Part 2: Of Justice and Rowing. My Talk with Dick

Fair play to you. – Irish

The story of University of Oregon’s endorsement of Victoria Brown as coxswain of a men’s rowing crew made the national news. Controversy arose. Vic and I, and the university, received dozens of supportive letters, and quite a few negative and angry ones too. And we attracted a true adversary.

Oregon’s 1972 crew team totaled some thirty student-athletes. At age twenty-three, I was hardly their elder, yet with a college degree under my belt, married and with a baby son and house complete with dog and cat, I was further along the path of life. I knew that regardless of the precise career I might choose, my push and passion would be for fairness and justice. As the Ducks’ coach I was charged with protecting my team, especially Vic. I needed the group’s unanimous support, so I convened team-wide discussions, encouraged everyone to speak up, and addressed their concerns. Some of the men felt an athletic team wasn’t the proper vehicle for challenging the status quo. I pushed hard because I believed the opposite to be true: athletes’ ability to overcome inertia and the respect accorded us make an athletic team the perfect engine for change. Vic was humbler. For her it was just about the team. Her attitude, my push, and team leadership’s declaration that “she is one of us” won over the doubters.  

Oregon’s athletic department supported us. Individual coaches, however, were split on the issue. Dick Harter, the basketball coach, thought having a female coxswain was silly. Football coach Jerry Frei said it was bold. The wrestling coach offered to beat me up. The department’s most highly respected coach, track legend Bill Bowerman, said, “Don, I wouldn’t do what you’re doing, but if Wendell Basye (the law professor who certified athletes) says she’s eligible, then I’m all for it.”

There was disagreement, too, among my fellow “WICCA-ns” (members of the Western Intercollegiate Crew Coaches’ Association). Coaches of the smaller and newer programs, like Pacific Lutheran, Puget Sound, and St. Mary’s, offered strong support. Stanford and UCLA were neutral. Cal was silent. (Marty McNair, my coach, was someone I knew well enough to suspect he was not happy with me. Years later, in visiting with him after the Cal men had championship crews with female coxswains, he admitted he had “gotten some things wrong and learned a lot”.)

The most strenuous objections came from Corvallis and Seattle. Oregon State University’s coach, Karl Drlicka, informed his men that NCAA rule would cause loss of athletic eligibility for any athlete who competed against a female coxswain – despite the fact that the NCAA had no such rule, and its rules didn’t govern men’s rowing in the first place.

University of Washington’s coach, Dick Erickson, nominated himself for the adversary role. He was a leader in west coast rowing, with a successful career rowing and coaching which he apparently felt vested in him the authority to overrule the University of Oregon. Through the press and in letters to me, he spewed forth a barrage of invective. Kenny Moore’s April 17, 1972 Sports Illustrated article, “The case of the ineligible bachelorette”, quoted him saying, “At Washington we expect a heck of a lot more of a coxswain than they [Oregon] do. We aren’t looking for someone to just ride in the boat and steer it *** we will not race them if they use a girl.”

The full extent of Dick Erickson’s hubris became clear in April when we travelled to Seattle to race our first- and second varsity eights against Washington’s third- and fourth boats. The plan was for Erickson to travel north to Vancouver on a Friday afternoon for his top rowers to compete in fours against University of British Columbia the next day. He would leave the freshman coach, Rick Clothier, in Seattle and in charge of our Saturday races.  

Clothier was a couple years older than I and one of Erickson’s former Husky coxswains. He was on record as saying he had no objection to our female coxswain. Early in the week I phoned him to double check: “Rick, I need to confirm: do you object to racing my varsity eight with Victoria Brown at cox?” “No, I don’t.” “Great. We’ll see you Friday afternoon.” We arrived at the Husky crew house to rig our shells and for a short row on Lake Washington. As a small-budget program, we couldn’t afford a boat trailer to carry our own shells; honoring tradition, Rick Clothier had offered us one of Washington’s.

We were met there not by Rick Clothier but by Dick Erickson! He had sent Clothier north with the other crews and stayed in Seattle in order to deny us and have his way. Plus, he wanted to take me to the woodshed! Visibly agitated, in front of my team he said, “Costello, let’s you and me go up to my office.” “Can’t, Dick. I’m here with my team.” He gestured toward Victoria Brown. “You’re not going to put her in one of our boats.” “Oh? Where’s Rick? We made an agreement.” “Rick’s not in charge here.” “Rick promised us a shell. He has no objection to racing our crew with Victoria. I expect you to back him up. I will see you in your office tonight at 7:00.”

When I arrived at Erickson’s office that evening, he started as if to scold me. I said, “Dick, nobody scolds me – not even you. You coach the Huskies. I coach the Ducks. We are equals. If you think you can talk down at me, you are mistaken.” Looking as if he was about to leap across his desk and hit me, he accused me of “threatening the traditions of rowing”. “Which traditions, exactly, Dick? That Washington’s coaches select Oregon’s teams? That a woman is not qualified to cox men? Those are not traditions, Dick; those are simply wrong. Here are some traditions of rowing: Crews stick together; yours do, mine do. Honor and dignity are rowing traditions. A coach selects his crews and nobody else’s – that’s a tradition in all sports, Dick. It seems that in fact you are the one who threatens the traditions of rowing.” Following a tense silence, he repeated that he would not race against Victoria Brown, and she would not sit in a Husky shell. I left.

We were at the Husky crew house early the next day. Dick Erickson was not around. The Husky athletes, though hospitable, said they had orders not to let us seat Victoria Brown in one of their shells. Our rowers stood on the dock in racing kit shoulder-to-shoulder in the classic vertical-oars pose, with Vic and our second-boat coxswain Randy kneeling in front. The Seattle press took photos and interviewed our team. Our first crew said they would not race without Victoria Brown. Our second boat refused to race as well. The Sunday Seattle newspapers carried photos, quotes and commentary on their front pages. They excoriated Dick Erickson.

On the trip back to Eugene, one of the men in the van I was driving asked if I understood why Dick Erickson was so strongly opposed to Victoria Brown. I said I don’t know. Vic, who was riding along too, was silent. She knew why. Every woman does.

The Seattle trip changed the team. Each athlete and crew improved. They found speed they didn’t know they could have, and they had more fun – all this in large part because they had proven to themselves that the sport of rowing is about much more than just races, boats, and oars.

That fall, I enrolled in law school at Lewis and Clark College in Portland and founded that college’s rowing program and the Station L Rowing Club. I worked as research clerk for a firm of trial lawyers during law school, was in private practice in Central Oregon from 1978 to 2002, became a judge at age thirty-four, retired from a thirty-six-year judicial career in 2020, then came out from retirement in late 2021 to join my wife in her law practice. At age seventy-five, I am in my fifty-first year in the legal profession and still enjoying it.  

This is my fifty-seventh year in rowing. I continue to support Cal Crew and Oregon Crew, coach the Ducks occasionally, mentor them, and help with Oregon’s rowing alumni association, Friends of Oregon Rowing. In my Central Oregon years, I hosted the Fly Lake Regatta for wooden singles at Suttle Lake. Over the past eighteen years I have sculled about 13,000 miles on my home lake, South Tenmile, north of Coos Bay, mostly in a single, alone on the lake. My involvement in the sport has taken me to twenty-five states, Norway, England and Austria. Beginning in 2011, I have been advisor and manager for Norway’s champion sculler, Olaf Tufte.

Many of the 1971-1972 Oregon Crew stay in touch with me. We agree that standing up that year for what’s right changed our lives. The strength of character of those young Ducks fueled their family lives and successful careers in such areas as law, real estate, business, public administration, medicine, engineering, and music. At least half a dozen of them continued to compete in masters-level rowing into their later years. They are thoughtful, kind and generous people. I trust them. I love them. Most of them are native Oregonians. My experience as their coach left me thinking that if they represent the type of person being raised in Oregon, perhaps I should permanently transplant myself from California. I have lived in Oregon since 1971.

Vic married Oregon football star Greg Lindsey and became Victoria Brown Lindsey. She received a bachelor’s degree from Oregon and her master’s from Washington. She spent forty years working in human resources in the aerospace industry. She says that the best part of her work was helping people to develop their potential. As an eighteen-year-old freshman she certainly did that for me. 

Later in 1972, the Western Intercollegiate Rowing Association abandoned its attempt at keeping out female coxswains. The change we fought for became commonplace, and by the mid-1970’s Dick Erickson was using female coxswains at University of Washington. It is well to remember that University of Oregon student-athletes led the way.    

Next, in Part 3: Racing! Shirts!

For Marge and Howard

© Don Owen Costello 2023.