, this is fun, it's the end of the year but don't worry I won't go on forever.

THE MODERATOR: Anything else? Okay. Thanks, Coach.

University of Wisconsin Athletics

Transcript: Coach Clark talks Eastern Sprints, season closer

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