In a single season, men’s crew coach Mark Davis has helped an exceptionally young Triton men’s crew program evolve from a modest competitor in the Western Intercollegiate Rowing Association, finishing the championship regatta ninth overall in 2003, to a fifth-place overall finisher in 2004. After the WIRA Championships, UCSD went on to try its luck against the nation’s best at the East Coast Athletic Conference National Invitational Regatta on May 8 and May 9, where the Tritons finished 14th but posted the fastest time of their season.

Davis, a native of Cape Cod, Mass., was named head coach Sept. 9, 2003, to fill the place of Michael Filippone, who coached the team since 1997.

Davis is the only member of his family who is involved in crew. But spending summers on beaches and vessels around Cape Cod sparked Davis’ appreciation for boats and water sports.

“I grew up on the ocean and on the water,” Davis said. “That’s where I had my first experience with boats.”

It was not until later in his high school career that Davis first started to row competitively with a team.

“I started going to a boarding school in my junior year of high school,” Davis said. “I was sick of playing soccer, which is what I’d done in the previous fall, and my new school had a rowing team.”

Davis went to Hobart College in Geneva, N.Y., where he pursued his ambitions of collegiate rowing competition.

“Some of my fondest memories from when I was rowing were of my practices in college,” Davis said. “We rowed on a canal in upstate New York, which was just beautiful. I had a great coach and some of the best teammates that I could have had. A lot of those guys are still my closest friends today.”

A positive experience with his coach at Hobart left Davis contemplating the possibility of becoming a high school teacher so that he could also coach a crew team and stay involved in the sport.

“I think that some of the way that I coach is the result of the way that I was coached at Hobart,” Davis said. “You want it to be more than just focusing on the competitions because you want the team to have fun with the practices, too.”

In 1993, Davis planned to assume an assistant coaching position at Hobart and William Smith College, where he would lead novice men’s and women’s boats, then get his masters degree before finding a high school program to head up.

“My original thought was to coach and teach at the high school level,” Davis said. “I got a job at the college level, and I liked that because I could get a lot more done because there is so much more time. In high school, a coach only gets one season every year to work with the team, but in college, the team works year-round to get better.”

Changing his role from rower to coach meant not rowing in the boat with his teams like he did in the past. Rather, Davis had to get used to instructing instead of performing.

“As a coach, I would go to workouts without working out, which was hard to get used to at first, but I have adapted and find time now to do my own workouts,” Davis said. “Now I just like to go out [rowing] to be on my own. I like to be doing my thing of being on the water. It’s a form of stress relief.”

In 1996, before he could get to his masters, Davis was offered a varsity head coaching position at Colby College in Waterville, Maine.

While at Colby, Davis transformed the struggling crew program into a national competitor in only five years.

“Some of my fondest memories of coaching are from when I was coaching at Colby College,” Davis said. “The group there was a lot of fun. They were motivated and anxious to work hard. They were like the student body here in a lot of ways — everyone has the desire to excel and to work hard. It makes my job easy.”

Colby only had 18 members and the men’s and women’s programs were both in last place in the New England Small College Athletic Conference when Davis took charge. By 2000, there were 56 student athletes in the program. The men’s varsity eight was nationally noteworthy and the women’s program moved into third place at the NESCAC Championships before going on to place eighth at NCAA Division II/III Nationals.

“Colby is a cold place,” Davis said. “There were days at Colby when we would put the boats in the water and it would be 19 degrees outside. We’d be rowing and ice would start to form on the hull of the boat.”

Davis left Colby in 2000, taking an assistant women’s rowing coach position at Division I University of Texas, where he assumed full responsibility for high school recruiting.

“I think that working at the University of Texas is as close to professional athleticism as any collegiate sports programs gets,” Davis said. “The athletic department there has to be one of the best in the country.”

Davis remembers when the Longhorns qualified for the 2003 National Championship Regatta.

“When the team found out that it had qualified for Nationals, the coaches went into the athletic department to tell them that we had made it,” Davis said. “After we told the people in the office the news, they acted relieved and just said, ‘finally.’ It turns out that we were the last varsity sport that season to qualify for Nationals. I just remember thinking to myself, wow, what if we didn’t make it? Texas has a great staff and great student support.”

The Longhorns went on to finish 12th at the regatta.

Davis’ knowledge of recruiting and building deep programs will be essential in upcoming years at UCSD as the current, young team grows, though the strategy for doing so will be different than it was at Division I Texas.

“You’re recruiting a different kind of athlete in Division I and Division II,” Davis said. “I am more focused on the walk-on athlete as opposed to recruiting. I’ve talked to some high school coaches who saw our team’s performance this season, and they are interested in UCSD as a rowing school.”

But Davis’ ambition for the future of Triton men’s rowing is more anchored in consistency than recruiting for a single powerful class.

“My biggest long-term goal for this team is just to be consistently strong year-in and year-out,” Davis said. “That’s the hardest thing. Being on top for one or two years is hard, but consistency over several years is difficult.”

In order for UCSD to remain a threatening team to its competition, Davis plans to try to recruit athletes who are already at UCSD that might already have some experience playing other sports in high school.

“My main goal for the future is to have more retention,” Davis said. “I want to get more upperclassmen to lead the team and to serve as role models for the younger classes. I want those guys to be the ones to show young athletes that they can keep playing sports and become a better athlete and better person.”

If the 2004 team is any indication of the outlook for UCSD rowing, then Davis has plenty to look forward to.

“I didn’t have any expectations for this team right away, but they really wanted to push themselves,” he said. “I would push them and they would just push back harder and demand to work harder. Every time I pushed this team they just kept wanting more.”

If you happen to be at a regatta before Davis’ team races, his superstitions might make him the friendliest spectator present.

“As a coach, I just have to sit back and watch the race,” Davis said. “I don’t do anything to cause my team to get any bad karma before the race. I open doors for people and use my best manners. You just get used to knowing that there’s nothing you can do as a coach when your team is racing. I am superstitious, though. I also keep my stopwatch with me at all times on race day.”