The bond
The coaches excelled, in part, because their relationship started well before joining forces at Exeter. They first connected on the campus of Brooks School, where partnering on 5 a.m. workouts and bonding over starting families and careers were the foundation of their close friendship.
“Our relationship is really seamless,” Morris says. “We are two tough women who have the highest level of respect for each other. Our connection at Brooks tied us as friends before coaching together, but our relationship allowed us to really dive in and focus on doing what we love to do: work with and develop young people and really build this program.”
On paper, they might not seem like a perfect match. Morris was a high school athlete who excelled in field hockey, basketball and softball, and she thrived in the physicality of those sports. Moore excelled as a dancer and sang in the choir throughout her childhood.
“Crew is like dancing on the water,” Morris says. “Once you are in the boat, all of your connection is spiritual. There is a grace, beauty, physicality and connectivity to the whole thing. You have to have incredible strength, balance and rhythm to make it work.”
An accomplished whitewater canoeist and kayaker, Morris might never have stepped into a crew shell if not for a broken toe that interrupted her freshman field hockey season at Trinity College. Moore, too, found rowing in college, joining the team at Radcliffe College to fill open time in her schedule, then fell in love with the sport.
“Sally and Becky are best friends and they worked well together,” says Albert Léger, chair of the Science Department and boys varsity crew coach since 2012. “Sally is a masterful technician who helped her crews use their bodies effectively and powerfully. Becky is methodical, patient and goal-oriented. She transformed students and knew how to empower girls into believing in themselves as confident athletes.”
Although the goals for the varsity and junior varsity boats might differ, Morris and Moore complemented each other to reach a balance and rhythm for the program.
“Sally has an unwavering focus on everything that goes into speed,” Moore says. “She would look for these small, but major, adjustments on the varsity boats, finding the perfect combination of rowers to jell in a boat — she could always find that.”
“Becky really prepared our students to be athletes,” Morris says. “By the time they were ‘graduating’ to a varsity boat, it was the foundation of her teaching that allowed me to focus on the technical proficiency.”
The early-morning workouts that began at Brooks continued when the two reunited at Exeter, and coaching and teaching prep naturally became part of their exercise routine.
“We would build the workouts for the team and then go through them ourselves so we could know what the kids were going through,” Morris says. “We’d hop on the erg and mimic technical mistakes we were seeing and workshop strategies and verbiage on how we could help fix it. It was fun, and it helped us prepare both ourselves and our students better.”
