Faculty Profile

Trooping up the Newell Boathouse slip on a dark gray day, after an hour of poor rowing, the 150-pound oarsman lowers at his reflection in the sleek wet shell and nurses the black conviction that today he pulled the boat all by himself. It is at this touchy moment that coach Bert Haines, a slim, middling-aged man with a wind-reddened face underlined by a thick white towel around his neck, steps from a launch, calls the day's offender aside, and with gestures explains in a gentle, English-tinged voice, "Now, this is the surface of the water, and my palm, here, is the blade of the oar . . ." The boyish enthusiasm over crew and Bert Haines among the men he has handled in 27 Harvard seasons indicates that in him the College has something very much like a genius at work.

The "secret" of Bert Haines' work with the 150-pounders can be simply put: he is in love with rowing; the Freshman learns quickly through hearsay and demonstration that for him one's rowing is the thing that there are no other criteria. This fact is a big one in crew, where men are jumped from beat to boat daily, and where they row as one, without resentments, or collapse halfway down the course.

Another aspect of Bert's effectiveness is the lifetime of technical perfection that he can bring to bear on the small problems that matter in crew. The "lifetime" is almost literal, for when he was born in Winsor, England, his father and three uncles, all champion punters, were waiting to impart to him all their love. Bert's father impressed the principles of coxing on him at nine by cracking his knuckles when he made a miscalculation. This is one teaching device that Bert has not found it expedient to carry over to the Harvard scene.

In later years Haines' career at times took on aspects that were almost fabulous: he was the driver of a dashing team of four in the Winsor Volunteer Fire Brigade, the fastest mile sculler in England, and a Sergeant-Major in the cavalry under General Allenby, winning the DSO.

The cavalry and firehorse-piloting period is over, but Bert Haines' sculling genius is very much a thing of the present. In addition to making a single fly as though possessed, he can get in the tank and row any first-boat man into collapse. His aim, though, is not so much to demonstrate, or "teach"-- Bert feels it is a matter of bringing out what a good man has through a "midwife" approach to coaching. This requires not scorn, or a drive-drive-drive psychology, but rather an incalculable patience and humor with green men who shoot their seat-slide forward too soon, fail to use leg-drive, or put a foot through the bottom of the shell. He will tell a crew whimsically, "You had two speeds today--dead slow, and stop." And then go on, "You have to keep limber in the hips--it's like sitting on a rolling log."

Swathed in sweaters and towels, and wearing a white umpire's cap over bristling white hair, Haines is a striking sight, and seems almost functionally adapted to leaning into stiff breezes with overtones of cold spray to catch the fleeting error that can throw a whole crew off. When approached about the present write-up, he looked hesitant and said dubiously, "You know, I don't want there to be too much of this 'Bert Haines' business." Every man is, of course, entitled to his opinion about this.