Indiana rowing head coach Steve Peterson boasts an impressive 35-year coaching career and is now entering his 21st season in Bloomington.
Under his leadership, Indiana has earned seven NCAA Championship appearances. Peterson said he emphasizes a positive, competitive environment, which resulted in 11 All-Americans and 44 All-Big Ten selections. The program's success extends beyond athletics, with over 350 rowers receiving Academic All-Big Ten honors in his time as coach.
Peterson's coaching tenure includes stints at George Washington University and Rutgers, as well as coaching the U.S. Women's National Team. As a former rower himself, Peterson's accomplishments include a world championship and competing in the 1996 Olympics.
Peterson met with the Indiana Daily Student over Zoom on Jan. 31 to discuss his goals for the upcoming season, and a recap of last year.
IDS: What goals do you have for this group, and what are you most excited about as the season approaches?
Peterson: I mean we have the same goals every year as a team: to win NCAA’s and Big Ten’s. I’m not saying that if we don’t win NCAA’s that it’s a bad year, but, ultimately the real goal is to be better than we were last year and be better than we were the day before. We’re always talking about that improvement and it’s a critical part of what we do, whether it’s lifting weights, on the rowing machines, or on the water getting better technically and a little bit stronger.
IDS: Looking back at last season, what things do you hope that this team has learned from?
Peterson: Well I do think, last year, which was sort of a high point for us, our varsity crew beat Ohio State. That was in Columbus during the regular season and they turned around and beat them again at the Big Ten championships, and Ohio State and Michigan have kind of ruled the Big Ten for literally the past ten years in our sport. They've been the top two. We've been getting faster, but they're also really good, and so for our varsity to knock off Ohio State a couple times last year was huge. They’re great athletes, but at the same time, there’s a reason we race every year, and that was a big thing for us.
IDS: What have been the biggest off-season challenges the team has faced?
Peterson: I don’t want to say there haven’t been any challenges, but I mean nothing that's like a hard challenge. I think we have some very good new additions to our team. We have a handful of freshmen and some transfers that came in, and so one of the things that's just a normal challenge we face every year is getting everybody on the same page when it comes to the training and the technique that we're using.
IDS: What does a typical day of practice look like once the spring season begins to ramp up?
Peterson: We’re practicing right now, but it's all indoors and each morning the girls will come in around 6:45, warm up and we’ll practice from 7-9:30 on the rowing machine. They’ll be rowing for two to two and a half hours doing various workouts, and then in the afternoon, they have an hour long lift over in the weight room in the football stadiumWe’ll follow that schedule basically up until we get on the water, which actually may be in the next week or two. As soon as there's not ice on Lake Lemon we try and get back out on the water, and the schedule changes a little bit but not a whole lot.
IDS: What have been the biggest goals for you and your fellow coaching staff just regarding your role as coaches over the past few months?
Peterson: A big factor we've had is working on developing and building the roster size, getting more athletes to come out, more recruits coming to the team, so that we're back to what would be a competitive Division I program sized number, so that's been a big goal for us, and I think it's the same thing that we're doing right now, is really trying to work with our first year freshmen that we call novice.
Peterson: A second part has been creating a much more competitive environment within our team, and so we try and be creative and try and create different events, like we had what we called our Hoosier Olympics. So each day they’d work out, they’d score points competing over the course of the week. They earned points, and then we came up with ‘“Okay who won the Olympics for the week, who came in second, who came in third.’” Anything we can do to create more competitive situations is a benefiting factor for us.
Peterson: Then, third is just continuing to develop our team culture. I think our culture as a team is just hard working athletes who are willing to give everything that they have within that day to be the best that they can be, and so I got to give a lot of credit to my assistant coach Grace Lindberg, who does a lot of the work with the athletes and developing that. It's a key thing. They’re college students. There's going to be days where they come in and they're exhausted mentally. I still expect 100% of whatever you got. It may not be the same as if you were rested, but I still expect that, and that's what they do.
IDS: What is one thing you would say to people who haven't considered getting invested in rowing in an attempt to get them intrigued in the sport?
Peterson: I started as a freshman in college at the University of Rhode Island, and I loved it. There’s guys that I rowed with, and it was a co-ed club so there were girls there too — I married one. And my best friends for life, I still talk to them on a regular basis, so it’s kind of a life thing. The other thing that’s really cool about it is that I didn't even know what the sport was when I was a senior in high school.
Peterson: I think it’s a neat thing because it gives you an opportunity you don’t necessarily have. Not everybody can be 7 foot and dunk a basketball or throw a 90 MPH fastball, and then the other thing I just love about it is there's no secret to it. If you want to be good, it's very clear. You want to be good on the rowing machine? Get on the rowing machine, and do it. You want to be good at rowing? Get in the boat, and do it. I feel like it's a very clear path to you want to be good, do what you need to do, and then it's just a matter of you sit there and race a crew. If they beat you, they’ve worked harder than we have. That’s just what it is. It’s really just who are the guys, who are the girls that work hard and want this, and are dedicated to it. I think that’s a neat thing.
