November 2, 2023 • 46 mins
Welcome to Navy Sports Central - The Official Podcast of the Navy Sports Nation!
In this episode, we'll be taking a closer look at one the most quietly successful athletic programs at Annapolis, the Navy Women's Rowing team. Coach Joe Schlosberg will join us to talk about the impact that COVID had on the team and how his athletes bounced back to win another Patriot League title last spring. So you do not want to miss our Deep Dive segment.
In our sports update, we'll talk about the Men's Cross Country team winning their 3rd straight league championship in pretty convincing fashion. And we'll check in with the Men's Rugby team as well as women's volleyball as well as both swimming & diving teams.
Finally, we'll wrap things up with our Question of the Day and Mid Watch segments. So please stay with us. You'll be glad you did.
Related Links:
We want your answer to our Question of the Day. Here is the one for this episode:
The Women’s Rowing team has had two Varsity 8 Crews inducted into the Navy Sports Hall of Fame.They were from the 1V8 boats in both 1992 and 1994. How many individual rowers from the program have earned that distinction since 1980. Is it:
A.) 8
B.) 11
C.) 14
D.) 18
Give us your answer on the Navy Sports Nation Group Facebook page.
Follow Navy Sports Central wherever you get your podcasts:
Check out the Navy Sports Nation group page on Facebook!
Music is provided courtesy of Audio Jungle. Artists featured in order:
- Seven In Music (Intro)
- Alexiaction (Deep Dive)
- Loka Music (Deep Dive Pt. 2 Lead In)
- Artlss (Question of the Day Lead In)
- Cinematic Alex (Closeout Music)
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Karl (00:14):
Hi everybody.
My name is Karl Darden and I'dlike to welcome and thank all of
you for joining us today onNavy Sports Central.
I'm your host and this is theofficial podcast of the Navy
Sports Nation where we take adeeper dive into Navy Sports.
It is still fall on thecalendar, but some of the Navy
Winter Sports are alreadygetting their seasons underway.
That means both swimming anddiving teams are back in the
water looking to defend theirPatriot League titles, so we're
(00:35):
going to check in to see what'sgoing on with them and, with the
fall sports season beginning towind down, the Mids are looking
at key star matches in bothVolleyball and Men's Rugby and
will also celebrate the Men'sCross Country Team's third
consecutive Patriot Leaguechampionship.
Finally, in our deep divesegment, we'll be featuring one
of the Mids most consistentlyhigh performing teams They've
won six Patriot League titles inthe last eight years and I'll
(00:56):
be joined by their coach to talkabout the program.
All this, plus our question ofthe day and mid-watch segments
are coming up, so please staywith us.
Okay, here we go with episode56.
Whether you are a returninglistener or checking us out for
the first time, I reallyappreciate you being here.
(01:16):
I'll tell you what we're goingto start in reverse order from
what I covered in the intro asfar as the sports update goes,
and that means leading with theMen's Cross Country Team, they
secured the Mids first PatriotLeague title of the sports
season last weekend at theBucknell University campus, and
there really wasn't a whole lotof suspense to it either.
Murphy Smith won the individualtitle, while Sam Keaney and
(01:37):
Andrew Kirkland finished rightbehind him, giving the Mids the
top three spots on the podium.
They finished with 37 points,army was second with 50 points
and Boston University came inthird with 56.
Now remember, in Cross Countrythe low score wins.
So in the championship meet,points were signed according to
how the first five runnersfinished.
So you can see how taking thetop three spots can help nail
(01:58):
down the win.
Next up for the team is theMid-Atlantic Regionals on
November the 10th, which will beheld on the Lehigh University
campus.
Now let's see what's going onwith Men's Rugby.
They posted a couple of solidwins over Air Force and Notre
Dame College over the lastcouple of weeks.
By the way, I thought it wasinteresting that both of those
teams are nicknamed the Falconsand they played them on
(02:19):
consecutive weeks.
But anyway, the Mids got off tokind of a slow start in each of
those games.
In fact they were down 14-0against Notre Dame before the
offense really got going.
They ended up scoring 50 pointswhile shutting out the Falcons
in the second half and, by theway, the final score was 50-19.
And the team beat Air Force theprevious week by a score of
50-8, after falling behind 8-3.
(02:40):
This weekend the team travels toState College to take on Penn
State and then they wrap up thefall season with the Star Match
against Army on November the10th.
That will be on the road andthe Mids really need to come
away with that one to keep theBlack Knights from getting too
big a lead in the series.
Right now Men's Cross Countryis the only team with a win so
far, but the Mids can close thatgap if they pick up wins in
that rugby match as well as involleyball.
(03:00):
Now it's not unusual for Armyto be a little bit ahead going
into the winter sports season,but it's typically only by a win
or two, not four, like it isright now.
The record through sevenmatches stands at 1-5-1.
That tie was in Men's Soccer,and remember that the magic
number is 13.
So the Mids have a little workto do.
(03:21):
The volleyball team has had abit of an uneven year in
conference play.
Now, if you look at the overallrecord, it's 14-7, which is
pretty good.
But right now the Mids are 6-6in the conference with four
games left, and those areagainst Colgate, holy Cross,
lehigh and Army.
Now all of them are at home,which is really good news,
because the team is pretty toughto beat on their own court.
So if you are local to theAnnapolis area, try your best to
(03:44):
get over to the Wesley BrownFieldhouse and make some noise
over the next couple of weeks.
In a game like volleyball,momentum swings can play a big
part in whether or not a teamcan nail down the win, and I've
seen loud fan support be thedifference maker on more than
one occasion.
These four matches won't beeasy, so let's see what we can
do to get out there and help thevolleyball team run the table
to finish out the regular season.
And finally, we're going tofinish up with swimming and
(04:05):
diving.
Both teams posted a couple ofcompetitive wins against George
Washington University and themen also defeated UMBC.
The Mids will welcome AmericanUniversity, bucknell and
Lafayette to Lejeune Hall thisweekend.
The Star Meet Against Armytakes place on December the 7th
at home.
You may recall that the men'sstreak of 31 straight wins over
(04:25):
the Black Knights came to an endlast year.
The Mids did get a measure ofrevenge by winning the Patriot
League championship in thatthrilling 4x100 freestyle relay.
But you know they've had thedate of this year's Star Meet
circled on the calendar as soonas the schedule came out.
Ok, that takes care of oursports update Coming up.
Next we have our Deep Divesegment and, as I mentioned in
the intro, we'll be joined by aNavy coach who has led his team
(04:46):
to six Patriot League titles ineight years.
That includes a dramatic comefrom behind win last spring.
So I know you'll want to stickaround for that.
Welcome back everyone.
(05:11):
You know, when it comes towinning Patriot League
championships, you've heard metalk about both track and field
and swimming and diving quite afew times.
The men and women have beendominant in these two sports
over the last several years, butone you may not be as familiar
with has won six titles in eightyears and nine overall.
I've become a huge fan of thissport and you only need to go
back through the episode historyto figure that out.
(05:32):
My very first guest, over twoand a half years ago, was the
director of the program, andtoday makes the sixth episode
out of 56 where I've showcasedthis sport.
If you haven't figured it out bynow, I'm talking about rowing,
and in today's deep dive segment, we'll be talking specifically
about the women's rowing team.
Our guest today was named thehead coach of the program in the
summer of 2015 after spending14 years as part of the coaching
(05:53):
staff at the University ofNotre Dame in South Bend.
In his very first season, heled the midst of their fourth
Patriot League title.
They went on to post the 19thplace finish in the NCAA
championships in the spring of2016, which is their highest
ever so far.
From 2017 to 2019, the team wonthree more League titles and
picked up another in 2021 afterCOVID canceled the championships
the previous year.
(06:13):
After Boston University stoppedthe mid streak of consecutive
titles in 2022, the team bouncedback to reclaim it in thrilling
fashion at the 2023 PatriotLeague championships.
So joining us today to talkabout how all that happened, as
well as give us an in depth lookat the program, is the head
coach of the Navy women's rowingteam.
Joe Schlosberg.
Coach Schlosberg, thank you somuch for joining me today on
(06:34):
Navy Sports Central.
I really appreciate you takingthe time.
Coach Schlosberg (06:38):
Thank you, Karl, I'm excited to be here.
Karl (06:40):
All right, so let's go ahead and get right into it.
You came to Annapolis fromNotre Dame, so I was a little
bit curious as to when this Navyhead coaching job first showed
up on your radar and what weresome of the factors that came
into play that led to youaccepting the job when it was
offered.
Coach Schlosberg (06:58):
Sure, actually , it was out in Sacramento,
California, at the 2015 NCAAchampionships.
I was there with Notre Dame andNavy was also there, and there
was actually a a varsity 4 fromNavy.
I believe they finished 17th inthe country that year.
A very good finish for them.
(07:19):
They were small but they werescrappy, they were tough, they
were keeping themselves in raceswhich they really shouldn't
have been in and they were justbeing an absolute pest to a lot
of other teams.
And there was no idea that thisjob was going to open up.
(07:42):
But that kind of put Navy onthe radar and the thought of
working with those athletes thatwere just tough and scrappy,
that's appealing.
And as the summer went on afterthat, the position ended up
opening up and my boss at thetime at Notre Dame was actually
(08:06):
somebody who had coached here atNavy previously, so I was able
to kind of pick his brain andthings started to happen and I
was very honored to be offeredthis position.
It was probably late Augustwhen I was offered this position
(08:27):
, so I had to dive right in.
I'm glad.
I did.
Karl (08:34):
So obviously Notre Dame is an institution with very high
academic standards, just likethe Naval Academy.
But even when you take intoaccount the NCAA rules on
practice time and when theathletes are available, I'm sure
you notice the differencebetween South Bend and Annapolis
.
Did you have to adjust yourapproach to coaching the Mids
given all the other competingdemands that they had on their
time?
Oh, gosh.
Coach Schlosberg (08:54):
Yes, it took me a while to figure out what
worked here and I made mistakes.
I will own that I made a lot ofmistakes Within the first couple
of years first two years I musthave tried three, four, five
different training approachesand some would work for a little
(09:15):
bit of time, some would notwork at all, and I feel bad for
looking back at those teamsbecause they were my guinea pigs
.
I was trying to learn, I wastrying to learn about the
academy and learn the demands,and it's such a unique
environment that you really dohave to approach things
differently.
And so it took me a while tokind of figure out, play with
(09:37):
some things and land onsomething, and I finally started
to see things click togetherwith the training.
The big thing here is that theNaval Academy is always evolving
and changing, and I need to dothe same with my training, with
my approach, because we are onesmall part of this bigger
(09:59):
mission and they're trying tobetter themselves and so we need
to adjust to that and roll withthe punches and still compete
nationally.
So it just I can't be stuck inone mindset, trying to do things
the same way I did five, eightyears ago.
(10:20):
Right, right.
Karl (10:22):
Okay, so this past spring I was watching the Patriot
League championships on YouTubeand obviously there is a great
final result there, recapturingthe Patriot League title after
Boston University kind of edgedout last year.
Can you share your thoughts onyour team's success and what
(10:43):
were the keys to the successthat resulted in them earning
back that title?
Coach Schlosberg (10:48):
Well, we had some speed bumps through COVID,
I think, leading up to 2022,2023, we lost ourselves through
COVID.
Kind of, coming out of COVID,we lost who we were, we lost our
future.
We were able to kind of stumblethrough the spring of 2021.
(11:09):
And we just could not sustainthat through the spring of 2022.
And you know, it was, it wasn'tsmoke and mirrors, but we there
was a lot of, there was a lotof duct tape and band-aids to
just kind of hold ourselvestogether.
So, going into the going intothe championship last year,
(11:30):
going into the entire year lastyear, we really left no stone
unturned.
I looked at everything and ifyou're looking for one specific
thing, it was.
It was definitely a change inculture.
We really refocused on the ideaof team teammate self.
(11:50):
It's it's mirrored here at Navywith with ship shipmate self.
And you know, during that timewe we went through attrition.
We lost some people that hadbeen strong members of the team
before, right, but but with that, people were forced to step up
(12:10):
and those that were here, theydid, they bought in, they made
great changes and pushed, pushedthe program back on course,
which which I'm very happy about.
But it was, it was a toughcouple of years and we had to
(12:30):
kind of hit hit some low pointsin order to kind of start moving
up again.
So it's a challenge.
Karl (12:39):
Yeah, yeah.
And actually that's a nicesegue into the next question I
had for you, because obviouslyit was a real challenge to the
mental toughness of the teamhaving to deal with all of that.
So actually I had a greatconversation with coach Edwards
from the women's triathlon teama couple of months ago and we
spoke about this whole notion ofmental toughness and I said,
(12:59):
hey, is most of that inherent orcan you develop it?
And he firmly believed that youcould develop it.
And certainly in the triathlonit's a it's a big factor.
But just as important in rowing, I gotta imagine it is because
you're not out there necessarilyon your own.
You're out there doing onething in unison with seven other
people, you know, assumingwe're talking about a row, a
(13:21):
crew of eight here.
So what's your take on that andwhat are some of the things
that you've been able to do tohelp sharpen up the mental
toughness on your team?
Coach Schlosberg (13:31):
I absolutely agree with coach.
Mental toughness can bedeveloped, but I don't.
You know, we don't sit down andreally talk about it.
We go and we work through it.
So I feel that we're going tochallenge our athletes and put
them into situations where theyneed to perform, regardless of
(13:52):
if they've had a tough week oftraining or if they've gone
through a week of midterm examsor they've had to stand watch in
the middle of the night beforepractice.
This is a place this being theBoat House that they can come
over as a release.
Yes, they work hard, but theyenjoy that.
They find fun in it.
With that, the expectation isthat they give their best effort
(14:15):
that day.
So you know, they could bereally beat up from a lot of
different aspects of life andthey're going to come over here
and the expectation is that theythey give their all that day
with what we're asking and youknow along those lines.
The second big part of it isthat we try and make practice
(14:38):
way harder than races.
They have that support groupwith their teammates, but we
challenge them.
The water challenges them, justlife here challenges them and
we make sure that theyunderstand what they're doing
and why they're doing it so thatby the time we race, that's the
fun part, right right, that'swhere they can go fast and enjoy
(15:03):
and just kind of let it all out.
So we don't sit there andnecessarily talk about the you
know how to develop your mentaltoughness.
We'll touch on some things, butit's more of like let's put it
to practice, let's just get youout there and walk you through
(15:23):
it, so you have to kind of learnthrough trial and error.
Karl (15:28):
Right, right, okay, now I want to talk about that 1v8
Grand Final last spring.
Okay, and just to set the stagefor our listeners.
Last May I believe it was, themids competed in the Patriot
League championship and BostonUniversity was a defending champ
, and so I guess by definitionyou could probably consider them
(15:50):
the favorite, although you knowit was probably just a coin
flip in my mind.
But going into the last race,the mids were down by three
points.
So basically it meant.
.
.
all right, 2000 meters.
First shell to the finish linetakes home the trophy.
I've watched that YouTube videoat least six or seven times,
but the thing was it didn't pickit up until about halfway.
(16:10):
So I wanted to kind of get yourperspective on the first half
of the race.
Did it align with what yourrace strategy was?
Were you satisfied with how theteam started off?
Can you take us through thosefirst 1000 meters?
Coach Schlosberg (16:24):
Sure.
So let me just say that I was aball of nerves watching the
race with everybody else.
This is one of the worst partsof our sport is that we can't
call time out, we can't makeadjustments mid-race.
It is just like we send ourboats out and we hope that we
(16:46):
prepared them as best we couldon so many levels.
So we knew that that Boston wasgoing to be fast and we knew,
as you said, that it.
You know it could be anyone'srace and we had no choice.
If we were going to win thechampionship, we needed to win
that race.
That was it, the way the pointshad worked out up to that point
(17:08):
.
We needed to win.
So, off the start, we were okay,but BU was faster off the line
and they put themselves ahead.
They were aggressive, they weretrying to break contact with us
and the rest of the field, butonce they got their initial,
their initial distance off of us, we were matching their speed.
(17:29):
We just couldn't cut into theirlead.
The two boats us and Bostonwere pushing each other and
starting to break away from therest of the field, and that's
really where the video startedto catch up and you saw that,
that you know we were, we werethere with them, we were moving
(17:50):
with them, but we just weren't,we weren't able to cut into the
lead that they had.
And at that point of the race,as we're, as we're looking for
the first half, really, I wassitting there going we
absolutely need to stay lockedonto them or else there's no
chance that we're going to beable to come back.
(18:11):
And to that point the crew dida great job to not lose contact,
stay kind of connected withthem, have some, have a little
bit of overlap with them and putthemselves into a really good
position for the second half ofthat race.
Karl (18:27):
Right, right, and along those lines, going into that
third 500, just as you said,Boston University just had that
half a boat lead roughly looklike to me.
That brought to mind a questionand it has to do with when they
tell you, okay, they have afour or five seat lead.
Is that measured from the front, from the bow, or from the
(18:48):
stern?
In other words, are youcounting seats from the back to
see how far they are, or thefront?
I was never really sure aboutthat.
Coach Schlosberg (18:55):
So five seat lead, it's from the bow, it's
from the front of the boat, withthere's a little white ball on
the front of the boat.
You could clearly see five ofBoston's rowers in front of
Navy's and then the seatsstarted to overlap.
And from there, if that growstoo much and I've watched this,
(19:21):
my bow practice, I've watchedthem race I kind of knew the
amount if they really had tomake an overwhelming charge,
what sort of timeframe we'relooking at, and I'm trying to
judge this relative to howBoston is looking and how
they're moving.
So it was, as I said, ball ofnerves watching this race.
(19:42):
But there was a moment headinginto the last, about 700 meters
of the race, mark Cox and ourdriver of the boat knew that
they had to make a move, theyhad to respond and they did, and
it was like that moment wherethe switch was flipped.
(20:05):
It's giving me chills justthinking about it, but you could
tell that at that point thatNavy's boat made a change, made
an adjustment and started toattack.
And that was the first timeafter there was that five seat
lead that we started to moveback into them.
So we kind of took a lot ofpunches from them.
(20:28):
We stayed with them and then,finally, we started to get
aggressive and we started tobuild some momentum.
Karl (20:37):
Well, I'll tell you what that reminded me of, and it's a
little bit of an exaggeration,but I think you'll appreciate it
.
What I saw when the Mids madethat move was the rowing
equivalent of shooting nitrousoxide into a car's intake
manifold to make it go faster.
That's what that looked like.
You can exactly put your fingeron the place on the video where
(20:58):
that move started and fromthere it just looked like
everybody else was moving inslow motion or maybe even moving
backwards.
So I was thinking, man, this iswhere all that training comes
in and it really is a differencemaker.
So, getting back to developingthe mental toughness and that
sort of thing, I would like toknow in your mind, is there one
(21:22):
particular workout or is there aseries of workouts that
contributes to, in that last 500meters, just that team being
able to come together andfinding that strength within
them to basically win going away?
I mean they ended up winning by3 and 1 half seconds, am I
right?
Yes, I mean it was asignificant win at the end of
the day.
Coach Schlosberg (21:46):
I think it's all of the workouts, from the
hard sprint work to the long 6Kwork, which is over 20 minutes
of hard intensity, to longsteady state, to technical days.
That's the secret.
It's not a workout.
It's all of them that preparedthem for that moment.
(22:07):
I think the team did a greatjob of approaching every workout
with a purpose.
We didn't want to have anythrowaway days, any throwaway
strokes, and I'm glad we didn't.
It led to that moment where Iremember when I was a rower,
(22:33):
when you had that moment whereyou finally built some momentum
and you finally started to moveon another boat, the confidence
grows, the energy grows.
It's a game changing moment.
You have to rely and haveconfidence on your training and
(22:56):
have confidence within yourteammates and what they're
willing to give to that moment.
Karl (23:08):
Just one other question regarding the workouts, because
I had asked Coach Bagnall thesame question.
I want to see if I get the sameanswer.
Is there a particular workoutthat the athletes know benefits
them tremendously but they justdon't want to do?
Coach Schlosberg (23:27):
Yes, there are some that we have that.
I've been around here this ismy ninth year.
As I said, as I figured stuffout, there were some workouts
that we had names to.
I'll run into a Lums now thatwe'll start talking and they'll
(23:52):
bring up those specific namedworkouts.
As I said, everything evolvesover the years, but there's a
couple that still, we do thisyear, we'll do next year, we'll
do the year after that.
People remember they hit alittle bit harder and they don't
want to do them.
They know that there's a bigbenefit to it.
I think that it's notdesensitizing them to them,
(24:17):
because they're fully aware thatthis work is hard and what
they're doing is hard.
But we can step back after theydo it, after the workout.
We can step back after theworkout and say, hey, this is
going to help, and you know it'sgoing to help.
And here's how we try and setthem up with that sort of focus,
(24:42):
regardless of the intensity ofpractice, it's everything that
we do is leading them to thespeed and the spring.
oach Bagnall referenced what hecalled third deck Fridays.
He said that his guys just werenot very fond of that one.
(25:04):
But the results speak forthemselves, based on how they've
been doing.
We do a lot of our hard work on that same room
, which is the third deck earthroom.
It just happens to have thebiggest number of throwing
machines there.
Last year my team started tocall it the jungle, just because
(25:26):
it was loud, it was hot, it wasa nasty place to be.
I played a little guns androses every once in a while.
Right now a lot of ourchallenging work is we start the
week off with somethingchallenging on Mondays.
(25:47):
It just sets the tone for theweek.
That's one of the days we havethat third deck Friday Mondays.
Absolutely, I'm with CoachBagnell Right.
Karl (26:00):
We're going to go ahead and take a short break now, but
before we do that, I did want togive you all a couple of ways
to stay up to date on NavySports.
The first is to join the NavySports Nation group Facebook
page.
I've got a link to that in theshow notes.
Just click on it, answer acouple of questions and you'll
be good to go.
The second way takes even lesstime.
Just hit the follow button onwhichever platform you're
listening to this podcast rightnow.
(26:21):
It can be Apple Podcasts,spotify, iheart Radio, it
doesn't matter.
Once you do that, every episodewill be downloaded to your
directory when it's released andyou can listen to it whenever
you're ready.
So please consider becoming amember of our group and you can
actually tap that follow buttonright now to show your support
for the podcast.
I'm looking forward to havingyou join us.
We'll be right back.
(26:57):
Okay, welcome back to NavySports Central.
Karl Darden here with you, andI'm joined by coach Joe
Schlossberg of the Navy Women'sRowing Team Coach.
We're going to go ahead andcontinue with the rest of the
conversation here in a minute,but I always like to invite our
guests to kind of sharesomething, either about
themselves or maybe a cause thatthey support that's important
(27:18):
to them.
This is the way of sayingthanks for jumping on the show
here.
So the mic is yours.
Go ahead and fire away.
Coach Schlosberg (27:25):
I guess, Karl.
The thing I can touch on isthat I've been very fortunate to
be able to coach at the NavalAcademy.
I had a wonderful experience 14years at the University of
Notre Dame and the group ofpeople there that I got to work
with both student athletes andthe people in the upper
(27:49):
department, the alums I thoughtit was a fantastic situation
that I didn't think I could findanything like that and I was
really blown away.
And I continued to be blownaway as I meet more and more
people associated with the NavalAcademy the family, the alumni
(28:12):
group, the students I get towork with each day.
It's just such a uniqueexperience.
It's a challenging experience.
Time demands are.
It's tough, but it's a goodtough and, as I said, the alumni
and this is not patting you onthe back, it's just the truth
(28:36):
the alumni group is justoutrageous.
I love getting to meet the alumsof this boat house and the
alumni of the school, becausethe lives you have had to lead
are exciting.
They are just unlike a typicalpath within everything and the
(29:02):
spirit that's the thing is, thealums of this place have a
spirit to them.
It's fantastic.
It just brings a smile to myface, not a cause or anything.
I'm just blessed to be here andI hope to continue to do what I
need to developing great rowers, great people, great leaders of
(29:28):
the future from my end and puttogether some great performances
so that I can keep doing thisfor a while.
Karl (29:35):
All right, well said, and along those lines, over the last
eight years or so you've hadsome, obviously some terrific
athletes at Navy, and one ofthem had a pretty good summer as
well, even after she helped youwin that Patriot League
championship, and that wasLauren Day.
She was part of that U23women's eight crew that won the
world championship in Bulgaria.
So I'm always kind of curiousto know how that process works,
(30:00):
how that selection process works.
Was she identified even beforethe season started?
If so, was there anything inparticular that you worked on
with her to kind of get herready for nationals?
You know all that sort of thing, because I assume that once she
gets to the nationals, shestill has to compete for a seat.
Am I right?
(30:20):
I mean, is that how that works?
Yes, so okay.
So yeah, I'm curious if youcould walk us through that.
Coach Schlosberg (30:26):
So I was fortunate to talk in late April
with the coach who would be incharge of this U23 team.
She's the head coach forOklahoma and you know Oklahoma
was at a race we were at and shestarted asking me about Lauren.
(30:46):
Lauren had put her name innumbers wise for speed on a
couple of different standardizedtests, kind of put her right in
the mix of this field of peoplethat could be selected.
I had spoken very honestly withthe coach about.
You know, lauren's a greatathlete.
She's very raw and new to thesport relative to a lot of other
(31:09):
people that they may beconsidering, but Lauren's going
to work and you know your guessis as good as mine because I
don't know, I don't know who'ssitting out there as a potential
that could challenge her inthis selection camp.
So that was late April thatthis kind of came on our radar
(31:30):
and we were from Navy's side ofthings.
We weren't going to do anythingdifferent with Lauren's
training.
Her training was for ourPatriot League championship and
then setting us up for the NCAAchampionship.
So we weren't going to changeany of that.
We won one of the PatriotLeague and then got to go to the
NCAA championship.
(31:51):
So she got two more weeks ofrowing and training there and
then, while her competitors,future teammates for this U23
camp, while they got to take abreak, maybe just be able to
train in row, lauren went toLeatherneck.
So for those that don't know,that's the primary mechanism.
(32:15):
That's which midshipmen areevaluated for their potential to
serve successfully as officersin the Marine Corps.
I think I stated that prettywell.
So she was.
She was in the field, she wasdoing stuff and it wasn't rowing
.
She was able to.
(32:36):
Fortunately they have somerowing machines where she was
stationed and she could kind ofjust stay in touch with the
machine and the rowing movement.
But she was busy doing someother stuff for a few weeks,
right.
So you know, with summertraining she, it was something
she had to do and so you'reworking through, a lot of people
(32:59):
, a lot of people helped Laurenget to where she needed to, to
be able to even try out for this, this selection camp, and so
she spent a few weeks atLeatherneck.
Leatherneck went right out tocamp in Oklahoma City and got
right to it and, as far as Iknow, lauren was challenged and
(33:20):
challenged a lot.
But I think that she provedherself.
Clearly, she she had made.
She had made the under 23,eight the top vote there at camp
and she did what she needed toto earn her seat and hold it and
like that's, that's all we canhope for.
Yeah, it was, it was, it was,it was special, it was a
(33:44):
wonderful thing.
So just feel very fortunatethat we were able to get
everything aligned to meet thatpossibility.
Karl (33:51):
Right, right, and for those listeners who don't know,
she's not the first either.
I mean, obviously, a few yearsago you had Alexandria Valenci
Martinson come through and she,not, she won not just one, but
two medals at the 20, 20, 21,under 23 championships.
I think it was a golden eightsand a silver and the fours, am I
(34:14):
right?
Okay, so you know, I get thatathletes are different, right,
and you see that all the all thetime.
But I was wondering if youcould point to a specific thread
that the two rowers might havein common that allowed them to
step on the national and thensubsequently the world stage,
like that.
Coach Schlosberg (34:32):
Lauren and Alexandria are both very
talented athletes, athletes fromother sports who became great
rowers.
Alexandria came over frombasketball, lauren was a
lacrosse player and Really, thecommon thread between the two
aside from both being incrediblyhumble, they had this drive to
(34:57):
be better, the drive to be asfast as individuals and, more
importantly, fast as teams, andthey put the work in to support
that talent and drive.
All those things put them intoa position to succeed on the
world stage and it's amazing tothink, as any athlete would feel
(35:22):
, when they're an internationalcompetition on the world stage,
there's going to be nerves andstuff.
But again, if we're doing whatwe're supposed to, from our end
of things, our practices leadingup to that harder are things
that they have to manage hereday to day.
Life at the Naval Academy Is itharder?
(35:43):
You know in that moment whereyou're going as hard as you can
down the race course, it mightnot seem like some things are
harder, but you know all of that, all of their things, all the
training that led up to thosemoments.
You know you hope.
As a coach you give them theright tools, you give them the
(36:04):
confidence in themselves theycan do their thing makes boats
go, and both of them were ableto do that, and then some.
Karl (36:13):
Yeah, no doubt.
All right.
Thanks for sharing that, coach.
So these last couple ofquestions here I'm going to kind
of have you just answer themtogether if you like.
And in fact you touched on it alittle bit earlier in terms of
what you have to do to kind ofkeep things moving forward with
each class that comes through.
So as a coach, you know that,especially with the success that
you've had over the lastseveral years six championships
(36:35):
in eight years, several in a rowone of the things that can kind
of creep into a program can becomplacency.
All right, and I was wonderingwhat are some things that get
your antenna up and kind oftriggers your spidey sense in
terms of whether or not, okay,complacency is starting to kind
of creep in, and what are somethings that you do to keep it at
arm's length so that you cancontinue to grow your program
(36:57):
the way you want to?
Coach Schlosberg (36:59):
Sure, I actually think that, looking
back on our, you know, kind ofworking through our time with
COVID, through the shutdown of2020, with all sports, and then
coming back and trying tonavigate things for the 2020,
2021 academic year and thenmoving forward, we did run into
(37:21):
that complacency as a team andwe had to navigate a whole lot
in terms of what we could dorealistically working together.
It was a challenge and we hadto again kind of relearn some
things.
One of the things that we hadto relearn is that we're always
(37:42):
trying to be better.
We're always trying to grow aspeople and as athletes and, as I
had mentioned before, the NavalAcademy is always changing, and
we do as well.
While we may not reinvent thewheel, we'll tweak old things
and try new ones, and the newones may not work, and that's
okay.
The team understands thatnothing is given.
(38:05):
We have to earn it and thatgoes a long way and, at the end
of the day, it's really it comesdown to the culture that we
have put in place and continueto evolve and understand, and
it's the athletes and theirbuy-in.
(38:26):
Within that situation, I thinkthat we can have usually have a
group of people that are overhere getting a good workout in,
and then, hey, they're okay withthat, but they understand that
that doesn't align with thebigger goals of the program and
the goals of the athletesthemselves.
So it's always just trying tomake sure that we have the right
(38:48):
goals in place and that ourmission is moving us in the
right direction with things.
Karl (38:56):
Right, right, Okay, hey, you know there's one question
that kind of popped up as wewere talking and I thought about
it and I said you know, therowing program is the one sport.
Well, that's probably more thanone, but this one in particular
that I follow quite closelydoes not have that rivalry with
Army, Because West Point doesn'thave rowing as a varsity sport.
(39:18):
But it was Coach Friedrich whotold me that it is a club sport
there for the men.
Do the women have it as a clubsport also?
Coach Schlosberg (39:25):
They do and we were fortunate a handful of
years ago I want to say 2017,2018, 2019, maybe as well we
were able to connect with theirclub team during our spring
training trips and lined up andwe could have our own little
Army Navy race.
(39:45):
And so we did and hopefully,being the school associated with
water, we showed that we were.
But it was a fun moment withinthe sport because, as you said,
it's not a varsity level sport.
I got that little taste of whatthe Army Navy rivalry is really
(40:11):
all about and it was special.
But no, I wish we could do itmore often because it's a really
it's a fun thing.
Karl (40:21):
Right, right, okay.
Last thing, wrapping up Longterm vision for the program.
In your perfect world, howwould you like things to map out
, say, over the next five to 10years or so?
Coach Schlosberg (40:31):
Long term vision, push the limits, see how
far we can take this team.
And then next year we pushfurther and the year after
further, putting Navy's nameback into the national
conversation.
Karl (40:44):
Right.
Coach Schlosberg (40:45):
I understand that we're on a different path
than a lot of different teamsout there and what they're able
to do and what we're able to do,but that's a challenge.
It's not a crutch or an excuseor anything.
Again, I'm going to push us andthe team is going to push and
see how far we can go and thentry and beat that and I love
(41:08):
that and we're going to embracethat and just continue to move
forward.
That's our plan.
Karl (41:15):
All right, yeah, and I will tell you, I think the fact
that, based on what I've learnedabout the program across the
board the last two and a halfyears or so, I continue to be
amazed at how many athletes youbring in there that had no
ruling experience, that all of asudden are just like major
players, and it's obviously atestament to the coaching staff
(41:36):
and the program and so forth.
So, yeah, with that kind oftrack record, I don't see any
problem with you achieving thosetypes of goals, so I appreciate
you sharing those with us.
All right, coach, this lookslike a pretty good place to stop
, so I wanted to thank you verymuch for taking the time to
speak with me today.
I'm a huge fan, as you know,and I look forward to tracking
your success into the spring,and we'll see how things go next
(41:59):
May when the Patriot Leaguechampionships roll around again.
Coach Schlosberg (42:01):
Fantastic, Karl.
Thank you so much for having meAll right.
Take care.
Karl (42:06):
Okay, coming up.
Next we have our question ofthe day and mid-watch segment,
so don't go anywhere, all right?
(42:27):
Thanks so much for hanging withus here on Navy Sports Central.
Now it is time for our questionof the day, so let's go ahead
and check our responses to ourlast question.
You'll recall that our guestwas Warren Mazanek, who was a
member of the Navy OffshoreSailing team and he also ran the
summer offshore sailing programwhen he came back to the
Academy to teach.
Here was the question.
(42:48):
The Naval Academy has won theKennedy Cup 15 times in offshore
sailing and, by the way, thatis the sports version of the
NCAA championship.
Now, on how many occasions didthey win it in consecutive years
?
Is it A just once, b twice, cthree times or D four times?
Looks like the most popularanswer was D four times.
(43:10):
68% of you liked that choice.
Next was B twice, with 25%going with that option, and then
, finally, 6% of you selected Cthree times.
There were no takers on D,which was four times.
It turns out that the correctanswer was C three times, so
congratulations to those of youwho picked that one.
(43:30):
The Naval Academy won theKennedy Cup in back-to-back
years, in 2012 and 2013.
And they also have a couple ofthree Pizzeres as well.
Those were from 1988 to 1990and from 1980 through 1982.
And, by the way, navy's 15Kennedy Cups are the most won by
any school.
The University of Rhode Islandis second with nine.
(43:50):
Now here's our question.
For this episode, the Navywomen's rowing team has had two
Varsity 8 crews inducted intothe Navy Sports Hall of Fame.
They were the 1V8 boats from1992 and also 1994.
How many individual rowers fromthe program have earned that
distinction since 1980?
Is it A 8, b 11, c 14, or D 18?
(44:15):
Go ahead and give that somethought, and you can let me know
your answers by going to theNavy Sports Nation Group
Facebook page.
I will have it posted by theend of the day.
Alright, let's go ahead andwrap things up with our
mid-watch segment.
The female athlete we've beentracking is Avery Miller from
the volleyball team.
She had 42 assists in the midswin over Lafayette two matches
(44:35):
ago, and she also tacked on sixkills and came up with 11 digs.
Right now, miller has 763assists on the year and she's
averaging just under 10%.
Believe it or not, she'sactually got an outside shot at
1000 assists for the season ifthe team can make a good run in
the Patriot League tournament.
If she can do it, it would markthe second time Miller has
accomplished that feat.
(44:56):
Last year she came up with 1122assists.
Jumping over to the men, we'vegot Kiefer Black from the water
polo team.
He had three goals and threeassists in the mids most recent
win against Bucknell.
That gives him a total of 46goals and 39 assists for the
year, for a total of 85 points.
Black leads the team in allthree of those offensive
categories.
(45:16):
At this rate he's got a reallygood chance at finishing the
season with over 100 points andhe also has 32 steals on the
year.
The water polo team has fourgames left so they have a chance
to improve on their positiongoing into the mid-Atlantic
water polo conference tournamentwhich starts on November 17th.
That's going to do it for thisedition of Navy Sports Central.
(45:37):
Thank you all so much forjoining us Now.
If you like what you've heard,please be sure to hit that
follow button wherever you getyour podcasts and remember to
get the word to all the otherNavy fans out there.
Once again, I'd like to thankCoach Jo Schlosberger of the
Navy Women's Rowing Team forjoining me today.
It's great to have such anup-close and personal look into
one of the programs that hasquietly become one of the most
consistent winners across allNavy sports over the last eight
(45:58):
to ten years.
Our question of the daycontinues to be a show of
favorite.
You can get in on that byjoining the Navy Sports Nation
Group Facebook page and givingyour answer to this week's
question.
I will pin it to the top so youdon't miss it.
And just a quick reminder theviews expressed on Navy Sports
Central are my own and do notreflect those of the US Naval
Academy or Navy Athletics.
By the way, the music used inNavy Sports Central comes to you
(46:19):
courtesy of Audio Jungle.
This is a great site forpurchasing the rights to use the
music from thousands of artistsaround the world, and those
featured in the podcast will becredited in our show notes.
Talk to you soon, everybody.
Until next time.
This is Karl Darden Go Navypiece.
Hi everybody.
My name is Karl Darden and I'dlike to welcome and thank all of
you for joining us today onNavy Sports Central.
I'm your host and this is theofficial podcast of the Navy
Sports Nation where we take adeeper dive into Navy Sports.
It is still fall on thecalendar, but some of the Navy
Winter Sports are alreadygetting their seasons underway.
That means both swimming anddiving teams are back in the
water looking to defend theirPatriot League titles, so we're
(00:35):
going to check in to see what'sgoing on with them and, with the
fall sports season beginning towind down, the Mids are looking
at key star matches in bothVolleyball and Men's Rugby and
will also celebrate the Men'sCross Country Team's third
consecutive Patriot Leaguechampionship.
Finally, in our deep divesegment, we'll be featuring one
of the Mids most consistentlyhigh performing teams They've
won six Patriot League titles inthe last eight years and I'll
(00:56):
be joined by their coach to talkabout the program.
All this, plus our question ofthe day and mid-watch segments
are coming up, so please staywith us.
Okay, here we go with episode56.
Whether you are a returninglistener or checking us out for
the first time, I reallyappreciate you being here.
(01:16):
I'll tell you what we're goingto start in reverse order from
what I covered in the intro asfar as the sports update goes,
and that means leading with theMen's Cross Country Team, they
secured the Mids first PatriotLeague title of the sports
season last weekend at theBucknell University campus, and
there really wasn't a whole lotof suspense to it either.
Murphy Smith won the individualtitle, while Sam Keaney and
(01:37):
Andrew Kirkland finished rightbehind him, giving the Mids the
top three spots on the podium.
They finished with 37 points,army was second with 50 points
and Boston University came inthird with 56.
Now remember, in Cross Countrythe low score wins.
So in the championship meet,points were signed according to
how the first five runnersfinished.
So you can see how taking thetop three spots can help nail
(01:58):
down the win.
Next up for the team is theMid-Atlantic Regionals on
November the 10th, which will beheld on the Lehigh University
campus.
Now let's see what's going onwith Men's Rugby.
They posted a couple of solidwins over Air Force and Notre
Dame College over the lastcouple of weeks.
By the way, I thought it wasinteresting that both of those
teams are nicknamed the Falconsand they played them on
(02:19):
consecutive weeks.
But anyway, the Mids got off tokind of a slow start in each of
those games.
In fact they were down 14-0against Notre Dame before the
offense really got going.
They ended up scoring 50 pointswhile shutting out the Falcons
in the second half and, by theway, the final score was 50-19.
And the team beat Air Force theprevious week by a score of
50-8, after falling behind 8-3.
(02:40):
This weekend the team travels toState College to take on Penn
State and then they wrap up thefall season with the Star Match
against Army on November the10th.
That will be on the road andthe Mids really need to come
away with that one to keep theBlack Knights from getting too
big a lead in the series.
Right now Men's Cross Countryis the only team with a win so
far, but the Mids can close thatgap if they pick up wins in
that rugby match as well as involleyball.
(03:00):
Now it's not unusual for Armyto be a little bit ahead going
into the winter sports season,but it's typically only by a win
or two, not four, like it isright now.
The record through sevenmatches stands at 1-5-1.
That tie was in Men's Soccer,and remember that the magic
number is 13.
So the Mids have a little workto do.
(03:21):
The volleyball team has had abit of an uneven year in
conference play.
Now, if you look at the overallrecord, it's 14-7, which is
pretty good.
But right now the Mids are 6-6in the conference with four
games left, and those areagainst Colgate, holy Cross,
lehigh and Army.
Now all of them are at home,which is really good news,
because the team is pretty toughto beat on their own court.
So if you are local to theAnnapolis area, try your best to
(03:44):
get over to the Wesley BrownFieldhouse and make some noise
over the next couple of weeks.
In a game like volleyball,momentum swings can play a big
part in whether or not a teamcan nail down the win, and I've
seen loud fan support be thedifference maker on more than
one occasion.
These four matches won't beeasy, so let's see what we can
do to get out there and help thevolleyball team run the table
to finish out the regular season.
And finally, we're going tofinish up with swimming and
(04:05):
diving.
Both teams posted a couple ofcompetitive wins against George
Washington University and themen also defeated UMBC.
The Mids will welcome AmericanUniversity, bucknell and
Lafayette to Lejeune Hall thisweekend.
The Star Meet Against Armytakes place on December the 7th
at home.
You may recall that the men'sstreak of 31 straight wins over
(04:25):
the Black Knights came to an endlast year.
The Mids did get a measure ofrevenge by winning the Patriot
League championship in thatthrilling 4x100 freestyle relay.
But you know they've had thedate of this year's Star Meet
circled on the calendar as soonas the schedule came out.
Ok, that takes care of oursports update Coming up.
Next we have our Deep Divesegment and, as I mentioned in
the intro, we'll be joined by aNavy coach who has led his team
(04:46):
to six Patriot League titles ineight years.
That includes a dramatic comefrom behind win last spring.
So I know you'll want to stickaround for that.
Welcome back everyone.
(05:11):
You know, when it comes towinning Patriot League
championships, you've heard metalk about both track and field
and swimming and diving quite afew times.
The men and women have beendominant in these two sports
over the last several years, butone you may not be as familiar
with has won six titles in eightyears and nine overall.
I've become a huge fan of thissport and you only need to go
back through the episode historyto figure that out.
(05:32):
My very first guest, over twoand a half years ago, was the
director of the program, andtoday makes the sixth episode
out of 56 where I've showcasedthis sport.
If you haven't figured it out bynow, I'm talking about rowing,
and in today's deep dive segment, we'll be talking specifically
about the women's rowing team.
Our guest today was named thehead coach of the program in the
summer of 2015 after spending14 years as part of the coaching
(05:53):
staff at the University ofNotre Dame in South Bend.
In his very first season, heled the midst of their fourth
Patriot League title.
They went on to post the 19thplace finish in the NCAA
championships in the spring of2016, which is their highest
ever so far.
From 2017 to 2019, the team wonthree more League titles and
picked up another in 2021 afterCOVID canceled the championships
the previous year.
(06:13):
After Boston University stoppedthe mid streak of consecutive
titles in 2022, the team bouncedback to reclaim it in thrilling
fashion at the 2023 PatriotLeague championships.
So joining us today to talkabout how all that happened, as
well as give us an in depth lookat the program, is the head
coach of the Navy women's rowingteam.
Joe Schlosberg.
Coach Schlosberg, thank you somuch for joining me today on
(06:34):
Navy Sports Central.
I really appreciate you takingthe time.
Coach Schlosberg (06:38):
Thank you, Karl, I'm excited to be here.
Karl (06:40):
All right, so let's go ahead and get right into it.
You came to Annapolis fromNotre Dame, so I was a little
bit curious as to when this Navyhead coaching job first showed
up on your radar and what weresome of the factors that came
into play that led to youaccepting the job when it was
offered.
Coach Schlosberg (06:58):
Sure, actually , it was out in Sacramento,
California, at the 2015 NCAAchampionships.
I was there with Notre Dame andNavy was also there, and there
was actually a a varsity 4 fromNavy.
I believe they finished 17th inthe country that year.
A very good finish for them.
(07:19):
They were small but they werescrappy, they were tough, they
were keeping themselves in raceswhich they really shouldn't
have been in and they were justbeing an absolute pest to a lot
of other teams.
And there was no idea that thisjob was going to open up.
(07:42):
But that kind of put Navy onthe radar and the thought of
working with those athletes thatwere just tough and scrappy,
that's appealing.
And as the summer went on afterthat, the position ended up
opening up and my boss at thetime at Notre Dame was actually
(08:06):
somebody who had coached here atNavy previously, so I was able
to kind of pick his brain andthings started to happen and I
was very honored to be offeredthis position.
It was probably late Augustwhen I was offered this position
(08:27):
, so I had to dive right in.
I'm glad.
I did.
Karl (08:34):
So obviously Notre Dame is an institution with very high
academic standards, just likethe Naval Academy.
But even when you take intoaccount the NCAA rules on
practice time and when theathletes are available, I'm sure
you notice the differencebetween South Bend and Annapolis
.
Did you have to adjust yourapproach to coaching the Mids
given all the other competingdemands that they had on their
time?
Oh, gosh.
Coach Schlosberg (08:54):
Yes, it took me a while to figure out what
worked here and I made mistakes.
I will own that I made a lot ofmistakes Within the first couple
of years first two years I musthave tried three, four, five
different training approachesand some would work for a little
(09:15):
bit of time, some would notwork at all, and I feel bad for
looking back at those teamsbecause they were my guinea pigs
.
I was trying to learn, I wastrying to learn about the
academy and learn the demands,and it's such a unique
environment that you really dohave to approach things
differently.
And so it took me a while tokind of figure out, play with
(09:37):
some things and land onsomething, and I finally started
to see things click togetherwith the training.
The big thing here is that theNaval Academy is always evolving
and changing, and I need to dothe same with my training, with
my approach, because we are onesmall part of this bigger
(09:59):
mission and they're trying tobetter themselves and so we need
to adjust to that and roll withthe punches and still compete
nationally.
So it just I can't be stuck inone mindset, trying to do things
the same way I did five, eightyears ago.
(10:20):
Right, right.
Karl (10:22):
Okay, so this past spring I was watching the Patriot
League championships on YouTubeand obviously there is a great
final result there, recapturingthe Patriot League title after
Boston University kind of edgedout last year.
Can you share your thoughts onyour team's success and what
(10:43):
were the keys to the successthat resulted in them earning
back that title?
Coach Schlosberg (10:48):
Well, we had some speed bumps through COVID,
I think, leading up to 2022,2023, we lost ourselves through
COVID.
Kind of, coming out of COVID,we lost who we were, we lost our
future.
We were able to kind of stumblethrough the spring of 2021.
(11:09):
And we just could not sustainthat through the spring of 2022.
And you know, it was, it wasn'tsmoke and mirrors, but we there
was a lot of, there was a lotof duct tape and band-aids to
just kind of hold ourselvestogether.
So, going into the going intothe championship last year,
(11:30):
going into the entire year lastyear, we really left no stone
unturned.
I looked at everything and ifyou're looking for one specific
thing, it was.
It was definitely a change inculture.
We really refocused on the ideaof team teammate self.
(11:50):
It's it's mirrored here at Navywith with ship shipmate self.
And you know, during that timewe we went through attrition.
We lost some people that hadbeen strong members of the team
before, right, but but with that, people were forced to step up
(12:10):
and those that were here, theydid, they bought in, they made
great changes and pushed, pushedthe program back on course,
which which I'm very happy about.
But it was, it was a toughcouple of years and we had to
(12:30):
kind of hit hit some low pointsin order to kind of start moving
up again.
So it's a challenge.
Karl (12:39):
Yeah, yeah.
And actually that's a nicesegue into the next question I
had for you, because obviouslyit was a real challenge to the
mental toughness of the teamhaving to deal with all of that.
So actually I had a greatconversation with coach Edwards
from the women's triathlon teama couple of months ago and we
spoke about this whole notion ofmental toughness and I said,
(12:59):
hey, is most of that inherent orcan you develop it?
And he firmly believed that youcould develop it.
And certainly in the triathlonit's a it's a big factor.
But just as important in rowing, I gotta imagine it is because
you're not out there necessarilyon your own.
You're out there doing onething in unison with seven other
people, you know, assumingwe're talking about a row, a
(13:21):
crew of eight here.
So what's your take on that andwhat are some of the things
that you've been able to do tohelp sharpen up the mental
toughness on your team?
Coach Schlosberg (13:31):
I absolutely agree with coach.
Mental toughness can bedeveloped, but I don't.
You know, we don't sit down andreally talk about it.
We go and we work through it.
So I feel that we're going tochallenge our athletes and put
them into situations where theyneed to perform, regardless of
(13:52):
if they've had a tough week oftraining or if they've gone
through a week of midterm examsor they've had to stand watch in
the middle of the night beforepractice.
This is a place this being theBoat House that they can come
over as a release.
Yes, they work hard, but theyenjoy that.
They find fun in it.
With that, the expectation isthat they give their best effort
(14:15):
that day.
So you know, they could bereally beat up from a lot of
different aspects of life andthey're going to come over here
and the expectation is that theythey give their all that day
with what we're asking and youknow along those lines.
The second big part of it isthat we try and make practice
(14:38):
way harder than races.
They have that support groupwith their teammates, but we
challenge them.
The water challenges them, justlife here challenges them and
we make sure that theyunderstand what they're doing
and why they're doing it so thatby the time we race, that's the
fun part, right right, that'swhere they can go fast and enjoy
(15:03):
and just kind of let it all out.
So we don't sit there andnecessarily talk about the you
know how to develop your mentaltoughness.
We'll touch on some things, butit's more of like let's put it
to practice, let's just get youout there and walk you through
(15:23):
it, so you have to kind of learnthrough trial and error.
Karl (15:28):
Right, right, okay, now I want to talk about that 1v8
Grand Final last spring.
Okay, and just to set the stagefor our listeners.
Last May I believe it was, themids competed in the Patriot
League championship and BostonUniversity was a defending champ
, and so I guess by definitionyou could probably consider them
(15:50):
the favorite, although you knowit was probably just a coin
flip in my mind.
But going into the last race,the mids were down by three
points.
So basically it meant.
.
.
all right, 2000 meters.
First shell to the finish linetakes home the trophy.
I've watched that YouTube videoat least six or seven times,
but the thing was it didn't pickit up until about halfway.
(16:10):
So I wanted to kind of get yourperspective on the first half
of the race.
Did it align with what yourrace strategy was?
Were you satisfied with how theteam started off?
Can you take us through thosefirst 1000 meters?
Coach Schlosberg (16:24):
Sure.
So let me just say that I was aball of nerves watching the
race with everybody else.
This is one of the worst partsof our sport is that we can't
call time out, we can't makeadjustments mid-race.
It is just like we send ourboats out and we hope that we
(16:46):
prepared them as best we couldon so many levels.
So we knew that that Boston wasgoing to be fast and we knew,
as you said, that it.
You know it could be anyone'srace and we had no choice.
If we were going to win thechampionship, we needed to win
that race.
That was it, the way the pointshad worked out up to that point
(17:08):
.
We needed to win.
So, off the start, we were okay,but BU was faster off the line
and they put themselves ahead.
They were aggressive, they weretrying to break contact with us
and the rest of the field, butonce they got their initial,
their initial distance off of us, we were matching their speed.
(17:29):
We just couldn't cut into theirlead.
The two boats us and Bostonwere pushing each other and
starting to break away from therest of the field, and that's
really where the video startedto catch up and you saw that,
that you know we were, we werethere with them, we were moving
(17:50):
with them, but we just weren't,we weren't able to cut into the
lead that they had.
And at that point of the race,as we're, as we're looking for
the first half, really, I wassitting there going we
absolutely need to stay lockedonto them or else there's no
chance that we're going to beable to come back.
(18:11):
And to that point the crew dida great job to not lose contact,
stay kind of connected withthem, have some, have a little
bit of overlap with them and putthemselves into a really good
position for the second half ofthat race.
Karl (18:27):
Right, right, and along those lines, going into that
third 500, just as you said,Boston University just had that
half a boat lead roughly looklike to me.
That brought to mind a questionand it has to do with when they
tell you, okay, they have afour or five seat lead.
Is that measured from the front, from the bow, or from the
(18:48):
stern?
In other words, are youcounting seats from the back to
see how far they are, or thefront?
I was never really sure aboutthat.
Coach Schlosberg (18:55):
So five seat lead, it's from the bow, it's
from the front of the boat, withthere's a little white ball on
the front of the boat.
You could clearly see five ofBoston's rowers in front of
Navy's and then the seatsstarted to overlap.
And from there, if that growstoo much and I've watched this,
(19:21):
my bow practice, I've watchedthem race I kind of knew the
amount if they really had tomake an overwhelming charge,
what sort of timeframe we'relooking at, and I'm trying to
judge this relative to howBoston is looking and how
they're moving.
So it was, as I said, ball ofnerves watching this race.
(19:42):
But there was a moment headinginto the last, about 700 meters
of the race, mark Cox and ourdriver of the boat knew that
they had to make a move, theyhad to respond and they did, and
it was like that moment wherethe switch was flipped.
(20:05):
It's giving me chills justthinking about it, but you could
tell that at that point thatNavy's boat made a change, made
an adjustment and started toattack.
And that was the first timeafter there was that five seat
lead that we started to moveback into them.
So we kind of took a lot ofpunches from them.
(20:28):
We stayed with them and then,finally, we started to get
aggressive and we started tobuild some momentum.
Karl (20:37):
Well, I'll tell you what that reminded me of, and it's a
little bit of an exaggeration,but I think you'll appreciate it
.
What I saw when the Mids madethat move was the rowing
equivalent of shooting nitrousoxide into a car's intake
manifold to make it go faster.
That's what that looked like.
You can exactly put your fingeron the place on the video where
(20:58):
that move started and fromthere it just looked like
everybody else was moving inslow motion or maybe even moving
backwards.
So I was thinking, man, this iswhere all that training comes
in and it really is a differencemaker.
So, getting back to developingthe mental toughness and that
sort of thing, I would like toknow in your mind, is there one
(21:22):
particular workout or is there aseries of workouts that
contributes to, in that last 500meters, just that team being
able to come together andfinding that strength within
them to basically win going away?
I mean they ended up winning by3 and 1 half seconds, am I
right?
Yes, I mean it was asignificant win at the end of
the day.
Coach Schlosberg (21:46):
I think it's all of the workouts, from the
hard sprint work to the long 6Kwork, which is over 20 minutes
of hard intensity, to longsteady state, to technical days.
That's the secret.
It's not a workout.
It's all of them that preparedthem for that moment.
(22:07):
I think the team did a greatjob of approaching every workout
with a purpose.
We didn't want to have anythrowaway days, any throwaway
strokes, and I'm glad we didn't.
It led to that moment where Iremember when I was a rower,
(22:33):
when you had that moment whereyou finally built some momentum
and you finally started to moveon another boat, the confidence
grows, the energy grows.
It's a game changing moment.
You have to rely and haveconfidence on your training and
(22:56):
have confidence within yourteammates and what they're
willing to give to that moment.
Karl (23:08):
Just one other question regarding the workouts, because
I had asked Coach Bagnall thesame question.
I want to see if I get the sameanswer.
Is there a particular workoutthat the athletes know benefits
them tremendously but they justdon't want to do?
Coach Schlosberg (23:27):
Yes, there are some that we have that.
I've been around here this ismy ninth year.
As I said, as I figured stuffout, there were some workouts
that we had names to.
I'll run into a Lums now thatwe'll start talking and they'll
(23:52):
bring up those specific namedworkouts.
As I said, everything evolvesover the years, but there's a
couple that still, we do thisyear, we'll do next year, we'll
do the year after that.
People remember they hit alittle bit harder and they don't
want to do them.
They know that there's a bigbenefit to it.
I think that it's notdesensitizing them to them,
(24:17):
because they're fully aware thatthis work is hard and what
they're doing is hard.
But we can step back after theydo it, after the workout.
We can step back after theworkout and say, hey, this is
going to help, and you know it'sgoing to help.
And here's how we try and setthem up with that sort of focus,
(24:42):
regardless of the intensity ofpractice, it's everything that
we do is leading them to thespeed and the spring.
oach Bagnall referenced what hecalled third deck Fridays.
He said that his guys just werenot very fond of that one.
(25:04):
But the results speak forthemselves, based on how they've
been doing.
We do a lot of our hard work on that same room
, which is the third deck earthroom.
It just happens to have thebiggest number of throwing
machines there.
Last year my team started tocall it the jungle, just because
(25:26):
it was loud, it was hot, it wasa nasty place to be.
I played a little guns androses every once in a while.
Right now a lot of ourchallenging work is we start the
week off with somethingchallenging on Mondays.
(25:47):
It just sets the tone for theweek.
That's one of the days we havethat third deck Friday Mondays.
Absolutely, I'm with CoachBagnell Right.
Karl (26:00):
We're going to go ahead and take a short break now, but
before we do that, I did want togive you all a couple of ways
to stay up to date on NavySports.
The first is to join the NavySports Nation group Facebook
page.
I've got a link to that in theshow notes.
Just click on it, answer acouple of questions and you'll
be good to go.
The second way takes even lesstime.
Just hit the follow button onwhichever platform you're
listening to this podcast rightnow.
(26:21):
It can be Apple Podcasts,spotify, iheart Radio, it
doesn't matter.
Once you do that, every episodewill be downloaded to your
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So please consider becoming amember of our group and you can
actually tap that follow buttonright now to show your support
for the podcast.
I'm looking forward to havingyou join us.
We'll be right back.
(26:57):
Okay, welcome back to NavySports Central.
Karl Darden here with you, andI'm joined by coach Joe
Schlossberg of the Navy Women'sRowing Team Coach.
We're going to go ahead andcontinue with the rest of the
conversation here in a minute,but I always like to invite our
guests to kind of sharesomething, either about
themselves or maybe a cause thatthey support that's important
(27:18):
to them.
This is the way of sayingthanks for jumping on the show
here.
So the mic is yours.
Go ahead and fire away.
Coach Schlosberg (27:25):
I guess, Karl.
The thing I can touch on isthat I've been very fortunate to
be able to coach at the NavalAcademy.
I had a wonderful experience 14years at the University of
Notre Dame and the group ofpeople there that I got to work
with both student athletes andthe people in the upper
(27:49):
department, the alums I thoughtit was a fantastic situation
that I didn't think I could findanything like that and I was
really blown away.
And I continued to be blownaway as I meet more and more
people associated with the NavalAcademy the family, the alumni
(28:12):
group, the students I get towork with each day.
It's just such a uniqueexperience.
It's a challenging experience.
Time demands are.
It's tough, but it's a goodtough and, as I said, the alumni
and this is not patting you onthe back, it's just the truth
(28:36):
the alumni group is justoutrageous.
I love getting to meet the alumsof this boat house and the
alumni of the school, becausethe lives you have had to lead
are exciting.
They are just unlike a typicalpath within everything and the
(29:02):
spirit that's the thing is, thealums of this place have a
spirit to them.
It's fantastic.
It just brings a smile to myface, not a cause or anything.
I'm just blessed to be here andI hope to continue to do what I
need to developing great rowers, great people, great leaders of
(29:28):
the future from my end and puttogether some great performances
so that I can keep doing thisfor a while.
Karl (29:35):
All right, well said, and along those lines, over the last
eight years or so you've hadsome, obviously some terrific
athletes at Navy, and one ofthem had a pretty good summer as
well, even after she helped youwin that Patriot League
championship, and that wasLauren Day.
She was part of that U23women's eight crew that won the
world championship in Bulgaria.
So I'm always kind of curiousto know how that process works,
(30:00):
how that selection process works.
Was she identified even beforethe season started?
If so, was there anything inparticular that you worked on
with her to kind of get herready for nationals?
You know all that sort of thing, because I assume that once she
gets to the nationals, shestill has to compete for a seat.
Am I right?
(30:20):
I mean, is that how that works?
Yes, so okay.
So yeah, I'm curious if youcould walk us through that.
Coach Schlosberg (30:26):
So I was fortunate to talk in late April
with the coach who would be incharge of this U23 team.
She's the head coach forOklahoma and you know Oklahoma
was at a race we were at and shestarted asking me about Lauren.
(30:46):
Lauren had put her name innumbers wise for speed on a
couple of different standardizedtests, kind of put her right in
the mix of this field of peoplethat could be selected.
I had spoken very honestly withthe coach about.
You know, lauren's a greatathlete.
She's very raw and new to thesport relative to a lot of other
(31:09):
people that they may beconsidering, but Lauren's going
to work and you know your guessis as good as mine because I
don't know, I don't know who'ssitting out there as a potential
that could challenge her inthis selection camp.
So that was late April thatthis kind of came on our radar
(31:30):
and we were from Navy's side ofthings.
We weren't going to do anythingdifferent with Lauren's
training.
Her training was for ourPatriot League championship and
then setting us up for the NCAAchampionship.
So we weren't going to changeany of that.
We won one of the PatriotLeague and then got to go to the
NCAA championship.
(31:51):
So she got two more weeks ofrowing and training there and
then, while her competitors,future teammates for this U23
camp, while they got to take abreak, maybe just be able to
train in row, lauren went toLeatherneck.
So for those that don't know,that's the primary mechanism.
(32:15):
That's which midshipmen areevaluated for their potential to
serve successfully as officersin the Marine Corps.
I think I stated that prettywell.
So she was.
She was in the field, she wasdoing stuff and it wasn't rowing
.
She was able to.
(32:36):
Fortunately they have somerowing machines where she was
stationed and she could kind ofjust stay in touch with the
machine and the rowing movement.
But she was busy doing someother stuff for a few weeks,
right.
So you know, with summertraining she, it was something
she had to do and so you'reworking through, a lot of people
(32:59):
, a lot of people helped Laurenget to where she needed to, to
be able to even try out for this, this selection camp, and so
she spent a few weeks atLeatherneck.
Leatherneck went right out tocamp in Oklahoma City and got
right to it and, as far as Iknow, lauren was challenged and
(33:20):
challenged a lot.
But I think that she provedherself.
Clearly, she she had made.
She had made the under 23,eight the top vote there at camp
and she did what she needed toto earn her seat and hold it and
like that's, that's all we canhope for.
Yeah, it was, it was, it was,it was special, it was a
(33:44):
wonderful thing.
So just feel very fortunatethat we were able to get
everything aligned to meet thatpossibility.
Karl (33:51):
Right, right, and for those listeners who don't know,
she's not the first either.
I mean, obviously, a few yearsago you had Alexandria Valenci
Martinson come through and she,not, she won not just one, but
two medals at the 20, 20, 21,under 23 championships.
I think it was a golden eightsand a silver and the fours, am I
(34:14):
right?
Okay, so you know, I get thatathletes are different, right,
and you see that all the all thetime.
But I was wondering if youcould point to a specific thread
that the two rowers might havein common that allowed them to
step on the national and thensubsequently the world stage,
like that.
Coach Schlosberg (34:32):
Lauren and Alexandria are both very
talented athletes, athletes fromother sports who became great
rowers.
Alexandria came over frombasketball, lauren was a
lacrosse player and Really, thecommon thread between the two
aside from both being incrediblyhumble, they had this drive to
(34:57):
be better, the drive to be asfast as individuals and, more
importantly, fast as teams, andthey put the work in to support
that talent and drive.
All those things put them intoa position to succeed on the
world stage and it's amazing tothink, as any athlete would feel
(35:22):
, when they're an internationalcompetition on the world stage,
there's going to be nerves andstuff.
But again, if we're doing whatwe're supposed to, from our end
of things, our practices leadingup to that harder are things
that they have to manage hereday to day.
Life at the Naval Academy Is itharder?
(35:43):
You know in that moment whereyou're going as hard as you can
down the race course, it mightnot seem like some things are
harder, but you know all of that, all of their things, all the
training that led up to thosemoments.
You know you hope.
As a coach you give them theright tools, you give them the
(36:04):
confidence in themselves theycan do their thing makes boats
go, and both of them were ableto do that, and then some.
Karl (36:13):
Yeah, no doubt.
All right.
Thanks for sharing that, coach.
So these last couple ofquestions here I'm going to kind
of have you just answer themtogether if you like.
And in fact you touched on it alittle bit earlier in terms of
what you have to do to kind ofkeep things moving forward with
each class that comes through.
So as a coach, you know that,especially with the success that
you've had over the lastseveral years six championships
(36:35):
in eight years, several in a rowone of the things that can kind
of creep into a program can becomplacency.
All right, and I was wonderingwhat are some things that get
your antenna up and kind oftriggers your spidey sense in
terms of whether or not, okay,complacency is starting to kind
of creep in, and what are somethings that you do to keep it at
arm's length so that you cancontinue to grow your program
(36:57):
the way you want to?
Coach Schlosberg (36:59):
Sure, I actually think that, looking
back on our, you know, kind ofworking through our time with
COVID, through the shutdown of2020, with all sports, and then
coming back and trying tonavigate things for the 2020,
2021 academic year and thenmoving forward, we did run into
(37:21):
that complacency as a team andwe had to navigate a whole lot
in terms of what we could dorealistically working together.
It was a challenge and we hadto again kind of relearn some
things.
One of the things that we hadto relearn is that we're always
(37:42):
trying to be better.
We're always trying to grow aspeople and as athletes and, as I
had mentioned before, the NavalAcademy is always changing, and
we do as well.
While we may not reinvent thewheel, we'll tweak old things
and try new ones, and the newones may not work, and that's
okay.
The team understands thatnothing is given.
(38:05):
We have to earn it and thatgoes a long way and, at the end
of the day, it's really it comesdown to the culture that we
have put in place and continueto evolve and understand, and
it's the athletes and theirbuy-in.
(38:26):
Within that situation, I thinkthat we can have usually have a
group of people that are overhere getting a good workout in,
and then, hey, they're okay withthat, but they understand that
that doesn't align with thebigger goals of the program and
the goals of the athletesthemselves.
So it's always just trying tomake sure that we have the right
(38:48):
goals in place and that ourmission is moving us in the
right direction with things.
Karl (38:56):
Right, right, Okay, hey, you know there's one question
that kind of popped up as wewere talking and I thought about
it and I said you know, therowing program is the one sport.
Well, that's probably more thanone, but this one in particular
that I follow quite closelydoes not have that rivalry with
Army, Because West Point doesn'thave rowing as a varsity sport.
(39:18):
But it was Coach Friedrich whotold me that it is a club sport
there for the men.
Do the women have it as a clubsport also?
Coach Schlosberg (39:25):
They do and we were fortunate a handful of
years ago I want to say 2017,2018, 2019, maybe as well we
were able to connect with theirclub team during our spring
training trips and lined up andwe could have our own little
Army Navy race.
(39:45):
And so we did and hopefully,being the school associated with
water, we showed that we were.
But it was a fun moment withinthe sport because, as you said,
it's not a varsity level sport.
I got that little taste of whatthe Army Navy rivalry is really
(40:11):
all about and it was special.
But no, I wish we could do itmore often because it's a really
it's a fun thing.
Karl (40:21):
Right, right, okay.
Last thing, wrapping up Longterm vision for the program.
In your perfect world, howwould you like things to map out
, say, over the next five to 10years or so?
Coach Schlosberg (40:31):
Long term vision, push the limits, see how
far we can take this team.
And then next year we pushfurther and the year after
further, putting Navy's nameback into the national
conversation.
Karl (40:44):
Right.
Coach Schlosberg (40:45):
I understand that we're on a different path
than a lot of different teamsout there and what they're able
to do and what we're able to do,but that's a challenge.
It's not a crutch or an excuseor anything.
Again, I'm going to push us andthe team is going to push and
see how far we can go and thentry and beat that and I love
(41:08):
that and we're going to embracethat and just continue to move
forward.
That's our plan.
Karl (41:15):
All right, yeah, and I will tell you, I think the fact
that, based on what I've learnedabout the program across the
board the last two and a halfyears or so, I continue to be
amazed at how many athletes youbring in there that had no
ruling experience, that all of asudden are just like major
players, and it's obviously atestament to the coaching staff
(41:36):
and the program and so forth.
So, yeah, with that kind oftrack record, I don't see any
problem with you achieving thosetypes of goals, so I appreciate
you sharing those with us.
All right, coach, this lookslike a pretty good place to stop
, so I wanted to thank you verymuch for taking the time to
speak with me today.
I'm a huge fan, as you know,and I look forward to tracking
your success into the spring,and we'll see how things go next
(41:59):
May when the Patriot Leaguechampionships roll around again.
Coach Schlosberg (42:01):
Fantastic, Karl.
Thank you so much for having meAll right.
Take care.
Karl (42:06):
Okay, coming up.
Next we have our question ofthe day and mid-watch segment,
so don't go anywhere, all right?
(42:27):
Thanks so much for hanging withus here on Navy Sports Central.
Now it is time for our questionof the day, so let's go ahead
and check our responses to ourlast question.
You'll recall that our guestwas Warren Mazanek, who was a
member of the Navy OffshoreSailing team and he also ran the
summer offshore sailing programwhen he came back to the
Academy to teach.
Here was the question.
(42:48):
The Naval Academy has won theKennedy Cup 15 times in offshore
sailing and, by the way, thatis the sports version of the
NCAA championship.
Now, on how many occasions didthey win it in consecutive years
?
Is it A just once, b twice, cthree times or D four times?
Looks like the most popularanswer was D four times.
(43:10):
68% of you liked that choice.
Next was B twice, with 25%going with that option, and then
, finally, 6% of you selected Cthree times.
There were no takers on D,which was four times.
It turns out that the correctanswer was C three times, so
congratulations to those of youwho picked that one.
(43:30):
The Naval Academy won theKennedy Cup in back-to-back
years, in 2012 and 2013.
And they also have a couple ofthree Pizzeres as well.
Those were from 1988 to 1990and from 1980 through 1982.
And, by the way, navy's 15Kennedy Cups are the most won by
any school.
The University of Rhode Islandis second with nine.
(43:50):
Now here's our question.
For this episode, the Navywomen's rowing team has had two
Varsity 8 crews inducted intothe Navy Sports Hall of Fame.
They were the 1V8 boats from1992 and also 1994.
How many individual rowers fromthe program have earned that
distinction since 1980?
Is it A 8, b 11, c 14, or D 18?
(44:15):
Go ahead and give that somethought, and you can let me know
your answers by going to theNavy Sports Nation Group
Facebook page.
I will have it posted by theend of the day.
Alright, let's go ahead andwrap things up with our
mid-watch segment.
The female athlete we've beentracking is Avery Miller from
the volleyball team.
She had 42 assists in the midswin over Lafayette two matches
(44:35):
ago, and she also tacked on sixkills and came up with 11 digs.
Right now, miller has 763assists on the year and she's
averaging just under 10%.
Believe it or not, she'sactually got an outside shot at
1000 assists for the season ifthe team can make a good run in
the Patriot League tournament.
If she can do it, it would markthe second time Miller has
accomplished that feat.
(44:56):
Last year she came up with 1122assists.
Jumping over to the men, we'vegot Kiefer Black from the water
polo team.
He had three goals and threeassists in the mids most recent
win against Bucknell.
That gives him a total of 46goals and 39 assists for the
year, for a total of 85 points.
Black leads the team in allthree of those offensive
categories.
(45:16):
At this rate he's got a reallygood chance at finishing the
season with over 100 points andhe also has 32 steals on the
year.
The water polo team has fourgames left so they have a chance
to improve on their positiongoing into the mid-Atlantic
water polo conference tournamentwhich starts on November 17th.
That's going to do it for thisedition of Navy Sports Central.
(45:37):
Thank you all so much forjoining us Now.
If you like what you've heard,please be sure to hit that
follow button wherever you getyour podcasts and remember to
get the word to all the otherNavy fans out there.
Once again, I'd like to thankCoach Jo Schlosberger of the
Navy Women's Rowing Team forjoining me today.
It's great to have such anup-close and personal look into
one of the programs that hasquietly become one of the most
consistent winners across allNavy sports over the last eight
(45:58):
to ten years.
Our question of the daycontinues to be a show of
favorite.
You can get in on that byjoining the Navy Sports Nation
Group Facebook page and givingyour answer to this week's
question.
I will pin it to the top so youdon't miss it.
And just a quick reminder theviews expressed on Navy Sports
Central are my own and do notreflect those of the US Naval
Academy or Navy Athletics.
By the way, the music used inNavy Sports Central comes to you
(46:19):
courtesy of Audio Jungle.
This is a great site forpurchasing the rights to use the
music from thousands of artistsaround the world, and those
featured in the podcast will becredited in our show notes.
Talk to you soon, everybody.
Until next time.
This is Karl Darden Go Navypiece.
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