G. Ernest Arlett (Ernie) is a member of the Northeastern University athletics Hall of Fame. Arlett was the first head coach of the Northeastern University Men's Rowing team. Arlett was inducted in 1976 for his accomplishments in crew. Arlett also was the United States Olympic coach for Sculling during the 1976 Summer Olympic Games. Arlett also is credited with the creation of the Head of the Charles Regatta, which was organized in 1965. [1]
Arlett was born in 1912 in Henley on Thames, Oxfordshire, England where his family has been in coaching and rowing for more than a hundred years [2]
Prior to coaching, in World War II he was trapped, along with a half-million soldiers on the beaches of Dunkirk. He commandeered a boat and rowed fellow "Tommies" to waiting destroyers during the famous evacuation. [3]
He was a member of the Arlett watermen's family and acted as boatman at Radley, Leander and the National Provincial Bank at Putney until 1957 before emigrating to the US. [4] When coming to the United States he started off as a freshman coach and rigger (boatman) at Rutgers university [4]
He was a top-flight sculler in England, coached Finland's Olympic crew in 1948, and coached Jack Kelly Jr., of Philadelphia when he competed in the Diamond Sculls of Henley. [5]
Arlett was the founding coach of the Northeastern Mens rowing team.During the 1965 season Arlett helped to lead Northeastern to the Small College Championship. In a young legend known as the Wreck of the Hecht, Northeastern demolished a borrowed shell its first time on the river. [2] Northeastern then was invited to the IRA Regatta along with the Henley Royal Regatta. During the 1972 and 1973 seasons, Northeastern won the men's heavyweight eight at the Eastern Sprints championships. Both of those seasons also saw NU battled in the finals of the Grand Challenge Cup, where the Huskies ultimately lost. He retired from Northeastern in 1979.
After graduating Arlett went off to coach crew in 1932 at Oxford. Arlett then coached at Lower Merion (Pa.) High School. [5] Arlett them moved to Boston coaching Harvard, Rutgers, and Northeastern. In 1976, Arlett was named as the 1976 US Olympic men's sculling coach.
1982 took up coaching again at Connecticut College in New London. [4]
Ernie passed away on February 11, 1997 in Atlanta, GA
In his honor, the Arlett Cup is awarded to the winner of the annual Northeastern-BU race.
Arlett has a son Bob
"If this hadn't been a good group of boys not afraid of my bark and growl—of which I've got plenty—one or the other of us would have been long gone by now. But they've been all I hoped for. Those who had thought it was going to be a boating party drifted away directly as I put them to work. Despite my grunts and groans the stayers are a pretty happy lot." [2]
- (Arlett when discussing starting the rowing program at Northeastern)
Rowing, sometimes called crew in the United States, is the sport of racing boats using oars. It differs from paddling sports in that rowing oars are attached to the boat using oarlocks, while paddles are not connected to the boat. Rowing is divided into two disciplines: sculling and sweep rowing. In sculling, each rower holds two oars, one in each hand, while in sweep rowing each rower holds one oar with both hands. There are several boat classes in which athletes may compete, ranging from single sculls, occupied by one person, to shells with eight rowers and a coxswain, called eights. There are a wide variety of course types and formats of racing, but most elite and championship level racing is conducted on calm water courses 2 kilometres (1.2 mi) long with several lanes marked using buoys.
Henley Royal Regatta is a rowing event held annually on the River Thames by the town of Henley-on-Thames, England. It was established on 26 March 1839. It differs from the three other regattas rowed over approximately the same course, Henley Women's Regatta, Henley Masters Regatta, and Henley Town and Visitors' Regatta, each of which is an entirely separate event.
The Head of the Charles Regatta, also known as HOCR, is a rowing head race held on the penultimate complete weekend of October each year on the Charles River, which separates Boston and Cambridge, Massachusetts United States. It is the largest 3-day regatta in the world, with 11,000 athletes rowing in over 1,900 boats in 61 events. According to the Greater Boston Convention & Visitors Bureau, the three-day event brings 225,000 people to the Greater Boston area and $72 million to the local economy.
Rowing is the oldest intercollegiate sport in the United States. The first intercollegiate race was a contest between Yale and Harvard in 1852. In the 2018–19 school year, there were 2,340 male and 7,294 female collegiate rowers in Divisions I, II and III, according to the NCAA. The sport has grown since the first NCAA statistics were compiled for the 1981–82 school year, which reflected 2,053 male and 1,187 female collegiate rowers in the three divisions. Some concern has been raised that some recent female numbers are inflated by non-competing novices.
Vesta Rowing Club is a rowing club based on the Tideway of the River Thames in Putney, London, England. It was founded in 1870.
The Lady Margaret Boat Club is the rowing club for members of St John's College, Cambridge, England. The club is named after Lady Margaret Beaufort, founder of the College.
The Thames Rowing Club (TRC) is a rowing club based on the tidal Thames as it flows through the western suburbs of London. The TRC clubhouse stands on Putney Embankment. The club was founded in 1860.
Harry Parker was the head coach of the Harvard varsity rowing program (1963–2013). He also represented the United States in the single scull at the 1960 Summer Olympics.
Joseph William Burk was an American oarsman and coach.
The Intercollegiate Rowing Association (IRA) governs intercollegiate rowing between varsity men's heavyweight, men's lightweight, and women's lightweight rowing programs across the United States, while the NCAA fulfills this role for women's open weight rowing. It is the direct successor to the Rowing Association of American Colleges, the first collegiate athletic organization in the United States, which operated from 1870–1894.
Durham University Boat Club (DUBC) is the rowing club of Durham University. In recent years, DUBC has cemented itself as one of the strongest university boat clubs in Great Britain. Under the leadership of former British Olympian Wade Hall-Craggs, DUBC notably won the BUCS Victor Ludorum for ten consecutive years (2004-2013), and has produced a number of athletes that have competed internationally at European and World Championship level.
Sidney Ernest Swann was a Manx-English clergyman and a rower who competed for Great Britain in the 1912 Summer Olympics and in the 1920 Summer Olympics.
University of London Boat Club is the rowing club for the University of London and its member institutions, many of which also have their own boat clubs. The club has its boathouse on the Thames in Chiswick, London, UK. It is a designated High-Performance Programme funded by British Rowing.
Caryn Davies is an American rower. She is the winner of the 2023 Thomas Keller Medal, the most prestigious international award in the sport of rowing, and the only American to have ever won this award. She won gold medals as the stroke seat of the U.S. women's eight at the 2012 Summer Olympics and the 2008 Summer Olympics. In April 2015 Davies stroked Oxford University to victory in the first ever women's Oxford/Cambridge boat race held on the same stretch of the river Thames in London where the men's Oxford/Cambridge race has been held since 1829. She was the most highly decorated Olympian to take part in either [men's or women's] race. In 2012 Davies was ranked number 4 in the world by the International Rowing Federation. At the 2004 Olympic Games she won a silver medal in the women's eight. Davies has won more Olympic medals than any other U.S. oarswoman. The 2008 U.S. women's eight, of which she was a part, was named FISA crew of the year. Davies is from Ithaca, New York, where she graduated from Ithaca High School, and rowed with the Cascadilla Boat Club. Davies was on the Radcliffe College (Harvard) Crew Team and was a member on Radcliffe's 2003 NCAA champion Varsity 8, and overall team champion. In 2013, she was a visiting student at Pembroke College, Oxford, where she stroked the college men's eight to a victory in both Torpids and the Oxford University Summer Eights races. In 2013–14 Davies took up Polynesian outrigger canoeing in Hawaii, winning the State novice championship and placing 4th in the long-distance race na-wahine-o-ke-kai with her team from the Outrigger Canoe Club. In 2013, she was inducted into the New York Athletic Club Hall of Fame and in 2022 into the Harvard University Athletics Hall of Fame.
Balliol College Boat Club (BCBC) is the rowing club for members of Balliol College, Oxford, England. It is one of the college boat clubs at the University of Oxford.
William Patrick Maher is an American rower who competed in the 1968 Summer Olympics, winning a bronze medal in the men's double sculls. In 1969, he crewed for the United States Army out of Vesper Boat Club.
Seán Joseph Drea is a former Olympic rower from Ireland, specialising in the single scull. He won the Henley Royal Regatta's Diamond Sculls three years in a row, and was the first Irish rower to win a World Championship medal securing silver in the 1975 World Championships.
The College Boat Club of the University of Pennsylvania is the rowing program for University of Pennsylvania Rowing, which is located in the Burk-Bergman Boathouse at #11 Boathouse Row on the historic Boathouse Row of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Its membership consists entirely of past and present rowers of the University of Pennsylvania.
Cantabrigian Rowing Club, known as Cantabs, is a 'town' rowing and sculling club in Cambridge, UK.
Reading University Boat Club is the rowing club for the University of Reading in the United Kingdom. It is based at a boat house in Christchurch Meadows on the River Thames in the Reading suburb of Caversham. The club has a focus on sculling. It has consistently been one of the more successful university rowing clubs in Britain, including topping the medal table at the BUCS regatta in 2011 and at the BUCS small boats head in 2014 and 2015, as well as wins at Henley Royal Regatta in 1986, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2013, and is considered one of the top six university rowing clubs in the UK. A number of former members have competed at the Olympics, including double gold-medallists James Cracknell and Helen Glover. The club has organised the Reading University Head of the River race since 1935.