Getting To Know Matt Weise
9/15/2006 12:00:00 AM | Women's Rowing
Sept. 15, 2006
Matt Weise enters his third season as the head coach for the women's rowing program, after spending seven years as an assistant. Weise has continued to develop the nationally- recognized program over the past two years, leading the team to its highest placing at the NCAA Championship and it first Big Ten title.
Q: How did you become interested in coaching?
A: I came here to Michigan State the spring of my freshman year with two years of rowing experience in high school. I joined the club team, but there wasn't a coach. At the end of that first year, they said `well, you've got experience, why don't you start coaching?' I rowed all four years I was here, while helping with the novice team, and I just fell in love with it. I realized after my first year teaching high school, after I graduated from MSU that I wasn't going to be a high school teacher; I needed to be a coach. So I came back to MSU and became the full time club coach here, coaching the men and the women.
Q: How did you make the transition from the club coach to the assistant coach for the varsity program?
A: We heard that they were looking for another women's sport on campus, so I wrote a proposal for elevating the women's rowing program to varsity and submitted it. In 1996, they decided that rowing would become a varsity sport the following year. I interviewed for the head coaching job, but they hired former head coach Bebe Bryans, who in turn hired me to be her assistant. It was a very important transition for me, because I learned a lot from her.
Q: Was it a shock to see how different club rowing is from varsity rowing?
A: I always thought the club team was training at a high level and it was just money that separated the club from varsity status, but that's just not the case. We trained just as hard as any varsity program on campus. It's a completely different level of rowing. The first year was tough for me, but as I realized what I needed to do, it became more fun.
Q: How does your assistant coaching experience help your relationship with your assistant coaches, Stacey Rippetoe and Christiina Tymoszewicz?
A: I think we work well as a team. I understand where they feel pressure and where they can be pressured. I've known Stacey for a while, and it was helpful to work with her before I became a head coach. Everybody brings different strengths to the program, and I think we do a good job covering all aspects of the rowing program. As a head coach, you want to control all aspects of the team, but I can't, and it's hard to realize that. Once you do realize it, you find good people to run the parts of the show they're capable of running.
Q: Do you have a specific coaching philosophy?
A: We call them the four pillars of rowing. The first is precision, which involves a lot of technical work. If a rower is not efficient on the water they're not going to beat anybody. We do a lot of work on the technical aspect of rowing. The second one is poise. Rowers train 95 percent of the time - they don't race very much, so a lot of crews get to race time and become very nervous because they're not used to racing. We teach rowers to be able to race by setting up practice just like races so they are training themselves to think of race day as just another day on the water. The third one is power, which is different from effort. Power comes more from what we can train - basically, power is strengthening a rower's endurance and make them faster. The last and most important is progression. Rowers constantly need to be moving forward and need to be constantly pushing to improve.
Q: How do you balance coaching with your family life?
A: My family is wonderful. Ellen is seven, in second grade, and she's smarter than me already. Pete is four, and he's probably going to be smarter than me. Nadia is six months old, and its fun to watch her grow up. My wife, Lisa, is a teacher at Holt High School. Two years ago, she was the Michigan Education Association's Teacher of the Year. She's my best friend. Lisa keeps my grounded and she puts me back on the right track. My family keeps me balanced.
Q: How do you keep 80 girls focused through the winter workouts?
A: This comes down to effort. If the rowers aren't giving the necessary effort, I ask myself two questions. Number one, why aren't they giving the effort, and two, am I not designing practice in a way that engages them to put in the effort? More than likely, it's the second scenario, because they're all motivated and they all want to do well. So, it comes down to mapping practice out to keep things fresh. If the rowers are seeing themselves get better, it makes it easier to keep putting in the effort. As long as there are different ways to keep the rowers motivated, it isn't hard.
Q: What are some things you want to do differently this season now that you have a season of head coaching under your belt?
A: I think we just need to build on what we started last year. We started working on race plans, being more consistent. We started to do that a little bit last year, and we need to continue doing so this year. We're making some technical changes because I think we can row better and become faster. It's always an evolving process to make crews row more efficiently. The Big Ten Championships were a big deal for us last year, especially the varsity eight. It was a really big win for them, and it was hard to get them back from that highly emotional win. By the time we got to the NCAA Championships, it was too late to get them back. The athletes realize this and are determined to complete their year.
Q: How do you see college rowing evolving over the next few years?
A: I see parity as the evolution of rowing as there are a number of programs which are beginning to challenge the typical rowing powerhouses. If you look at the Big Ten, it's a fast place. There are schools that are testing the waters, and that's good, because the more competition we have throughout the country, the better. Other schools are starting to pop in and out of the national scene and the schools that were dominant five years ago aren't as dominant anymore. The parity among the schools that are returning to the NCAA Championships year after year is getting closer, so I think you're going to see more parity develop, and keep in mind that crew is still a young sport.
Q: How does being a participant in the Big Ten help prepare you for races against your national competition?
A: It's great, not having to travel far in order to have a great race. You can find competition anywhere. From our standpoint, every race we go to is a high level of competition. They are all challenging. It doesn't matter what team MSU is racing in the Big Ten, we know it's going to be fast and we have to be ready. The pressure is a little higher, but I like it from that aspect. It makes for some exciting races. Every weekend, we are basically racing someone that is ranked in the top ten in the country. There are no easy races.
Q: What is the most misunderstood aspect of crew?
A: People look at this sport and say that it must be easy because we can take athletes from other programs and be competitive. It's a sport with a repetitive stroke, so the technique, although we refine it, is pretty basic. What we look for in an athlete is someone who can work to be able to do it all. The big issue with walk-on rowers is they have to be a great athlete. Not all cross-over athletes are good rowers, but you don't know if you'll be a great rower until you try it. Most people don't know they're good rowers until they get to college because there aren't many opportunities to row in high school.