STANWOOD – “Lurch, wobble and swallow ‘em up.”
So proclaimed the headline in the May 31, 1971 edition of Sports Illustrated magazine. The accompanying story was about the University of Washington varsity crew, which had blown away an elite field to win the prestigious Western Sprints on Lake Washington.
The SI piece noted the Huskies penchant for slow starts and strong finishes. It also correctly predicted greater glory for the crew.
In June of that same year, the UW lost the Intercollegiate Rowing Association (IRA) championship to Cornell by a fraction of a second in Syracuse, N.Y.
Three days later, on the same body of water, the Huskies rebounded by sweeping past the finest collegiate and club teams in the country to win the national championship and a spot in the 1971 Pan Am games, where they captured a silver medal.
Last Friday, the nine members of that 1971 team – which included Snohomish County natives John Buse, Cliff Hurn and the late Rick Copstead – were inducted into the Husky Hall of Fame.
“For me (the ceremony) was kind of surreal,” Buse said. “It was absolutely wonderful.”
It was likewise with their UW careers.
Several days before the Hall of Fame induction ceremony, Buse and Hurn got together over coffee and overflowing scrapbooks to share memories.
What quickly became evident was their love of what has been called the “ultimate team sport.” Rowing demands the brute strength of weightlifting, the endurance of distance running and the coordination of synchronized swimming.
“You develop a mindset of mental toughness and work through the physical pain,” Buse said. “The boat’s only going to get as good as the weakest link. Eight other guys are depending on you. It’s a point of pride.”
During their high school years – Buse at Everett, Hurn at Snohomish – the pair crossed athletic paths in cross country and track, but never met formally.
With no rowing experience, Buse wandered into the UW crew house as a freshman, following the footsteps of his older brother Mike. Hurn joined up after legendary UW crew coach Dick Erickson contacted Snohomish’s basketball coach at the time, Jack Dekubber, seeking athletes.
“He was looking for guys over 6-foot who wanted to try crew,” Hurn recalled. “So I went down and saw what rowing was all about.”
The two Snohomish County natives hit if off well.
“We had an affinity for each other because both of our families were in the timber business,” Hurn said.
Added Buse’s wife, Vonda: “They both had sawdust in their veins.”
With Buse, Copstead and Hurn aboard, the Husky freshmen eight, coached by Lou Gellerman, tied Penn for the IRA championship in the spring of 1969.
“He got us going,” Hurn said of Gellerman, who’s also in the Husky Hall of Fame as an oarsman. “Because of his coaching we were good enough to be in the varsity boat as sophomores.”
Buse might have been in the varsity boat as a sophomore, but he was out with a broken back suffered while lifting weights.
“I was trying to lift as much as my brother,” Buse said. “He was 6-foot-5 and outweighed me by 50 pounds. Big mistake.”
In the spring of 1970, while Buse recuperated from surgery to fuse a vertebra, Erickson tinkered with the varsity lineup.
Two disappointing losses to UCLA in the weeks prior to the IRA led Erickson to move the beefed-up, 225-pound Hurn from the middle of the boat – the so-called “engine room” – to the No. 8, or stroke oar.
Situating Hurn closest to the coxswain, was a stroke of genius.
“I had trouble following guys,” Hurn said with a laugh. “So now they followed me.”
“There are two kinds of strokes,” Buse said. “Those with great rhythm and those who refuse to lose. Cliff was definitely the latter. As the races got longer, he got stronger.”
At the 1970 IRA the Huskies, including Copstead, steamed from last place to catch Penn at the lead with 500 meters remaining in the 2,000-meter race.
“We blew them away,” Hurn recalled of the six-length victory.
“They were just a boat load of studs,” Buse said of the 1970 crew, which also was inducted into the Hall of Fame last Friday.
By the fall of 1970, Buse was getting back to full strength and was intent upon rowing for the varsity.
Even though he grew to 180 pounds, Buse was undersized for the heavyweight boat. He earned a spot through sheer tenacity.
“He may have been too small,” Hurn said. “But the guy was just crazy.”
The same might be said for their buddy Copstead, an Edmonds native who lost his battle with cancer in 1988.
Among numerous other incidents, there was the time at the 1970 World Championships in St. Catherine’s, Ontario, when Copstead’s mischievous nature nearly got the Dawgs booted out of the event.
“We were staying in the dormitory at Ridley School,” Hurn recalled. “They were all playing cricket on the lawn. It was very hoity-toity.”
One night Copstead and coxswain Dwight Phillips climbed the bell tower and switched the cables.
“Instead of going ding-dong they were all messed up,” Hurn said with a laugh. “Those stuffy (Canadians) gathered all the coaches and said if they found out who did it, they’d kick the entire team out.”
Along with his playfulness, Copstead is most remembered by his friends for his heart and talent.
“Of the three of us, Rick was the best,” Buse said. “He had this inner toughness.”
After finishing second in the 1971 IRA, Buse, Hurn, Copstead and their crewmates regrouped for the national championship.
As it turned out, the championship race was anti-climatic after a stirring victory in the preliminaries over the Vesper Rowing Club, a composite team made up of the best rowers past and present from perennial collegiate power Penn.
In that memorable prelim, Washington led with about 750 meters to go when Vesper made a dramatic move.
“They went from a length down to pull even,” Buse recalled. “It wasn’t a power 10 or power 20, but a flurry. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“Just past 500 yards we took the stroke up,” Buse continued. “I felt confident because they had expended a lot of energy with that flurry.”
The Huskies won by two-tenths of a second and rode the momentum to fend off Vesper and the rest of the field in the finals.
For the 1971 Pan-Am gamess, the team traveled a precarious mountain road to Lake Calima in the Colombian Andes and placed second to a powerful Argentina squad to earn the UW’s first medal in international competition since 1952.
Buse and Hurn downplay their own roles in Husky lore, but revere the memories of others, including George Pocock Sr., who may have been to Husky crew what Ghandi was to India. “He was a very inspirational man,” Buse said. “He likened crew to almost a religious experience.”
Then there was Erickson, a member of the Husky Hall of Fame as both an athlete and coach, who masterfully marketed the UW program.
“He was the quintessential psychologist,” Buse said. “He could be tough when necessary and your best friend when you needed one.”
Hurn: “He brought us the ‘Opening Day,’ race. To have 100,000 people around when you were having a crew race was unheard of.”
Buse and Hurn have tales aplenty to share. If one watched the twinkle in their eyes long enough as they reminisced a cup of coffee might eventually cool and congeal.
Ah, but the memories would remain fresh and warm.
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