The Army Crew Team

Exam 1: The Army Crew Team

The Army crew team is experiencing a perplexing situation; the JV crew team is frequently beating the Varsity crew team during practices and some games. Colonel Stas Preczewski (Coach P.), the coach of the Army crew team, is in utter frustration because he has^[a][b] never witnessed anything like this before in his nine years of coaching. Also, he has^[c][d] spent the last few weeks evaluating each member based on a series of performance tests measuring their speed, strength, and coordination—all of which determined the rowers on the Varsity and JV team. To further understand and resolve this perplexing situation, we must first look at the current situation for both the Varsity and JV crew teams.

The Varsity crew team current situation is not okay. The ^[e][f][g]crew team is experiencing a rift in a few key areas: ^[h]trust, performance, goals, and leadership. There have been many times throughout the past several weeks that have indicated a lack of confidence between the eight ^{[i][j][k][l][m]}rowers. The first instance was when one another appeared unhappy and critical about not having defeated the JV crew team by a larger margin in Atlanta. Some more instances range from the email messages, individual critiques, and group meeting a few days before the national competition race—all of^[n][o][p][q] which demonstrates their contrary and unfavoring views of each other. They also tend to focus on individual performance ^{[r][s][t][u][v][w]}rather than team performance, which reveals their lack of clear and specific goals. For instance, they intermittently changed their words when shouting parting words from their huddle. Lastly, the crew team has no leaders while several members of the team are labeled “disrupters.” The current disaster the Varsity crew team is experiencing is quite the opposite of what the JV crew team is experiencing.

The JV crew team current situation is great; they are experiencing the reversal in the few key areas the Varsity crew team are lacking. The crew team has much trust between each rower, and it has been demonstrated throughout the past several weeks. An excellent example of this confidence is displayed in an email message by one of the rowers; "we are rowing for every guy in that boat because we do not want to let him down." ^{[x][y][z][aa][ab][ac][ad][ae][af][ag][ah][ai][aj][ak][al][am][an][ao]}They also focused on team performance when conducting a self-critique, making general comments about details that everyone needed to practice rather than individually critiquing each rower. They had clear and specific ^[ap][aq]goals always shouting “nothing to lose” before racing. Lastly, the crew team had no disrupters.