Lawrence resident Dylan Mann heads to USRowing Youth National Championships with Mercer Junior Rowing Club
When it comes to rowing, the folks in the boat listen to the coxswain, but they follow a guy like Dylan Mann.
Mann is part of the Mercer Junior Rowing Club’s Youth Lightweight 8 boat with coxswain and also a member of the Lightweight 4 with coxswain. The Lightweight 8 actually won the gold medal at the Mid-Atlantic Junior Championships at Mercer Lake in May, while the Lightweight 4 finished fifth.
But Mann and his boat mates went to the USRowing Youth National Championships in mid-June in the Lightweight 4 boat.
“We had a bad race with the four at regionals,” Mann explained. “We got a little antsy and our race didn’t go to plan, so our race plan got messed up a little and we got a little jumpy. We ended up getting fifth but our coach decided to put in a petition to see if we could go to the nationals in the four, and they let us in.
“All five guys who were in the eights were in the four, so since the eights won it, that could have had something to do with it.”
No matter what boat went, Mann would be a part of it. The Lawrence High School senior is in the fourth seat of the Lightweight 4 and the eighth seat in the Lightweight 8. And while it is the coxswain who yells out the instructions, it is Mann’s duty to basically establish the physical pace of the crew.
“I’m the guy that sets the rhythm, it’s just been working out that way every boat I’ve been in,” Mann said. “It’s not always the best guy in that seat, but the guy who can set a consistent rhythm. Everyone follows you. Everybody is trying to do it together but I’m setting the rhythm.
“I always liked having control. That seat is a good place for it.”
Mann’s presence served as a great help to Nikhil Modi, a sophomore at West Windsor-Plainsboro South who just completed his first year as the boat’s coxswain.
“First of all he brings a great technical aspect, he is the key to our boat’s success,” Modi said. “If he doesn’t set a good rhythm or gets out of time it could sort of put a damper on the entire race.
“He’s also really, really upbeat and he basically is kind of the guy you could say is the secondary leader of our boat. He really helps everyone else get through their pieces (a length or time done during practice) when it gets tough. He helps people when they have questions of a technical aspect, and lets them know which way is better. Since he has more experience than me, I can go to him when I have questions. He’s kind of, in a sense, the father of the boat.”
And Modi is humble enough to defer to something Mann might point out.
“He helps me with calls I’m going to make,” Modi said. “During a piece if I make a call he likes or doesn’t like, when we’re resting he’ll tell me I should do this or do that, and lets me know if I should make a certain call.”
Mann started in MJRC’s developmental program in eighth grade and was quickly elevated to the Novice team in the fall of his freshman year. He was also a wrestler, and stuck with that sport as a freshman and sophomore but began rowing in the fall and spring.
“As a junior I really got into it and never looked back,” he said. “I trained all through the fall, winter, spring and summer last year.”
Mann became interested in the sport while watching his brother’s friends compete on the Hun rowing team.
“Obviously it’s not the most televised or public sport,” he said. “I had kind of heard about it a little bit, and I’d always been into fitness and stuff. My brother went to Hun, some of his friends were on the rowing team. It kind of caught my eye, so I decided to check it out. Now I ended up here four years later.”
Mann quickly revealed that the perception was not even close to the reality when he first climbed on board.
“It’s never what you expect the first time you get in the boat,” he said. “I kind of had no idea. I’ll be first to admit, I was completely lost.
“I showed up halfway through the season in eighth grade and all these guys had already been there. I’m completely lost. You go to the oar, you don’t know the movements. But you kind of get the hang of it.”
Getting in shape to be a quality rower is not easy. The workouts are grueling both in the water and on land, as Mercer has a center for dry workouts in the winter and even before outdoor practices.
Mann was in good shape coming from wrestling, but still had a way to go to get in crew shape.
“The workouts are tougher, especially the last two years,” he said. “First year novice you’re more worried about trying to put a boat in the water without smashing it, which happens more often than you think.
“The sophomore year I joined varsity, and junior year it’s even more intense, with all the workouts inside when the lake is frozen. I didn’t understand what sleep was until I would get nine hours and that wasn’t enough to recover. It’s like you’re never able to recover. Wrestling we’d have bursts and stuff and not anywhere close to rowing.”
Mann noted there are other differences between wrestling and rowing. In wrestling, some of the greatest performers started as little kids. That’s not the case in rowing.
“You can’t do it until you’ve developed,” Mann said. “High school is almost like the little league for rowing. The real top level is 24, 25 with the national team rowers. By then they’ve been all over the world. Sometimes people say rowers are uncoordinated, but the uncoordinated rowers get weeded out early. You’ve got to have coordination, feel, instinct.”
He added that there is more of a team camaraderie when four or eight guys are trying to be in perfect sync to make one boat go faster than all the rest.
“It’s really a different culture than wrestling, which is something I really fell in love with,” Mann said. “In wrestling, and it’s just the nature of the sport, I’m worried about my 145 pound match and the other guy for three periods of two minutes.
“With crew it’s a different kind of camaraderie. You’re doing the workouts not for you, you’re doing it to make the boats go faster in whatever way you can. The trust you put into it with each other is a bond. I love it.”
He loves it so much that he is going to attempt to walk on to the University of Pennsylvania’s team this fall.
And once again, Mann will hope to set the rhythm.
Dylan Mann competed in the Mercer Junior Rowing Club’s Lightweight 4 boat at the USRowing Youth National Championships. (Photo by Suzette J. Lucas.),
