Captain Payne Denegre announced Saturday that regular crew work at Yale will start today. Two of the three new rowing coaches arrive in the city and will effect a preliminary arrangement of plans. E. J. Gianinni of the N. Y. A. C. is expected then, and Richard Armstrong '95 will arrive the first of the week. Guy Nickalls has cabled rowing authorities that he will reach New York early in February. Upon landing he will go directly to New Haven to begin work. Nickalls' cabled acceptance of the position tendered him as rowing coach marks the successful termination of the efforts to institute a new rowing system in crew.
The plan for training crew candidates is a departure from the methods of former years. Last winter at this time crew men were receiving daily work-outs on the rowing machines. That was deemed the best method of teaching them the English stroke then in use. Today candidates for the freshman crew will be started at work on the sweeps in the tank. Already the university crew has done considerable work in the gymnasium. Captain Denegre and his men have been working on the horses and horizontal bars in the gymnasium for several weeks. Beginning today, long runs, added to work in the tank, will comprise the drill. For the university men, however, there will be a temporary let-up in the tank work until after the Junior Promenade. The men will keep in training, but no hard work will be done until Nickalls arrives.
Of the three coaches who are expected at Yale, Mr. Armstrong will be "resident graduate in charge of rowing" and will have most authority, although, as has been customary at Yale, the captain's views will receive every consideration. Mr. Nickalls, who was coach and member of the Leander Rowing Club in England, will help Mr. Armstrong in arriving at the best stroke for the crew. Coach Gianinni, it is understood, will have charge of the training of the men. He will devote his energies to doing what few Yale coaches have achieved in recent years, namely, keeping the men from going stale.
Just what new stroke the Yale crews will use has not been decided. Captain. Denegre says it will not be the simple "Bob" Cook stroke used at Yale with such success in the early nineties. He intimates that it will be a variation of this stroke, although just what changes will be made in it have not been definitely decided. Immediately upon the arrival of Guy Nickalls next month this matter will be threshed out. The new stroke will probably be very little different from the "Bob" Cook stroke, although there will be some variation.
The basis of the crew which will meet Harvard on the Thames in June will be the crew that met Princeton last fall, presumably, although not necessarily. If the eight men who had seats in that boat are to keep their places they will have to win their positions in a hard competition, for Captain Denegre expects more men to report for crew work this spring than have ever reported before. The enthusiasm of undergraduates in general seems to warrant this assumption. More than 100 men are expected to report for work with the running squad this week.
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