The sign on the office door read DON'T KNOCK. COME IN. Inside, a small, spectacled man leaned back in his chair and surveyed the walls, decorated heavily with rowing memorabilia. "I am satisfied to retire," said Carroll Ebright, 65, the University of California's head rowing coach since 1924. "I have seen our crews reach worldwide acclaim; I have been down, and now I see us coming back again. It is time for a younger man."
When "Ky" Ebright retires in June, he can look back on one of the most successful records in rowing. His crews have been national college champions six times, took Olympic titles in 1928, 1932 and 1948. Last week, attired in his traditional battered hat, stubby (5 ft. 6 in.) Ky Ebright was still bustling around the California boathouse on the Oakland Estuary, roaring instructions and encouragement as he drove his oarsmen through his last season.
Conibear & Success. "Rowing," says Ebright, "is a strenuous sport, though there is no jarring and no contact. It requires persistence and mental courage. Those that stay with it acquire some of that mental courage."
Ebright started early and stayed late. At the crew-conscious University of Washington (class of 1917), he was a fine coxswain under the great Hiram Conibear, father of West Coast rowing, and developer of the upright stroke with short layback that became the trademark of West Coast crews, differentiating them from Eastern oarsmen, who took their style from the British. California picked Ebright in 1924 to raise the Golden Bears to Washington's lofty level. Results came quickly. In 1927, 1928 and 1929, California crews, newly tutored in the Conibear stroke by Ebright, left mighty Washington trailing in their wake.
Bigger & Better. Unlike Washington, California attracts few experienced rowers, and Ebright must build his men from scratch. Twice a year he looks over the registration line of incoming students, studying them like a chorus line director for height, posture, shoulder and leg muscles. "Usually they're flattered when I single them out, but some of the skeptics wonder what's the catch. Most of them never held an oar in their lives." He puts the selected candidates to work, builds their bodies, makes extensive use of movies in analyzing their form. Though crew is a spring sport, Ebright works his men on the barge and rowing machines each fall, has them ready for the eight-oared shells when the season rolls around.
Though rowing styles have changed little in his 36 years as coach, oarsmen have. Today they are bigger and row faster. "It's harder to get into school now; yet the enrollment is larger, so our selection is better in all ways," he explained. "The boys are generally taller and stronger, too. The 6-ft. 4-in. and 6-ft. 5-in. guys in the middle of the shell are common now. In fact, it's getting harder all the time to find little coxswains."