Rick Crawley didn’t just coach the University of Victoria Vikes women’s rowing team for 35 years. He lived the experience. That despite “never being suited to 5:30 a.m.” on Elk Lake.
But the remarkable number of 29 Olympic rowers his Vikes program produced for Canada are a testament to his dedication, no matter the time of day.
His former Vikes rowers who won Olympic medals include the likes of Silken Laumann, Kirsten Barnes, Jessica Monroe-Gonin, Lisa Robertson, Buffy Alexander, Anna Vander Kamp, Theresa Luke, Darcy Marquardt, Rachelle de Jong and Lindsay Jennerich.
Crawley, 68, announced his retirement this week from the Vikes program he has helmed since 1983. In the 21 years the Canadian university rowing championships have been in official existence since 1997, Crawley’s UVic team has won 12 national women’s championships, including seven consecutive from 1997 to 2003.
“We built a consistency and culture into the program,” said Crawley.
“Now it’s time to let someone else have the fun of coaching UVic rowing.”
As another testament to his years of coaching, his final UVic team this season included the daughters of four previous Vikes rowers he has coached. That includes current Vikes rower Caileigh Filmer, a 2016 Rio Olympics finalist with the Canadian eight, whose mother Helen also rowed at UVic for Crawley.
Caileigh Filmer sent an Instagram post last fall, showing a picture of herself with arms raised, winning gold in the UVic eight at the 2017 Canadian university championships on Burnaby Lake. Below was a split-screen shot of her mother, Helen, also winning gold with Crawley’s 1989 UVic eight.
“Twenty-eight years later: Same blood, same colours, same coach,” wrote Caileigh Filmer, with the post.
“So proud to have been able to race in Rick Crawley’s last crew and live the legacy.”
It was a legacy built stroke by stroke on Elk Lake.
“Rick fed athletes to the national team, and I thought: ‘Oh, that’s just what you do,’” Vikes rowing alumna and 2012 London Olympics silver-medallist Marquardt once noted, adding she had no idea then of the volume of work required.
Marquardt was a softball player from Richmond who saw a poster in her freshman year at UVic welcoming first-timers to the Vikes rowing program: “I had never set foot in a rowing boat before UVic. I had never heard of any of these people. But suddenly, I’m at Elk Lake shoulder to shoulder with Olympic rowers, and Olympic medallists, and getting exposed to what was possible.”
Crawley is being asked a lot this week about his favourite rowers, and proved again, that the best coaches are also the best diplomats.
“Anyone who worked as hard as I wanted them to work were my favourite rowers,” he answered.
There was one, however, he could be excused for pointing out by name. Coaching his daughter Lacey Crawley at UVic was a career highlight for Rick.
“I thought it might be awkward but it wasn’t. That’s because Lacey knew she had to earn everything she got, just like all the other Vikes rowers,” said a proud father.
Crawley also felt like a proud parent in other ways and valued his role in helping foster or guide the direction of the Canadian university rowing championships, Canadian Henley, Elk Lake Spring Regatta, Head of the Gorge, Brown Cup and Monster ERG.
Crawley grew up in London, Ont., and rowed for the Huskies at the University of Washington.
“You can trust anything [Crawley] puts in front of you,” Filmer said, when once asked what made him a good coach.
Even now, he won’t be far from the water.
“I’ll see where retirement takes me,” said Crawley.
Crawley will keep his hand in the sport on his own terms by conducting clinics and assisting national women’s team head coach Dave Thompson as needed, including taking a junior team to the world university rowing championships this summer.
Twitter.com/tc_vicsports
