The Army Crew Case Analysis

The Army Crew - Case Analysis

The Army crew and its setup are built of two primary parts: The rowers and the coach – this analysis is going to look at the issues facing the two parts and how the sum of the parts have made the wider issue of a fumbling varsity rowing team.

The Coach Colonel Stas Preczewski

* Coach P is well experienced (9 years) in the field of rowing; he had picked varsity teams successfully over these 9 years. He had a precise regime of picking his varsity team. This was a tried and tested “seat racing” (even used in the Olympic selection process) method and stuck with it and here I think is where the first issue lies, the method of picking a team of 8 rowers was only based around rowing 2 teams of 4 to select the top 8 rowers to race together. This testing logic is flawed would have been better used to pick the top 4 rowers and not 8.

* Once Coach P selected his varsity team, he missed the first signal that something could be wrong when team members were critical of one another after the first race off. Ultimately, he didn’t intervene and took it as a good sign which was wrong.

* Finally, when it dawned on him that there was a serious issue, most of his focus was primarily to get the structure right (testing and retesting), strength and conditioning and did little to address the team problems. The physiological mental work done on the team again was done as individuals and not as a team.

* Ultimately, the coach inability to reframe facilitated these teams’ problems and perhaps his background in the Army (structure, structure and more structure) has something to do with his inability to reframe. “If it isn’t broke, you haven’t looked hard enough. Fix it anyway” from methods used in picking the team, to the first flashpoint Coach P thought everything was good because he was in his structured frame.

The Varsity Team

* The team suffer from self-protection syndrome, skipping around the true nature of their problems they go on the...