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STRATEGIC VISION CINDERELLA

Like anSTORY efficient and coordinated crew, the individuals charting the rebirth of Penn Charter rowing pulled the program smoothly and surely forward in the past eight years, building momentum and identity. Then, in the months leading up By the mid 2000s, many people, The team slowly grew in membership and including Ford, were wondering why Penn coaching staff and, modestly, in equipment. to this season, they turned up the Charter didn’t have a crew team. “Given Michael Moulton, Penn Charter’s director of speed. The team is now rowing our remarkable crew legacy and proximity educational technology, joined the team as to the water, of course Penn Charter an assistant coach in 2010 and recalls those out of a new boathouse. They are should compete on the river,” Ford said. early days of renting boats and equipment. rowing with new, world-class boats Penn Charter brought crew back “When you borrow somebody’s beginning in 2007 as a club sport. Then- equipment it is not the same. It is not and gear. And they are under the parent J.B. Kelly III OPC ’78, a grandson possible to rig your boats properly – and care and tutelage of inspired and of Kelly Sr. and son of Kelly Jr., worked picture having lots of size 18 shoes, but with Ford and the Athletics Department to girls who need a size 2,” Moulton said. gifted coaches. establish the program and secure Vesper “You can do it. And we did it. But you “I’m not sure that people understood as its home. Crew became a coed junior could do better.” how the core principles of the Strategic varsity sport in 2008 and a coed varsity Contrast that with this season. Moulton Vision – excellence, innovation, sport in 2009. remembered a day early this spring when collaboration – would apply to athletics. But they apply just as they do to academics and the arts,” said Head of School Darryl J. Ford. “The changes we have made in the crew program exemplify that: We are collaborating with the best talent in the sport, we have invested in excellent equipment. We even incorporated into our academic program an eloquent and inspiring piece of literature about the life- changing power of the sport.” (See sidebar, “The Fourth Dimension.”) Penn Charter had teams on the Schuylkill River in the ’30s and ’40s, and in the mid 1940s a remarkable squad of PC oarsmen rowed for Penn Charter out of Vesper Boat Club; in the spring of 1945, the Penn Charter boys senior eight won the Stotesbury Cup. John B. Kelly Sr., the three-time Olympic gold medal champion in crew, was head coach of that team, and his son John B. Kelly Jr. OPC ’45 was captain. (The younger Kelly went on to win the bronze in crew at the 1956 Olympics. Legend has it that he gave the medal to his sister, the actress Grace Kelly, as a wedding present when she married Prince Rainier.) Despite that pedigree and success, crew at PC disbanded for decades. There were short bursts of activity, including girls who competed under the school name in 1999- 2003, passionate rowers who trained year- round and paid for their own coaching, equipment and boathouse membership. the team took the bubble wrap off its new fleet of boats. He recalled the look of amazement on the face of Helen Tompkins, an elite rower who competes nationally and internationally and is newly hired as an assistant coach for PC crew, as the wrap came off to reveal a brand new Filippi rowing shell. “These are really good!” Tompkins said. Said Moulton: “We were rowing Fiats. These are Ferraris.” When John Thiel, director of athletics and athletic planning, came to Penn Charter in 2012 he knew fields, gymnasiums, pools and the high school sports which athletes play on them and in them. Not so much boats and a river. Tasked by Ford to take the program to the next level, Thiel spent two years learning the sport and then analyzing what he needed to put in place to elevate Penn Charter crew. He identified the need to make changes in three key areas: coaching, equipment, boathouse. Thiel hired as a consultant to the team PC parent John Riley, an Olympic rower and U.S. Rowing Hall of Famer. “John helped a great THE FOURTH DIMENSION deal,” Thiel said. “I asked him questions, The Penn Charter faculty and staff, and all of the bounced ideas off him. He reduced the time it took me to learn, and he helped me avoid students in Upper School, read one book each mistakes – particularly related to purchasing summer that they can share and reflect on when equipment.” Riley, a living legend on Boathouse everyone returns to school in September. Row, continues as a consultant to the Last summer, the all-school read selection was a book promoted to Head of School team, working not with the PC rowers, but Darryl J. Ford by a member of the crew team. with their coaches. He helps the coaches plan indoor and outdoor training for the Ethan Grugan, a senior and a member of the Upper School Book Club, said he noticed athletes, teaches them how to rig the boats The Boys in the Boat on a display in Gummere Library last year and was immediately to a millimeter of perfection, and is a ready drawn to the cover art showing a rowing shell on calm waters. resource. The book, by Daniel James Brown, tells the epic story of the 1936 U.S. men’s Olympic Thiel promoted Katherine Farrell, an eight-oar rowing team. “Of course, I liked the rowing parts,” Grugan said, “and the assistant coach for the PC team for two themes of brotherhood and working together were super inspirational.” years, to head coach this year. Farrell, Ford was inspired by the book, too. In September and often throughout the academic who rowed for Georgetown, is talented, year, he reminded faculty and staff of a lesson learned in the book: The secret of a motivated and a leader, Thiel said. And she successful crew is their swing, a “fourth dimension” that makes it possible for a crew to knows the PC athletes and the program. row with abandon because they are in perfect harmony with their teammates. With advice from Riley, Thiel purchased “That fourth dimension,” Ford said, “that’s what we want to achieve at Penn Charter.” a set of new boats – two quads, three doubles and two singles – from Filippi, Italian manufacturer of rowing racing limited, to a boathouse that could better Moulton said, “even being in the changing shells. He doubled the ability of PC coaches accommodate the 30-member team. room is like being on a movie set.” Thiel to work with rowers on the water by adding Penn Charter is now rowing out of said the size of the club, the organization a second coaching launch, and he invested the venerable Undine Barge Club at #13 within the boathouse and the welcome in new oars and gear. Boathouse Row. Undine is a stone and members have given to the PC students Now all the shoes fit, but the expansion wood jewel box of a building designed by convinces him that Undine is “a good would only be possible, Thiel knew, if PC architect Frank Furness and built in 1882. match.” changed from Vesper, where space was Remarking on the beauty of the building, Caitlin Schaefer has joined Farrell, Moulton and Tompkins as an assistant coach, bringing not only her skill as a rower but her knowledge of the boathouse: Schaefer is the daughter of Undine’s captain, George Schaefer, and Undine has been a second home to her since her childhood. When the Penn Charter team rowed out of Undine for the first time this spring, Thiel was satisfied that the program was established on a firm foundation that would allow it to grow into a strong, competitive experience for our student athletes. “The mission of the program is to make it possible for our students to achieve at the highest possible level of the sport,” Thiel said. “I think we have given them the tools and the coaching they need to achieve that.” PC