Navy Sports Central

Back on Course: My Conversation With Navy Women's Rowing Coach Joe Schlosberg

• Episode 56

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Welcome to Navy Sports Central - The Official Podcast of the Navy Sports Nation!


In this episode, we'll be taking a closer look at one the most quietly successful athletic programs at Annapolis, the Navy Women's Rowing team.  Coach Joe Schlosberg will join us to talk about the impact that COVID had on the team and how his athletes bounced back to win another Patriot League title last spring. So you do not want to miss our Deep Dive segment.

In our sports update, we'll talk about the Men's Cross Country team winning their 3rd straight league championship in pretty convincing fashion. And we'll check in with the Men's Rugby team as well as women's volleyball as well as both swimming & diving teams. 

Finally, we'll wrap things up with our Question of the Day and Mid Watch segments. So please stay with us. You'll be glad you did. 

Related Links:

We want your answer to our Question of the Day. Here is the one for this episode:

The Women’s Rowing team has had two Varsity 8 Crews inducted into the Navy Sports Hall of Fame.They were from the 1V8 boats in both 1992 and 1994. How many individual rowers from the program have earned that distinction since 1980. Is it:

A.) 8
B.) 11
C.) 14
D.) 18

Give us your answer on the Navy Sports Nation Group Facebook page. 

Follow Navy Sports Central wherever you get your podcasts:

Check out the Navy Sports Nation group page on Facebook!
Music is provided courtesy of Audio Jungle. Artists featured in order:

  • Seven In Music (Intro)
  • Alexiaction (Deep Dive)
  • Loka Music (Deep Dive Pt. 2 Lead In)
  • Artlss (Question of the Day Lead In)
  • Cinematic Alex (Closeout Music)








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Karl:

Hi everybody. My name is Karl Darden and I'd like to welcome and thank all of you for joining us today on Navy Sports Central. I'm your host and this is the official podcast of the Navy Sports Nation where we take a deeper dive into Navy Sports. It is still fall on the calendar, but some of the Navy Winter Sports are already getting their seasons underway. That means both swimming and diving teams are back in the water looking to defend their Patriot League titles, so we're going to check in to see what's going on with them and, with the fall sports season beginning to wind down, the Mids are looking at key star matches in both Volleyball and Men's Rugby and will also celebrate the Men's Cross Country Team's third consecutive Patriot League championship. Finally, in our deep dive segment, we'll be featuring one of the Mids most consistently high performing teams They've won six Patriot League titles in the last eight years and I'll be joined by their coach to talk about the program. All this, plus our question of the day and mid-watch segments are coming up, so please stay with us. Okay, here we go with episode 56. Whether you are a returning listener or checking us out for the first time, I really appreciate you being here. I'll tell you what we're going to start in reverse order from what I covered in the intro as far as the sports update goes, and that means leading with the Men's Cross Country Team, they secured the Mids first Patriot League title of the sports season last weekend at the Bucknell University campus, and there really wasn't a whole lot of suspense to it either. Murphy Smith won the individual title, while Sam Keaney and Andrew Kirkland finished right behind him, giving the Mids the top three spots on the podium. They finished with 37 points, army was second with 50 points and Boston University came in third with 56. Now remember, in Cross Country the low score wins. So in the championship meet, points were signed according to how the first five runners finished. So you can see how taking the top three spots can help nail down the win.

Karl:

Next up for the team is the Mid-Atlantic Regionals on November the 10th, which will be held on the Lehigh University campus. Now let's see what's going on with Men's Rugby. They posted a couple of solid wins over Air Force and Notre Dame College over the last couple of weeks. By the way, I thought it was interesting that both of those teams are nicknamed the Falcons and they played them on consecutive weeks. But anyway, the Mids got off to kind of a slow start in each of those games. In fact they were down 14-0 against Notre Dame before the offense really got going. They ended up scoring 50 points while shutting out the Falcons in the second half and, by the way, the final score was 50-19. And the team beat Air Force the previous week by a score of 50-8, after falling behind 8-3.

Karl:

This weekend the team travels to State College to take on Penn State and then they wrap up the fall season with the Star Match against Army on November the 10th. That will be on the road and the Mids really need to come away with that one to keep the Black Knights from getting too big a lead in the series. Right now Men's Cross Country is the only team with a win so far, but the Mids can close that gap if they pick up wins in that rugby match as well as in volleyball. Now it's not unusual for Army to be a little bit ahead going into the winter sports season, but it's typically only by a win or two, not four, like it is right now. The record through seven matches stands at 1-5-1. That tie was in Men's Soccer, and remember that the magic number is 13. So the Mids have a little work to do.

Karl:

The volleyball team has had a bit of an uneven year in conference play. Now, if you look at the overall record, it's 14-7, which is pretty good. But right now the Mids are 6-6 in the conference with four games left, and those are against Colgate, holy Cross, lehigh and Army. Now all of them are at home, which is really good news, because the team is pretty tough to beat on their own court. So if you are local to the Annapolis area, try your best to get over to the Wesley Brown Fieldhouse and make some noise over the next couple of weeks. In a game like volleyball, momentum swings can play a big part in whether or not a team can nail down the win, and I've seen loud fan support be the difference maker on more than one occasion. These four matches won't be easy, so let's see what we can do to get out there and help the volleyball team run the table to finish out the regular season.

Karl:

And finally, we're going to finish up with swimming and diving. Both teams posted a couple of competitive wins against George Washington University and the men also defeated UMBC. The Mids will welcome American University, bucknell and Lafayette to Lejeune Hall this weekend. The Star Meet Against Army takes place on December the 7th at home. You may recall that the men's streak of 31 straight wins over the Black Knights came to an end last year. The Mids did get a measure of revenge by winning the Patriot League championship in that thrilling 4x100 freestyle relay. But you know they've had the date of this year's Star Meet circled on the calendar as soon as the schedule came out. Ok, that takes care of our sports update Coming up.

Karl:

Next we have our Deep Dive segment and, as I mentioned in the intro, we'll be joined by a Navy coach who has led his team to six Patriot League titles in eight years. That includes a dramatic come from behind win last spring. So I know you'll want to stick around for that. Welcome back everyone. You know, when it comes to winning Patriot League championships, you've heard me talk about both track and field and swimming and diving quite a few times. The men and women have been dominant in these two sports over the last several years, but one you may not be as familiar with has won six titles in eight years and nine overall. I've become a huge fan of this sport and you only need to go back through the episode history to figure that out. My very first guest, over two and a half years ago, was the director of the program, and today makes the sixth episode out of 56 where I've showcased this sport.

Karl:

If you haven't figured it out by now, I'm talking about rowing, and in today's deep dive segment, we'll be talking specifically about the women's rowing team.

Karl:

Our guest today was named the head coach of the program in the summer of 2015 after spending 14 years as part of the coaching staff at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend. In his very first season, he led the midst of their fourth Patriot League title. They went on to post the 19th place finish in the NCAA championships in the spring of 2016, which is their highest ever so far. From 2017 to 2019, the team won three more League titles and picked up another in 2021 after COVID canceled the championships the previous year. After Boston University stopped the mid streak of consecutive titles in 2022, the team bounced back to reclaim it in thrilling fashion at the 2023 Patriot League championships. So joining us today to talk about how all that happened, as well as give us an in depth look at the program, is the head coach of the Navy women's rowing team. Joe Schlosberg. Coach Schlosberg, thank you so much for joining me today on Navy Sports Central. I really appreciate you taking the time.

Coach Schlosberg:

Thank you, Karl, I'm excited to be here.

Karl:

All right, so let's go ahead and get right into it. You came to Annapolis from Notre Dame, so I was a little bit curious as to when this Navy head coaching job first showed up on your radar and what were some of the factors that came into play that led to you accepting the job when it was offered.

Coach Schlosberg:

Sure, actually, it was out in Sacramento, California, at the 2015 NCAA championships.

Coach Schlosberg:

I was there with Notre Dame and Navy was also there, and there was actually a a varsity 4 from Navy. I believe they finished 17th in the country that year. A very good finish for them. They were small but they were scrappy, they were tough, they were keeping themselves in races which they really shouldn't have been in and they were just being an absolute pest to a lot of other teams. And there was no idea that this job was going to open up. But that kind of put Navy on the radar and the thought of working with those athletes that were just tough and scrappy, that's appealing. And as the summer went on after that, the position ended up opening up and my boss at the time at Notre Dame was actually somebody who had coached here at Navy previously, so I was able to kind of pick his brain and things started to happen and I was very honored to be offered this position. It was probably late August when I was offered this position, so I had to dive right in. I'm glad.

Coach Schlosberg:

I did.

Karl:

So obviously Notre Dame is an institution with very high academic standards, just like the Naval Academy. But even when you take into account the NCAA rules on practice time and when the athletes are available, I'm sure you notice the difference between South Bend and Annapolis. Did you have to adjust your approach to coaching the Mids given all the other competing demands that they had on their time? Oh, gosh.

Coach Schlosberg:

Yes, it took me a while to figure out what worked here and I made mistakes.

Coach Schlosberg:

I will own that I made a lot of mistakes Within the first couple of years first two years I must have tried three, four, five different training approaches and some would work for a little bit of time, some would not work at all, and I feel bad for looking back at those teams because they were my guinea pigs.

Coach Schlosberg:

I was trying to learn, I was trying to learn about the academy and learn the demands, and it's such a unique environment that you really do have to approach things differently. And so it took me a while to kind of figure out, play with some things and land on something, and I finally started to see things click together with the training. The big thing here is that the Naval Academy is always evolving and changing, and I need to do the same with my training, with my approach, because we are one small part of this bigger mission and they're trying to better themselves and so we need to adjust to that and roll with the punches and still compete nationally. So it just I can't be stuck in one mindset, trying to do things the same way I did five, eight years ago. Right, right.

Karl:

Okay, so this past spring I was watching the Patriot League championships on YouTube and obviously there is a great final result there, recapturing the Patriot League title after Boston University kind of edged out last year. Can you share your thoughts on your team's success and what were the keys to the success that resulted in them earning back that title?

Coach Schlosberg:

Well, we had some speed bumps through COVID, I think, leading up to 2022, 2023, we lost ourselves through COVID. Kind of, coming out of COVID, we lost who we were, we lost our future. We were able to kind of stumble through the spring of 2021. And we just could not sustain that through the spring of 2022. And you know, it was, it wasn't smoke and mirrors, but we there was a lot of, there was a lot of duct tape and band-aids to just kind of hold ourselves together.

Coach Schlosberg:

So, going into the going into the championship last year, going into the entire year last year, we really left no stone unturned. I looked at everything and if you're looking for one specific thing, it was. It was definitely a change in culture. We really refocused on the idea of team teammate self. It's it's mirrored here at Navy with with ship shipmate self. And you know, during that time we we went through attrition. We lost some people that had been strong members of the team before, right, but but with that, people were forced to step up and those that were here, they did, they bought in, they made great changes and pushed, pushed the program back on course, which which I'm very happy about. But it was, it was a tough couple of years and we had to kind of hit hit some low points in order to kind of start moving up again. So it's a challenge.

Karl:

Yeah, yeah. And actually that's a nice segue into the next question I had for you, because obviously it was a real challenge to the mental toughness of the team having to deal with all of that. So actually I had a great conversation with coach Edwards from the women's triathlon team a couple of months ago and we spoke about this whole notion of mental toughness and I said, hey, is most of that inherent or can you develop it? And he firmly believed that you could develop it. And certainly in the triathlon it's a it's a big factor. But just as important in rowing, I gotta imagine it is because you're not out there necessarily on your own. You're out there doing one thing in unison with seven other people, you know, assuming we're talking about a row, a crew of eight here. So what's your take on that and what are some of the things that you've been able to do to help sharpen up the mental toughness on your team?

Coach Schlosberg:

I absolutely agree with coach. Mental toughness can be developed, but I don't. You know, we don't sit down and really talk about it. We go and we work through it. So I feel that we're going to challenge our athletes and put them into situations where they need to perform, regardless of if they've had a tough week of training or if they've gone through a week of midterm exams or they've had to stand watch in the middle of the night before practice.

Coach Schlosberg:

This is a place this being the Boat House that they can come over as a release. Yes, they work hard, but they enjoy that. They find fun in it. With that, the expectation is that they give their best effort that day. So you know, they could be really beat up from a lot of different aspects of life and they're going to come over here and the expectation is that they they give their all that day with what we're asking and you know along those lines.

Coach Schlosberg:

The second big part of it is that we try and make practice way harder than races. They have that support group with their teammates, but we challenge them. The water challenges them, just life here challenges them and we make sure that they understand what they're doing and why they're doing it so that by the time we race, that's the fun part, right right, that's where they can go fast and enjoy and just kind of let it all out. So we don't sit there and necessarily talk about the you know how to develop your mental toughness. We'll touch on some things, but it's more of like let's put it to practice, let's just get you out there and walk you through it, so you have to kind of learn through trial and error.

Karl:

Right, right, okay, now I want to talk about that 1v8 Grand Final last spring. Okay, and just to set the stage for our listeners. Last May I believe it was, the mids competed in the Patriot League championship and Boston University was a defending champ, and so I guess by definition you could probably consider them the favorite, although you know it was probably just a coin flip in my mind. But going into the last race, the mids were down by three points. So basically it meant. . . all right, 2000 meters. First shell to the finish line takes home the trophy. I've watched that YouTube video at least six or seven times, but the thing was it didn't pick it up until about halfway. So I wanted to kind of get your perspective on the first half of the race. Did it align with what your race strategy was? Were you satisfied with how the team started off? Can you take us through those first 1000 meters?

Coach Schlosberg:

Sure. So let me just say that I was a ball of nerves watching the race with everybody else. This is one of the worst parts of our sport is that we can't call time out, we can't make adjustments mid-race. It is just like we send our boats out and we hope that we prepared them as best we could on so many levels. So we knew that that Boston was going to be fast and we knew, as you said, that it. You know it could be anyone's race and we had no choice. If we were going to win the championship, we needed to win that race. That was it, the way the points had worked out up to that point. We needed to win.

Coach Schlosberg:

So, off the start, we were okay, but BU was faster off the line and they put themselves ahead.

Coach Schlosberg:

They were aggressive, they were trying to break contact with us and the rest of the field, but once they got their initial, their initial distance off of us, we were matching their speed. We just couldn't cut into their lead. The two boats us and Boston were pushing each other and starting to break away from the rest of the field, and that's really where the video started to catch up and you saw that, that you know we were, we were there with them, we were moving with them, but we just weren't, we weren't able to cut into the lead that they had. And at that point of the race, as we're, as we're looking for the first half, really, I was sitting there going we absolutely need to stay locked onto them or else there's no chance that we're going to be able to come back. And to that point the crew did a great job to not lose contact, stay kind of connected with them, have some, have a little bit of overlap with them and put themselves into a really good position for the second half of that race.

Karl:

Right, right, and along those lines, going into that third 500, just as you said, Boston University just had that half a boat lead roughly look like to me. That brought to mind a question and it has to do with when they tell you, okay, they have a four or five seat lead. Is that measured from the front, from the bow, or from the stern? In other words, are you counting seats from the back to see how far they are, or the front? I was never really sure about that.

Coach Schlosberg:

So five seat lead, it's from the bow, it's from the front of the boat, with there's a little white ball on the front of the boat. You could clearly see five of Boston's rowers in front of Navy's and then the seats started to overlap. And from there, if that grows too much and I've watched this, my bow practice, I've watched them race I kind of knew the amount if they really had to make an overwhelming charge, what sort of timeframe we're looking at, and I'm trying to judge this relative to how Boston is looking and how they're moving. So it was, as I said, ball of nerves watching this race.

Coach Schlosberg:

But there was a moment heading into the last, about 700 meters of the race, mark Cox and our driver of the boat knew that they had to make a move, they had to respond and they did, and it was like that moment where the switch was flipped. It's giving me chills just thinking about it, but you could tell that at that point that Navy's boat made a change, made an adjustment and started to attack. And that was the first time after there was that five seat lead that we started to move back into them. So we kind of took a lot of punches from them. We stayed with them and then, finally, we started to get aggressive and we started to build some momentum.

Karl:

Well, I'll tell you what that reminded me of, and it's a little bit of an exaggeration, but I think you'll appreciate it. What I saw when the Mids made that move was the rowing equivalent of shooting nitrous oxide into a car's intake manifold to make it go faster. That's what that looked like. You can exactly put your finger on the place on the video where that move started and from there it just looked like everybody else was moving in slow motion or maybe even moving backwards. So I was thinking, man, this is where all that training comes in and it really is a difference maker. So, getting back to developing the mental toughness and that sort of thing, I would like to know in your mind, is there one particular workout or is there a series of workouts that contributes to, in that last 500 meters, just that team being able to come together and finding that strength within them to basically win going away? I mean they ended up winning by 3 and 1 half seconds, am I right? Yes, I mean it was a significant win at the end of the day.

Coach Schlosberg:

I think it's all of the workouts, from the hard sprint work to the long 6K work, which is over 20 minutes of hard intensity, to long steady state, to technical days. That's the secret. It's not a workout. It's all of them that prepared them for that moment. I think the team did a great job of approaching every workout with a purpose. We didn't want to have any throwaway days, any throwaway strokes, and I'm glad we didn't. It led to that moment where I remember when I was a rower, when you had that moment where you finally built some momentum and you finally started to move on another boat, the confidence grows, the energy grows. It's a game changing moment. You have to rely and have confidence on your training and have confidence within your teammates and what they're willing to give to that moment.

Karl:

Just one other question regarding the workouts, because I had asked Coach Bagnall the same question. I want to see if I get the same answer. Is there a particular workout that the athletes know benefits them tremendously but they just don't want to do?

Coach Schlosberg:

Yes, there are some that we have that. I've been around here this is my ninth year. As I said, as I figured stuff out, there were some workouts that we had names to. I'll run into a Lums now that we'll start talking and they'll bring up those specific named workouts. As I said, everything evolves over the years, but there's a couple that still, we do this year, we'll do next year, we'll do the year after that. People remember they hit a little bit harder and they don't want to do them. They know that there's a big benefit to it. I think that it's not desensitizing them to them, because they're fully aware that this work is hard and what they're doing is hard. But we can step back after they do it, after the workout. We can step back after the workout and say, hey, this is going to help, and you know it's going to help. And here's how we try and set them up with that sort of focus, regardless of the intensity of practice, it's everything that we do is leading them to the speed and the spring.

Karl:

oach Bagnall referenced what he called third deck Fridays. He said that his guys just were not very fond of that one. But the results speak for themselves, based on how they've been doing.

Coach Schlosberg:

We do a lot of our hard work on that same room, which is the third deck earth room. It just happens to have the biggest number of throwing machines there. Last year my team started to call it the jungle, just because it was loud, it was hot, it was a nasty place to be. I played a little guns and roses every once in a while. Right now a lot of our challenging work is we start the week off with something challenging on Mondays. It just sets the tone for the week. That's one of the days we have that third deck Friday Mondays. Absolutely, I'm with Coach Bagnell Right.

Karl:

We're going to go ahead and take a short break now, but before we do that, I did want to give you all a couple of ways to stay up to date on Navy Sports. The first is to join the Navy Sports Nation group Facebook page. I've got a link to that in the show notes. Just click on it, answer a couple of questions and you'll be good to go. The second way takes even less time. Just hit the follow button on whichever platform you're listening to this podcast right now. It can be Apple Podcasts, spotify, iheart Radio, it doesn't matter. Once you do that, every episode will be downloaded to your directory when it's released and you can listen to it whenever you're ready. So please consider becoming a member of our group and you can actually tap that follow button right now to show your support for the podcast. I'm looking forward to having you join us. We'll be right back.

Karl:

Okay, welcome back to Navy Sports Central. Karl Darden here with you, and I'm joined by coach Joe Schlossberg of the Navy Women's Rowing Team Coach. We're going to go ahead and continue with the rest of the conversation here in a minute, but I always like to invite our guests to kind of share something, either about themselves or maybe a cause that they support that's important to them. This is the way of saying thanks for jumping on the show here. So the mic is yours. Go ahead and fire away.

Coach Schlosberg:

I guess, Karl. The thing I can touch on is that I've been very fortunate to be able to coach at the Naval Academy. I had a wonderful experience 14 years at the University of Notre Dame and the group of people there that I got to work with both student athletes and the people in the upper department, the alums I thought it was a fantastic situation that I didn't think I could find anything like that and I was really blown away. And I continued to be blown away as I meet more and more people associated with the Naval Academy the family, the alumni group, the students I get to work with each day. It's just such a unique experience. It's a challenging experience. Time demands are. It's tough, but it's a good tough and, as I said, the alumni and this is not patting you on the back, it's just the truth the alumni group is just outrageous.

Coach Schlosberg:

I love getting to meet the alums of this boat house and the alumni of the school, because the lives you have had to lead are exciting. They are just unlike a typical path within everything and the spirit that's the thing is, the alums of this place have a spirit to them. It's fantastic. It just brings a smile to my face, not a cause or anything. I'm just blessed to be here and I hope to continue to do what I need to developing great rowers, great people, great leaders of the future from my end and put together some great performances so that I can keep doing this for a while.

Karl:

All right, well said, and along those lines, over the last eight years or so you've had some, obviously some terrific athletes at Navy, and one of them had a pretty good summer as well, even after she helped you win that Patriot League championship, and that was Lauren Day. She was part of that U23 women's eight crew that won the world championship in Bulgaria. So I'm always kind of curious to know how that process works, how that selection process works. Was she identified even before the season started? If so, was there anything in particular that you worked on with her to kind of get her ready for nationals? You know all that sort of thing, because I assume that once she gets to the nationals, she still has to compete for a seat. Am I right? I mean, is that how that works? Yes, so okay. So yeah, I'm curious if you could walk us through that.

Coach Schlosberg:

So I was fortunate to talk in late April with the coach who would be in charge of this U23 team. She's the head coach for Oklahoma and you know Oklahoma was at a race we were at and she started asking me about Lauren. Lauren had put her name in numbers wise for speed on a couple of different standardized tests, kind of put her right in the mix of this field of people that could be selected. I had spoken very honestly with the coach about. You know, lauren's a great athlete. She's very raw and new to the sport relative to a lot of other people that they may be considering, but Lauren's going to work and you know your guess is as good as mine because I don't know, I don't know who's sitting out there as a potential that could challenge her in this selection camp. So that was late April that this kind of came on our radar and we were from Navy's side of things. We weren't going to do anything different with Lauren's training. Her training was for our Patriot League championship and then setting us up for the NCAA championship. So we weren't going to change any of that. We won one of the Patriot League and then got to go to the NCAA championship. So she got two more weeks of rowing and training there and then, while her competitors, future teammates for this U23 camp, while they got to take a break, maybe just be able to train in row, lauren went to Leatherneck. So for those that don't know, that's the primary mechanism. That's which midshipmen are evaluated for their potential to serve successfully as officers in the Marine Corps.

Coach Schlosberg:

I think I stated that pretty well. So she was. She was in the field, she was doing stuff and it wasn't rowing. She was able to. Fortunately they have some rowing machines where she was stationed and she could kind of just stay in touch with the machine and the rowing movement. But she was busy doing some other stuff for a few weeks, right. So you know, with summer training she, it was something she had to do and so you're working through, a lot of people, a lot of people helped Lauren get to where she needed to, to be able to even try out for this, this selection camp, and so she spent a few weeks at Leatherneck.

Coach Schlosberg:

Leatherneck went right out to camp in Oklahoma City and got right to it and, as far as I know, lauren was challenged and challenged a lot. But I think that she proved herself. Clearly, she she had made. She had made the under 23, eight the top vote there at camp and she did what she needed to to earn her seat and hold it and like that's, that's all we can hope for. Yeah, it was, it was, it was, it was special, it was a wonderful thing. So just feel very fortunate that we were able to get everything aligned to meet that possibility.

Karl:

Right, right, and for those listeners who don't know, she's not the first either. I mean, obviously, a few years ago you had Alexandria Valenci Martinson come through and she, not, she won not just one, but two medals at the 20, 20, 21, under 23 championships. I think it was a golden eights and a silver and the fours, am I right? Okay, so you know, I get that athletes are different, right, and you see that all the all the time. But I was wondering if you could point to a specific thread that the two rowers might have in common that allowed them to step on the national and then subsequently the world stage, like that.

Coach Schlosberg:

Lauren and Alexandria are both very talented athletes, athletes from other sports who became great rowers. Alexandria came over from basketball, lauren was a lacrosse player and Really, the common thread between the two aside from both being incredibly humble, they had this drive to be better, the drive to be as fast as individuals and, more importantly, fast as teams, and they put the work in to support that talent and drive. All those things put them into a position to succeed on the world stage and it's amazing to think, as any athlete would feel, when they're an international competition on the world stage, there's going to be nerves and stuff. But again, if we're doing what we're supposed to, from our end of things, our practices leading up to that harder are things that they have to manage here day to day.

Coach Schlosberg:

Life at the Naval Academy Is it harder? You know in that moment where you're going as hard as you can down the race course, it might not seem like some things are harder, but you know all of that, all of their things, all the training that led up to those moments. You know you hope. As a coach you give them the right tools, you give them the confidence in themselves they can do their thing makes boats go, and both of them were able to do that, and then some.

Karl:

Yeah, no doubt. All right. Thanks for sharing that, coach. So these last couple of questions here I'm going to kind of have you just answer them together if you like. And in fact you touched on it a little bit earlier in terms of what you have to do to kind of keep things moving forward with each class that comes through. So as a coach, you know that, especially with the success that you've had over the last several years six championships in eight years, several in a row one of the things that can kind of creep into a program can be complacency. All right, and I was wondering what are some things that get your antenna up and kind of triggers your spidey sense in terms of whether or not, okay, complacency is starting to kind of creep in, and what are some things that you do to keep it at arm's length so that you can continue to grow your program the way you want to?

Coach Schlosberg:

Sure, I actually think that, looking back on our, you know, kind of working through our time with COVID, through the shutdown of 2020, with all sports, and then coming back and trying to navigate things for the 2020, 2021 academic year and then moving forward, we did run into that complacency as a team and we had to navigate a whole lot in terms of what we could do realistically working together. It was a challenge and we had to again kind of relearn some things. One of the things that we had to relearn is that we're always trying to be better. We're always trying to grow as people and as athletes and, as I had mentioned before, the Naval Academy is always changing, and we do as well.

Coach Schlosberg:

While we may not reinvent the wheel, we'll tweak old things and try new ones, and the new ones may not work, and that's okay. The team understands that nothing is given. We have to earn it and that goes a long way and, at the end of the day, it's really it comes down to the culture that we have put in place and continue to evolve and understand, and it's the athletes and their buy-in. Within that situation, I think that we can have usually have a group of people that are over here getting a good workout in, and then, hey, they're okay with that, but they understand that that doesn't align with the bigger goals of the program and the goals of the athletes themselves. So it's always just trying to make sure that we have the right goals in place and that our mission is moving us in the right direction with things.

Karl:

Right, right, Okay, hey, you know there's one question that kind of popped up as we were talking and I thought about it and I said you know, the rowing program is the one sport. Well, that's probably more than one, but this one in particular that I follow quite closely does not have that rivalry with Army, Because West Point doesn't have rowing as a varsity sport. But it was Coach Friedrich who told me that it is a club sport there for the men. Do the women have it as a club sport also?

Coach Schlosberg:

They do and we were fortunate a handful of years ago I want to say 2017, 2018, 2019, maybe as well we were able to connect with their club team during our spring training trips and lined up and we could have our own little Army Navy race. And so we did and hopefully, being the school associated with water, we showed that we were. But it was a fun moment within the sport because, as you said, it's not a varsity level sport. I got that little taste of what the Army Navy rivalry is really all about and it was special. But no, I wish we could do it more often because it's a really it's a fun thing.

Karl:

Right, right, okay. Last thing, wrapping up Long term vision for the program. In your perfect world, how would you like things to map out, say, over the next five to 10 years or so?

Coach Schlosberg:

Long term vision, push the limits, see how far we can take this team. And then next year we push further and the year after further, putting Navy's name back into the national conversation.

Karl:

Right.

Coach Schlosberg:

I understand that we're on a different path than a lot of different teams out there and what they're able to do and what we're able to do, but that's a challenge. It's not a crutch or an excuse or anything. Again, I'm going to push us and the team is going to push and see how far we can go and then try and beat that and I love that and we're going to embrace that and just continue to move forward. That's our plan.

Karl:

All right, yeah, and I will tell you, I think the fact that, based on what I've learned about the program across the board the last two and a half years or so, I continue to be amazed at how many athletes you bring in there that had no ruling experience, that all of a sudden are just like major players, and it's obviously a testament to the coaching staff and the program and so forth. So, yeah, with that kind of track record, I don't see any problem with you achieving those types of goals, so I appreciate you sharing those with us. All right, coach, this looks like a pretty good place to stop, so I wanted to thank you very much for taking the time to speak with me today. I'm a huge fan, as you know, and I look forward to tracking your success into the spring, and we'll see how things go next May when the Patriot League championships roll around again.

Coach Schlosberg:

Fantastic, Karl. Thank you so much for having me All right. Take care.

Karl:

Okay, coming up. Next we have our question of the day and mid-watch segment, so don't go anywhere, all right? Thanks so much for hanging with us here on Navy Sports Central. Now it is time for our question of the day, so let's go ahead and check our responses to our last question. You'll recall that our guest was Warren Mazanek, who was a member of the Navy Offshore Sailing team and he also ran the summer offshore sailing program when he came back to the Academy to teach. Here was the question.

Karl:

The Naval Academy has won the Kennedy Cup 15 times in offshore sailing and, by the way, that is the sports version of the NCAA championship. Now, on how many occasions did they win it in consecutive years? Is it A just once, b twice, c three times or D four times? Looks like the most popular answer was D four times. 68% of you liked that choice. Next was B twice, with 25% going with that option, and then, finally, 6% of you selected C three times. There were no takers on D, which was four times. It turns out that the correct answer was C three times, so congratulations to those of you who picked that one. The Naval Academy won the Kennedy Cup in back-to-back years, in 2012 and 2013. And they also have a couple of three Pizzeres as well. Those were from 1988 to 1990 and from 1980 through 1982. And, by the way, navy's 15 Kennedy Cups are the most won by any school. The University of Rhode Island is second with nine.

Karl:

Now here's our question. For this episode, the Navy women's rowing team has had two Varsity 8 crews inducted into the Navy Sports Hall of Fame. They were the 1V8 boats from 1992 and also 1994. How many individual rowers from the program have earned that distinction since 1980? Is it A 8, b 11, c 14, or D 18? Go ahead and give that some thought, and you can let me know your answers by going to the Navy Sports Nation Group Facebook page. I will have it posted by the end of the day. Alright, let's go ahead and wrap things up with our mid-watch segment.

Karl:

The female athlete we've been tracking is Avery Miller from the volleyball team. She had 42 assists in the mids win over Lafayette two matches ago, and she also tacked on six kills and came up with 11 digs. Right now, miller has 763 assists on the year and she's averaging just under 10%. Believe it or not, she's actually got an outside shot at 1000 assists for the season if the team can make a good run in the Patriot League tournament. If she can do it, it would mark the second time Miller has accomplished that feat. Last year she came up with 1122 assists.

Karl:

Jumping over to the men, we've got Kiefer Black from the water polo team. He had three goals and three assists in the mids most recent win against Bucknell. That gives him a total of 46 goals and 39 assists for the year, for a total of 85 points. Black leads the team in all three of those offensive categories. At this rate he's got a really good chance at finishing the season with over 100 points and he also has 32 steals on the year. The water polo team has four games left so they have a chance to improve on their position going into the mid-Atlantic water polo conference tournament which starts on November 17th. That's going to do it for this edition of Navy Sports Central.

Karl:

Thank you all so much for joining us Now. If you like what you've heard, please be sure to hit that follow button wherever you get your podcasts and remember to get the word to all the other Navy fans out there. Once again, I'd like to thank Coach Jo Schlosberger of the Navy Women's Rowing Team for joining me today. It's great to have such an up-close and personal look into one of the programs that has quietly become one of the most consistent winners across all Navy sports over the last eight to ten years.

Karl:

Our question of the day continues to be a show of favorite. You can get in on that by joining the Navy Sports Nation Group Facebook page and giving your answer to this week's question. I will pin it to the top so you don't miss it. And just a quick reminder the views expressed on Navy Sports Central are my own and do not reflect those of the US Naval Academy or Navy Athletics. By the way, the music used in Navy Sports Central comes to you courtesy of Audio Jungle. This is a great site for purchasing the rights to use the music from thousands of artists around the world, and those featured in the podcast will be credited in our show notes. Talk to you soon, everybody. Until next time. This is Karl Darden Go Navy piece.

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