Jane Merryman

Kiesling, Stephen. The Shell Game: Reflections on Rowing and the Pursuit of Excellence. Nordic Knight Press, 1982.

            I like to walk at dawn along the river. At this time of day it belongs to a few exercise freaks, the birds, and the rowers. The university rowing team trains here, putting their boats in the water at 5:45 six days a week, a small fleet of eight- and four-man shells.  

            Few things are more satisfying than watching other people work. Not only do these rowers work hard, but they do it with a beauty of precision and unison that is noteworthy in a culture of individualism. I’ve asked myself why would you pick the sport of racing shells when it dumps you out of bed at an ungodly hour and takes you down to a river that is often cold, rainy, or foggy? Is it the feel of the oar as it enters the water and propels the boat smoothly forward or perhaps the sight of the back of the rower in front who is pulling at exactly the same time you are?

            Sometimes, when I watch from the bank in my parka with my hands in my pockets, I feel a little embarrassed that I am just standing around. I am mesmerized by the way the blades, on the forward stroke of the oars, lie flat a few inches above the water—like pelicans gliding a micron above a wave—and then enter the water with minimal splash and a distinct thrump.

            I had been watching the rowers for about two years when I discovered Stephen Kiesling’s book The Shell Game. He rowed for Yale from 1978 to 1980. The highlight of each year was the Race Against Harvard, which Yale hadn’t won for sixteen years. Much of the book is about this intense intercollegiate competition. It is also about pain, limitation, and excellence.

             The Shell Game taught me to look inside the boat to witness an economy of motion. The premise and equipment are simple. The sport is old and full of jargon. The boats are called shells and are made of fiber glass or carbon fiber plastic. An eight, or eight-man boat, is 60 feet long and 25 inches wide; the hull is one-sixteenth of an inch thick. Each seat rolls on small wheels along the slide, two parallel steel tracks. The rowers are oarsmen. Their oars, which are 12½ feet long, used to be made of wood, but are now carbon fiber. The oars lock into place at the catch and release at the finish. The sound of the oar hitting the oarlock at the finish is the rhythmic thrump that awakens the sleeping river.

             Male oarsmen are usually more than six feet and 200 pounds; women rowers are trying to be. A coxswain, weighing much less than the oarsmen, sits in the stern facing the crew and is the strategist and driver, steering with a rope. The stroke seat, directly in front of the coxswain, is responsible for maintaining the shell’s steady tempo.

             Rowing is more than hard work. The back, legs, stomach, and arms—all the major muscle groups—are engaged in racing shells. It’s the quickest way of any sport to use up all the energy in the body. Yet it looks so easy, elegant, and graceful. On the mirror of the river at dawn, it appears to be a form of meditation.

(This review originally appeared in the Redwood Coast Review.)