Coxswain

Caught up in the major high of a triumphant ride in the varsity eight, Mount St. Joseph Academy coxswain Erin McElroy lunged forward and into the arms of stroke Dana Lerro. Seconds later, as McElroy had taken a quick break from calling out directions, the Legacy crashed into an abutment of the Columbia Avenue Bridge. "I guess we were all kind of in the moment," senior second seat Rose Ehrlich said. McElroy endured some light ribbing - and, as is tradition, was tossed in the drink by her teammates - at the end of Saturday's 86th Stotesbury Cup Regatta.

Caught up in the major high of a triumphant ride in the varsity eight, Mount St. Joseph Academy coxswain Erin McElroy lunged forward and into the arms of stroke Dana Lerro. Seconds later, as McElroy had taken a quick break from calling out directions, the Legacy crashed into an abutment of the Columbia Avenue Bridge. "I guess we were all kind of in the moment," senior second seat Rose Ehrlich said. McElroy endured some light ribbing - and, as is tradition, was tossed in the drink by her teammates - at the end of Saturday's 86th Stotesbury Cup Regatta.

Mike Moore could have come back from the junior world rowing championships in Italy with a medal. Instead, he returned with a lesson: "Never, never again will I let a crew alter my personality. " When Moore left for Milan on July 20, he was the coxswain for the eight-man crew, the most prestigious of the three American boats. But in Italy, the people in the eight found themselves out of sync, and Moore ultimately found himself in the four-man boat. The eight, filled with the team's most seasoned rowers, took a bronze medal.

Radnor coxswain Katherine Callaghan was ecstatic when her freshman four scull sped across the finish line first on the Schuylkill yesterday afternoon. Callaghan's crew - Lilly Gordon, Ellen Miller, Maria Connolly and Rebecca Michelson - was too exhausted to exult, even after announcer Jim Glavin said that they were the first girls' team from Radnor to win a city championship race. More than 2,600 boys and girls from 60 area high schools, including Southeastern Pennsylvania and South Jersey, competed in the Philadelphia Scholastic Rowing Association's annual championships.

On the surface, the job requirements of a coxswain read like the definition of a Napoleon complex: aggressive; ambitious; commanding; and, perhaps most essentially, small in stature. The coxswain sits at the stern of a boat, barking orders and directions. Moorestown Rowing Club coach Rich Henderson jokingly notes that it's a job sometimes associated with a crew's "small loud mouth," not with one who garners college scholarships for his or her services. But perhaps more than anyone in the South Jersey high school rowing scene, Henderson is witness to just how misguided that view is. Two seniors on the Moorestown Rowing Club's girls' varsity eight rowing team recently inked scholarships with Division I schools.

On the surface, the job requirements of a coxswain read like the definition of a Napoleon complex: aggressive; ambitious; commanding; and, perhaps most essentially, small in stature. The coxswain sits at the stern of a boat, barking orders and directions. Moorestown Rowing Club coach Rich Henderson jokingly notes that it's a job sometimes associated with a crew's "small loud mouth," not with one who garners college scholarships for his or her services. But perhaps more than anyone in the South Jersey high school rowing scene, Henderson is witness to just how misguided that view is. Two seniors on the Moorestown Rowing Club's girls' varsity eight rowing team recently inked scholarships with Division I schools.

The American four with coxswain crew, which includes stroke John Walter of Philadelphia's Penn Athletic Club, won its heat today in a time of 6 minutes, 8:36 seconds. The rest of the crew included John Terwilliger, Tom Darling and Chris Huntington and coxswain Mark Zembsch. Czechoslovakia was second in the heat in 6:11.25 and Yugoslavia was third. The winner of each heat advances to the finals, while the next three finishers move on to the repechage, in which they can still earn a finals berth.

Michael Buskirk, a West Catholic senior, walked into his Southwest Philadelphia home one day early last month and announced, "We need another coxswain. Do you want to join?" Nothing unusual there. Crew teams are often in search of coxswains. But when Michael spoke, his comments were directed not at a brother, but at his sister, Michele. "I said I'd try it for a couple days," recalled Michele, a 5-7, 115-pound freshman. "I said, 'If I don't like it, I'm going to stop.' " Almost six weeks later, Michele Buskirk is still going strong.

When the U.S. Olympic men's heavyweight eight shows up for rowing's marquee event in Beijing, a man who honed his skills on the Schuylkill will be calling out directions to the crew. Is history repeating itself? When the U.S. eight won gold in Athens in 2004, the coxswain was a local, a graduate of St. Joseph's Prep. This time, Monsignor Bonner High and Temple graduate Marcus McElhenney is the coxswain, having beaten another St. Joseph's Prep graduate for the spot. This coxswain is Delaware County-raised, the hard-working son of a roofer and a schoolteacher, "a creature of knowledge," and a fan of the great opera singer Maria Callas.

Sport creates odd relationships: caddies and their golfers; jockeys and their horses; catchers and their pitchers; cutmen and their boxers. And then there are the coxswains and their crews, relationships unlike any other in the sporting world. "I don't know anything to compare it to," Mike Lehman, coxswain of Penn's varsity eight, said the other day. "Maybe a conductor and his orchestra. Being a coxswain is about finding rhythm. " Today through Saturday, the diminutive Lehman will be on the Cooper River, in Pennsauken, Camden County, leading eight men, each with an oar in his hand, in a long, skinny boat down a straight, 2,000-meter course, which they are likely to negotiate in about six minutes.

Caught up in the major high of a triumphant ride in the varsity eight, Mount St. Joseph Academy coxswain Erin McElroy lunged forward and into the arms of stroke Dana Lerro. Seconds later, as McElroy had taken a quick break from calling out directions, the Legacy crashed into an abutment of the Columbia Avenue Bridge. "I guess we were all kind of in the moment," senior second seat Rose Ehrlich said. McElroy endured some light ribbing - and, as is tradition, was tossed in the drink by her teammates - at the end of Saturday's 86th Stotesbury Cup Regatta.

Caught up in the major high of a triumphant ride in the varsity eight, Mount St. Joseph Academy coxswain Erin McElroy lunged forward and into the arms of stroke Dana Lerro. Seconds later, as McElroy had taken a quick break from calling out directions, the Legacy crashed into an abutment of the Columbia Avenue Bridge. "I guess we were all kind of in the moment," senior second seat Rose Ehrlich said. McElroy endured some light ribbing - and, as is tradition, was tossed in the drink by her teammates - at the end of Saturday's 86th Stotesbury Cup Regatta.

On the surface, the job requirements of a coxswain read like the definition of a Napoleon complex: aggressive; ambitious; commanding; and, perhaps most essentially, small in stature. The coxswain sits at the stern of a boat, barking orders and directions. Moorestown Rowing Club coach Rich Henderson jokingly notes that it's a job sometimes associated with a crew's "small loud mouth," not with one who garners college scholarships for his or her services. But perhaps more than anyone in the South Jersey high school rowing scene, Henderson is witness to just how misguided that view is. Two seniors on the Moorestown Rowing Club's girls' varsity eight rowing team recently inked scholarships with Division I schools.

On the surface, the job requirements of a coxswain read like the definition of a Napoleon complex: aggressive; ambitious; commanding; and, perhaps most essentially, small in stature. The coxswain sits at the stern of a boat, barking orders and directions. Moorestown Rowing Club coach Rich Henderson jokingly notes that it's a job sometimes associated with a crew's "small loud mouth," not with one who garners college scholarships for his or her services. But perhaps more than anyone in the South Jersey high school rowing scene, Henderson is witness to just how misguided that view is. Two seniors on the Moorestown Rowing Club's girls' varsity eight rowing team recently inked scholarships with Division I schools.

One of the most courageous and inspirational among the approximately 3,100 athletes at the Dad Vail Regatta is a wispy Drexel freshman who weighs 112 pounds, most of it heart. Kerry Walsh, coxswain for the Dragons women's varsity eight, has leukemia. As she described it Saturday, the steroid treatment for the disease rotted out her hips and she had a double hip replacement while she was a student at Bishop Eustace. The condition, called avascular necrosis (AVN), is also affecting her other joints.

St. Joseph's Prep had fallen behind early in its second-round race Thursday at the Henley Royal Regatta when coxswain Lou Lombardi decided it was time for a tribute. The junior called a move in honor of teammate Brendan Adams, who could not compete at Henley because of a commitment to the Naval Academy. The Hawks responded, taking the lead and stretching it to almost a length. They then withstood a varying headwind in the last half of the race and defeated Hampton School of Middlesex, England, to advance to the quarterfinals of the Princess Elizabeth Challenge Cup. The Prep's eight with coxswain finished the 2,112- meter course in 7 minutes, 7 seconds for a 23/4-length victory in the head-to-head competition in Henley-on-Thames, England.

It didn't take much for Tracy Labrum to know that her son Seamus had found what he was looking for in the Pacific Northwest. "Seamus has gone on several college visits and, each time, as soon as he arrived and then a couple of times during the visit, he checked in," said Labrum, of Cape May Court House, N.J. "The University of Washington was his last visit and we didn't hear from him. I knew the longer it went until we heard from him, the more...

Bishop Eustace Prep overcame strong headwinds, choppy water, and stiff competition to win the girls' senior eight championship yesterday in the 83d annual Stotesbury Cup Regatta on the Schuylkill. The Crusaders dedicated the final race to their coxswain, junior Kerry Walsh, who knows a thing or two about surmounting hurdles. The 5-foot-1, 106-pounder was found to have acute lymphoblastic leukemia six years ago and just 10 months ago had both hips replaced. Walsh, a 17-year-old from Cherry Hill, has bravely battled the fast-growing cancer.

BEIXIAOYING TOWN, China - Before shoving the men's heavyweight eight out to race yesterday in the Olympic finals, U.S. coach Mike Teti went down the line of his rowers, saying good luck to each one. When Teti - about to see his last race in 12 years as the national-team coach - got to his coxswain, Marcus McElhenney, he switched gears. "I patted him on the head and just said, 'Go, Bonner,' " Teti said later. The coach and the coxswain are Monsignor Bonner alumni. The connection from their Drexel Hill high school never made it easier for McElhenney.