The Drexel rowing program normally trains on the Schuylkill River in the mornings. But in the days leading up to the high-profile Aberdeen Dad Vail Regatta last May, several members of the men’s team went beyond the call of duty to prepare for the signature race.
“These guys would come back after co-op and go back out on the water in the afternoon,” recalls Paul Savell, director of the men’s and women’s rowing teams at Drexel.
That extra work paid off as the Dragons pulled off a surprise victory in the Dad Vail, the largest collegiate race in the country.
“With the way these guys were training, winning was kind of contagious.”
— PAUL SAVELL
“Those guys did all of the right things,” Savell says. “They put in a lot of extra rows. They came back in the afternoon and that made all the difference. We were definitely not the favorites originally, but we knew we were in a good place. When the guys’ varsity won the Dad Vail, that was monumental.”
The Dad Vail capped a series of memorable victories under Savell, who was named the 2012 Schuylkill Navy Coach of the Year.
A major inflection point for his coaching program came in 2010 when Drexel took part in the elite Henley Women’s Regatta in England. The women took first place by one-and-a-half boat lengths to claim the top prize in the history of the women’s program. That season the women also claimed a bronze medal at the Dad Vail Regatta and a victory in the Kelly Cup Regatta.
“That was unbelievable; that was our first huge milestone during my time here,” Savell says of the Henley Women’s victory.
Another milestone event took place in October when the Drexel men’s varsity eight took first place at the prestigious Head of the Charles event in Boston, where teams compete for the best time over long distances.
The major victories in 2013 came because, Savell says simply, it was time.
“With the way these guys were training, winning was kind of contagious,” he says. “I think we had been building toward this and each year we were getting faster.”
Savell says one of his training philosophies is to keep the teams’ workouts fresh and interesting.
“Our training plan calls for workouts that are repeated every few weeks to mark progress and allow the athletes to see the effects of their training,” he says. He tends to select workouts to get the teams “as fit as possible,” but then he puts a “Drexel spin” on it, he says. That spin comes from pulling in coaches from other sports to mix it up.
“All of us as Drexel coaches, we all borrow from each other — if there are things that I like from a wrestling or a swim coach, I’ll take an exercise and try and incorporate it into our training.”
Savell has other coaches run the team’s practices occasionally. He’s even picked the brain of Drexel alum Steve Kasprzyk, a member of the 2012 Olympic rowing team, to find out how the national team is training.
Sebastian Ryan, a senior in the men’s program, says Savell instills a culture of hard work. “He is always encouraging us to go hard in the second half of a race,” he says.
And, it doesn’t hurt that Drexel’s rowing teams now have a dedicated home on Boathouse Row for training. In 2008, Drexel signed a 50-year tenant lease with Bachelors Barge Club, the oldest continuously operated rowing club in the country. Since moving into No. 6., as the boathouse is known, both the men’s and women’s teams have had more successes than ever before, as well as deeper ties to Philadelphia’s intense rowing community.
“[Philadelphia is] probably the best rowing city in the United States,” says Savell. Savell has a solid background in the sport, which began in the 1980s at Holy Spirit High School in Absecon, N.J. He was introduced to rowing by his freshman-year math teacher, Stan Bergman, who was also the school’s rowing coach. “He talked me into rowing right off the bat,” says Savell, who also played on the football and swim teams.
Bergman left the following year to become the coach at the University of Pennsylvania, and for the next three seasons, Savell competed under new head coach Mark Brestle, who later coached at Rutgers.
In those days, Savell trained on the frigid waters near Atlantic City. “There are some cold days when you start out. You actually have to break the ice to get out on the water,” he recalls. But his early training helped him become a national champion later while studying at the University of Wisconsin, where he graduated with a degree in engineering.
The son of educators, Savell initially went into teaching himself, and was in his first job as a math teacher at a middle school in New Jersey when he realized the joy of coaching rowing while helping out at a local high school in the afternoons.
“That was my favorite part of the day,” he recalls of those afternoons on the water. “When you are coaching, you know everyone wants to be there. Not everyone may want to be in your math class.”
Savell eventually realized that he wanted to coach full-time. He went on to coach for Georgia Tech University and Lehigh University, and finally landed at Drexel in 2007.
Nearly seven years into his coaching career at Drexel, and Savell says he knows what it takes to achieve the win.
“You need good leaders and you need good followers. You need people to jump on board to build momentum, but you can’t have a bunch of leaders going in all different directions. You have to stick with one plan, and as a team you build on that plan. But, it’s got to really come from the athletes, because I can’t drag them across the finish line. They have to want to get up and go.”