Princeton University Athletics
Two In A Row
August 02, 2000 | General
Not many coaches can boast three consecutive Eastern Sprint titles and two straight Intercollegiate Rowing Association national championships in their first three years at the helm.
Heather Smith can, but boasting is not her style.
Keeping things in perspective is what Princeton's women's lightweight crew coach is all about.
"Women's lightweight is a rather undeveloped," says Smith, who has coached the program since it began in 1998. "I certainly don't want to negate the excitement about winning a national championship, but it's necessary to be realistic. Of the 10 boats competing [at the 2000 nationals], most of the women came from Division III schools and some were from Division I who had very little funding from their school."
That being said, Smith's record is still impressive. Let's face it, she can't do any better. And that success has her thinking there could be something to this coaching thing.
"This might turn out to be a career," she says with a laugh. "No one is really interested in declaring themselves a rowing coach now and forever, and there's that old saying that `Soon I have to get a real job.' Sometimes this seems unreal, but it's very exciting."
It was never planned this way. Growing up in Canandaigua, N.Y., a small town outside of Rochester, Smith had no interest in rowing. She took it up after enrolling at Trinity College, the alma mater of men's heavyweight coach Curtis Jordan. Smith was a three-year varsity rower and two-time captain, and she won the school's outstanding scholar-athlete award before graduating with a degree in Russian and Soviet studies in 1992. Smith then became Trinity's graduate assistant while earning a master's degree in public policy.
"I knew I had really enjoyed my learning experiences and knew my rowing coaches in college had a big impact on me," she says. "So it was convenient to get into coaching and have my education paid for, too.
"I had some moderate success as a coach at Trinity, nothing huge. I had a boat that won some races and had some athletes give me some positive feedback, so I thought, `Maybe I could be good at this.' "
Even then, she kept it in perspective.
"I had a lot of first-year rowing students who had a lot of enthusiasm. It's not too unusual for those students to shower coaches with praise and love. But it was still nice to hear," she recalls.
After gaining her master's, Smith coached at Wisconsin for one year and was active in the development of the lightweight program. She came to Princeton a year later and coached under former women's coach Dan Roock (now the men's heavyweight coach and director of rowing at Cornell) and current Tiger women's open coach Lori Dauphiny, but she left for a paying position at Columbia under Princeton grad Mike Zimmer '87 in 1996-97. That spring she was hired to lead Princeton's fledgling lightweights and quickly felt the pressure of a winning tradition.
"At our staff meeting before the school year [athletic director] Gary Walters read off this list of how many Ivy League and national championships had been won in the previous years," Smith remembers. "Right away I thought `I'm definitely at someplace different now. Making it to the finals just doesn't cut it.' "
Fortunately much of the administrative planning already had been taken care of, leaving Smith free to worry about coaching.
"The University already had a boathouse and an office in place and an alumni organization willing to take a lightweight women's team under its wing," Smith says. "I had to do much less than other people as far as starting a program.
"We already had the equipment necessary to make a good team and there was an environment that encouraged success. I know coaches trying to start lightweight programs who have to fight for everything, or there's already a men's program in place and a lot of animosity develops. I didn't have any roadblocks here, which was a huge help...provided I could teach people how to row."
The proof is in the championships. Princeton won the Eastern Sprints her initial season in 1998, before she had any reputation to back her up in recruiting. Thus, she molded what she had.
"Rowing thrives on a combination of experienced athletes and brand new novice athletes who just have a tremendous desire to succeed and maybe are burned out from other sports," Smith says. "They're just able to, in a short period of time, learn and succeed."
Success breeds success, as two straight national championships and two more Eastern titles have produced unprompted phone calls from bona fide recruits interested in coming to Princeton. With a renovation of the existing boathouse and construction of the new Shea Rowing Center underway, the Tigers' future looks as good as the past has already been.
Smith is hopeful the future of lightweight women's programs is equally bright, provided the coaches and athletes work to promote the sport.
In the meantime Smith will continue her rise as one of the sport's bright young coaching stars, while doling out the credit elsewhere.
"The environment here has so much to do with the success," she says. "The students are hard workers who always have been accustomed to doing well, and they expect to do well here. I think we're able to feed off those historical successes."
Smith's teams don't just feed off the history.
They help make it.
by Rich Fisher