Natureview Case

The coach of the Army Crew Team, Colonel Stas Preczewski, has encountered an unusual situation with his Junior Varsity (JV) & Varsity (V) rowing team. He separated his 16 people into two teams. He then selected the best 8, due to their stamina, strength, speed and coordination and placed them in the V Team. The other less successful rowers were then placed into the JV team. Although the V Team is better in individual talent, they would consistently lose to the JV team. This created the struggling situation: how is this possible?

To be successful in any rowing race, there are two things that should be considered: individual effort and teamwork. The coach was aware of this issue and split the crew into two teams with the results of physical strength and conditioning test. The whole crew completed the test and the better 8 were placed in the V Team and the others were placed in JV Team.

With teamwork, coordination and collaboration is vital. The success of any rowing team is directly related to the coordination and psychological support within the team members. The interesting result was that the V Team lost races against the JV Team, which was less skillful in individual abilities. It was obvious that the JV Team became a team, leaving their individual differences behind and supporting each other as a whole, while the V Team became more concerned with individual differences and blaming each other for failure. As a result, he came up with two teams, which one of them is better at physical strength and conditioning but also worse at collaborating and less successful in races compared to the other one.

To overcome the problem before entering the National Championship, which is less than a week away, Coach P came up with three options: switching the V and JV boats; switching individual boat members; or intervening to improve the Varsity’s performance.

Alternative Solutions

Switch V and JV boats

One of the major advantages of switching V and JV boats is that...