COYNE TOSS: From Final Kick To Kick Lines

This time last year, sophomores Morgan Kruger and Ashley Zalta were putting in two practices a day on the Charles, lifting weights to the extreme, and concentrating on how best to attack the choppy Seekonk River. The pair toiled together as members of the Radcliffe crew, with Zalta coxing the first novice boat that Kruger pulled for from the three-seat.

For Kruger, it was the first time she had been racing competitively in a boat, having been recruited for the sport as a track athlete. Her transition proved successful.

“She was by far one of the best novices,” Zalta said. “She was in the first boat in her first year, which was insane.”

“I came in as a wide-eyed novice, I didn’t really know what was going on, and I enjoyed everything about it,” Kruger said.

Concurrently with crew, the duo were also serving as business assistants (BAs) for the Hasty Pudding Theatricals.

“I got to be more and more involved in BAing,” Kruger said. “It just got more and more involved and it wasn’t something I wanted to stop. It wasn’t an ‘I want to stop crew.’ I just wanted to be in the Pudding, and I couldn’t do both of them.”

April last they were both accepted as full-fledged business staffers for the run of this year’s show, a move that forced both to give up rowing.

“It was less leaving crew or leaving the sport than joining the Pudding,” Zalta added. “They both have to be primary time commitments. I had done crew for a year, and I hadn’t been in the Pudding. It was a really hard choice, but in the end, I don’t think I could have chosen anything else.”

This year, Kruger served as business manager while Zalta filled the role of ticket sales manager.

But both had to get used to the fact that there were no longer wise coaches around to tell them what to do.

“You have adults around [in crew],” Zalta said. “There’s a huge difference having adults there. There were times freshman year when I really needed help and there were adults there who I totally could rely on, and that made a huge difference. And it was really scary for me to leave that and go into a club that didn’t have any adults, all college students.”

Independence and self-reliance were also part of the appeal, however. The chance to help run a half million-dollar company that sells over 10,000 tickets and travels to New York and Bermuda was too good to pass up.

“Crew is like a metaphor for life, because you can carry those skills over into real life, but the Pudding is real life,” Kruger said.

In the Pudding, both became eminently useful.

“Morgan and Ashley were two of the cornerstones of the business staff this year,” junior Romina Garber, a co-producer of the show, said.

The lessons taught in Weld Boathouse have not had just a little impact on them, either.

About a fortnight ago, Zalta was named one of the two new producers for next year’s run, the 158th of the company, but first in its new, temporary home away from its 12 Holyoke home of yore.

Don’t think that her time at the head of the shell didn’t have anything to do with her success in the business office.

“Crew taught me how to do the balancing act balancing coaches and rowers,” Zalta said. “You’re on the river and you are balancing talking to the people right next to you and you have the weather and the current and the speed, where you are in the course, the race plan, people’s safety. You’re balancing a million and one factors at the same time, and yet you can’t drop the ball.”

Kruger agreed.

“And so I think that that’s what probably will be most useful, your ability to mediate and sort of work your way in between all these different personal problems and relationships and make a solution out of it,” she said.

Despite the great times had at the Pudding, the pair are really not thrifty in their praise of Radcliffe.

“Once you’re part of Radcliffe, you’re always part of Radcliffe,” Zalta said. “They will always welcome you back. The coaching staff are the most caring set of women. [Novice coach] Cory Bosworth is the most amazing person ever. [Head coach] Liz O’Leary is a fabulous, fabulous coach, so supportive of who you are as a person. And so while we’re not doing crew, that boathouse will always be there, and we’ll always be able to go back, if you need anything, they are there for you. So it’s not like a normal sport that you can leave behind; crew always stays with you.”

—Staff writer J. Patrick Coyne can be reached at coyne@fas.harvard.edu. His column appears on alternate Thursdays.