A rowing legend moves on

If Mary Lockyer Browning feels a chill while coaching the women’s crew team this year, she can attribute it to the enormous shadow she’s standing in.

Browning, in her fourth year at Wisconsin and her first as varsity coach, has the unenviable task of succeeding an institution: Sue Ela, head coach for the past 20 years and a former national coach of the year.

“I’ve never met anyone like her,” Browning says. “There’s no way I could ever even try to match her. I’m just going to try to be me and hope to live up to her expectations.”

Ela announced her retirement in February after 26 years with Wisconsin crew, beginning with four years as a team member from 1972-75. She spent three years as an assistant before being named head coach of her alma mater in 1979. A rower for Wisconsin’s 1975 national championship team, Ela guided her 1986 team to a national title and has garnered 11 finishes in the national top four in the past 18 seasons. US Rowing named her woman of the year in 1989, and in 1995 she was voted coach of the year by the Eastern Sprints Association.

Her last two teams have won national acclaim for top-to-bottom excellence, winning overall points trophies at national regattas in both 1997 and 1996.

Ela’s retirement closes one of the most illustrious chapters in UW crew history and completes a transition to a new generation of leadership. Randy Jablonic, who led the men’s team to four national titles while serving as head coach for nearly 30 years, retired in 1996. He was succeeded by Chris Clark, an assistant to Jablonic since 1994.

Under Ela and Jablonic, UW rowers also recorded some of the highest grade point averages in the athletic department, a tradition of academic achievement that continues today. “[Ela] has been an extraordinary leader in terms of balancing athletics and academics. The values she’s instilled in rowers as well as her assistant coaches have been unparalleled,” Browning says.

One of the most compelling lines on Ela’s resume is the stranglehold that she has held on rowing competitions in the Midwest, a tribute to her construction of a dominant crew program in a region lacking traditional rowing strength. In 25 years of competing in the varsity eight event in the Midwest Rowing Regatta, she has never lost. She retires with her record an unblemished 25-0.

Browning’s team will attempt to extend the varsity’s dominance on Lake Wingra next weekend.

“The rowing community will miss Sue — but she’ll still be around,” Browning says. “She’s on my speed dial, that’s for sure.”