Corporate strategies tested at Dad Vail

Dan Lyons, an elite oarsman who has rowed on six U.S. national teams and competed in the 1988 Olympics, believes that rowing is the ultimate team sport.

"The goal is to meld, not to win, to harness the individual potential of each crew member to attain perfect synergy, which leads to victory," the Narberth resident said.

The lessons Lyons has learned trying to achieve perfect synergy in a shell inspired him to start Team Concepts, a company that specializes in leadership development and team-building.

It also inspired him to propose a corporate challenge race at the Aberdeen Dad Vail Regatta. The idea was embraced by regatta organizers, and the first corporate challenge occurred in 2000.

"It's always been my intent to spread the gospel of rowing to everybody we can," said Lyons, 52, tall, lean, and affable. "We're evangelical about it."

Twelve crews from five companies and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania competed Saturday in the 11th edition of the challenge. The conditions were not ideal. Blustery winds made the Schuylkill choppy and doubled the difficulty of keeping the boats on a straight course.

The essence of Dad Vail, a city tradition that almost left town this year for New Jersey because of shaky funding, is inclusiveness. From the start, it was open to everybody and designed for colleges with fledgling crew programs that couldn't compete with the Ivies and other more established teams. It's an event imbued with the spirit of amateurism, a word whose Latin root means love.

At the Dad Vail, love of the sport runs high, and taking part is more important than winning, though winning is important, too, as proved by the beaming faces of the muscular young men and women whose necks were draped with medals.

The corporate challenge epitomizes the Dad Vail spirit squared. It's a race of 500 meters - a little more than a quarter mile, and a sprint compared with the 2,000 meters covered by the collegiate contestants - with three divisions: novice, intermediate, and senior.

The distance may be short, but it's still taxing, especially for those fresh to the sport. "The first minute may be free and easy," Lyons said, "but then the lactic acid builds up, and the last minute can be painful."

At an orientation session Saturday morning, Ken Shaw, vice president of the regatta, explained procedures to a small gathering of challenge participants, many of whom had rowing skills that ranged from limited to nonexistent. The essence of his message: Relax.

"We don't want anyone to be nervous," he said. "It's our job to make sure you have a good experience. And when you're passing the grandstand, smile and show your pearly whites. Let's not make it look like it's hard."

Ryan Meade, 27, of West Chester, a "sales team grunt" at Aberdeen Asset Management, confessed that this was his first time rowing in an eight-person shell, and that he and his teammates had meager practice - a session on a rowing machine, only two sessions on the water.

"This is our first year sponsoring the event," he said of Aberdeen, the Scottish-owned, Center City-based financial services firm, whose four-year commitment was key to Dad Vail's remaining in Philadelphia. "So we have to represent strong."

Meade was realistic, however.

"Victory for us is not falling in the river or wrecking the boat. I just hope nobody gets killed."

Despite scant experience on the water, Jennifer Grande, 25, an Aberdeen coxswain, was undaunted. "I have lots of experience barking orders," she stated confidently. "It's not a problem for me."

Perhaps the most challenging part of the challenge was the start. Because the boats were racing over the final 500 meters of the regatta course, they had to line up for a "floating start," untethered to a stationary boat. This is difficult under any circumstances, but especially for tyros on a river buffeted by fickle gusts.

In the novice race, Aberdeen was tardy in reaching the start, just above Peter's Island. The crew's disorganized progress upriver prompted Shaw, the Dad Vail vice president, to offer a comparison to "an octopus trying to put its socks on."

After several minutes, the boats were aligned, more or less. The referee shouted, "Go!" The red flag dropped.

Vanguard and Wharton surged ahead smartly. But, alas, Aberdeen, trying to compensate for a fierce quartering wind, veered toward the boat rowed by a crew from Yellowbook, striking its hull with a glancing blow. "We thought they were trying to take us out," said Yellowbook's Shirl Evangelisto, 29, of Doylestown, after the race.

Aberdeen straightened out but soon collided with Yellowbook a second time, tangling oars. Meanwhile, Vanguard and Wharton vied for the lead. A woman in each boat "caught a crab," losing control of her oar or slipping out of her seat, cutting propulsive power briefly by an eighth. But Vanguard recovered and mustered enough closing speed to take the race in 2 minutes, 18 seconds.

In the intermediate race, Wharton edged out KPMG in a hardy battle, with Yellowbook capturing third. Aberdeen's intermediate boat, bolstered by two strapping lads with Oxford and Cambridge pedigrees who had flown in from Australia and South America to add their brawn, finished a disappointing fourth.

In the senior race, to no one's great surprise, Nielsen Kellerman, a supplier of electronic rowing gear, including "cox boxes" that display a boat's speed and stroke rate, overcame a deck-length disadvantage at the start to seize the front spot and hold off a gutsy finishing-stretch push by the Wharton crew. The winning time: 1:36. (Afterward, a Nielsen Kellerman rower revealed the secret of their success: "We hire based on erg scores," referring to performance on a rowing ergometer.)

On the dock in front of the grandstand at the finish line, Gary Marshall, 48, Aberdeen's chief executive officer for U.S. operations, wearing a kilt in his family tartan, bestowed gold, silver, and bronze medals on the corporate-challenge oarsfolk, who repeatedly thanked him and Aberdeen for "saving the Dad Vail."

Marshall pronounced the Dad Vail "fantastic" and "a world-class event," every bit as good as the Oxford-Cambridge boat race the company has sponsored in London.

He vowed that Aberdeen would dazzle next year. "Practice starts next week," he declared.

Challenge chieftain Lyons was pleased.

"Nobody died, and nobody flipped," he said. "It was a great event, especially considering the difficult conditions and not a whole lot of practice time. The novice race was entertaining, the intermediate race was awesome, and the senior race was the closest in years."

In the corporate challenge tent, where contestants gathered for food, drink, and celebration after the races, Evangelisto, whose Yellowbook crew placed third in the novice race, rejoiced in the "camaraderie and teamwork," the chance to become more friendly not only with her coworkers but folks in other boats from other companies. She and her boyfriend have caught the rowing bug, she said.

"I want to be involved in this every year," she said.

Wendy Zalles, 39, the Vanguard novice coxswain, who received her gold medal from company chief executive officer Bill McNabb, an avid rower, shared the victory with her son, Levi, 17 months old. In 2008, when Vanguard finished fourth, Levi had come along for the ride; Zalles was four months pregnant at the time.

The former Baldwin School rower tried to motivate her teammates by sharing a YouTube clip of Al Pacino's psych-up speech from Any Given Sunday. "I told them we need to fight for every inch," Zalles said. "And we did."

She plans to wear her gold medal to work Monday.