The Boys in the Boat

In January, Ulbrickson posts the team lists, and Joe is surprised and overjoyed to find his name on the number one varsity boat. By late February, Ulbrickson starts to “form solid ideas about what a first varsity boat—a boat for Berlin—would look like” (231). This boat will include Bobby, a smart, older coxswain, the one who directs and steers the boat and crew.

Following Thula’s death, Joe and Joyce play parents to Thula’s traumatized children. As his family life improves, Joe opens up to his teammates and begins to count on them. After a temporary demotion to the third boat, Joe returns to the first boat and throws himself into rowing. Pocock builds the varsity team a new boat, which he christens the Husky Clipper. The new boat helps strengthen the varsity team’s cohesion as a unit: “Every time they climbed into the Husky Clipper together, [the varsity boys] just seemed to get better” (241). Still, before they reach Berlin, the team must win the Pacific Coast Regatta in Seattle, then the Poughkeepsie Regatta, and finally a race at Princeton in July.

At the Pacific Regatta, the team to beat is, once again, Cal Berkeley. Both varsity teams are exceptional, so it will “come down to watermanship, and guts” (247).