What Is a Coxswain? Crew Girl's Rowing Terms Explained

A coxswain steers the boat and calls the race. They do not row.

That is the job Teagan Tao (Miku Martineau) takes in Crew Girl when she reaches her new school and finds it has no girls' team, and it is the job the whole season turns on. Here are the main rowing terms the show uses, in roughly the order it introduces them.

There are no spoilers on this page. This is the language, not the plot.

What is a coxswain in Crew Girl?

A coxswain, usually shortened to cox, may sit in the stern or lie in the bow, depending on the boat. In Crew Girl's eight, the cox sits in the stern facing the crew. They steer, and they run the race: calling the rhythm, reading the water, deciding when to push and when to hold.

They wear a headset connected to a cox box, which amplifies their voice down the length of the boat and shows the crew's stroke rate, stroke count and elapsed time. GPS models add speed, distance and the 500-metre split.

A racing eight always carries a cox, which is why the boat class is written as 8+. Other classes may be coxed or coxless, and in a coxless boat fitted with a rudder, one rower steers it with a foot-controlled steering shoe.

It is a leadership job rather than a passenger's seat, which the show gets right. As Martineau put it to Netflix, "The best coxswains learn how to be the best communicators, make decisions, have great relationships with their teammates."

Why the stroke seat matters in Crew Girl

In Crew Girl's stern-coxed eight, the stroke sits directly in front of the cox and works with them to set the rate and rhythm. Everybody behind follows the stroke's blade, so that rower has to turn the cox's calls into a pace the whole crew can actually hold.

That makes it the boat's other leadership position, and it is why Josh Regis (Sam Braun), Cam Dillinger (Kyle Clark) and Ryder Regis (Connor Paton) spend an entire season circling it.

The engine room and the bow seat

The middle four rowers, seats three through six, are called the engine room. They are often among the biggest and strongest in the boat, and they supply much of its raw power.

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The bow seat sits at the opposite end from the cox, at the front of the boat as it travels. Chris "Crabcatcher" Padmore (Jarrett Carlington) rows bow, which brings us to his nickname.

What does catching a crab mean in Crew Girl?

Catching a crab is one of rowing's most conspicuous mistakes. The blade gets caught in the water instead of coming out cleanly, and the oar turns into a brake. At speed it can stop a boat dead, or knock the rower backwards off their seat.

It is common enough among beginners to be a running joke in a crew, which is exactly how the show uses it.

What is an erg in Crew Girl?

An erg, short for ergometer, is an indoor rowing machine. The ones in Crew Girl are made by Concept2, one of the sport's most widely used brands.

A split is the time it takes to row 500 metres, and it is the number rowers actually care about. Lower is faster. It is the main pace figure on an erg, and a GPS cox box shows the same calculation out on the water.

Erg scores give coaches a standard measure of fitness and power, with crew, weather and steering stripped out, so they count for a great deal in selection and scouting. They are not the whole decision, though. Technique, results on the water, seat racing, how a rower fits a particular crew and the coach's own judgement all feed in. The indoor competition in Crew Girl matters as much as it does because a scout for the junior national team is watching, not because indoor results normally outrank racing.

Sculling and sweep rowing: what Teagan Tao gave up

There are two kinds of rowing, and the difference explains Teagan's whole situation.

In sweep rowing, each rower holds one oar with both hands. The eight in Crew Girl is a sweep boat.

In sculling, each rower holds two oars, one in each hand. A single scull is an individual event: one athlete, one boat, two oars. That is what Teagan came up through.

So the show puts an athlete used to competing alone in charge of eight other people. That is not a small adjustment. It is a completely different job.

The catch, and why Crew Girl's first episode is named after it

The catch is the moment the blade drops into the water at the start of the stroke, just before the rower drives with their legs. Get it late or shallow and you lose the run of the boat.

Crew Girl's first episode is called "The Catch", and Teagan explains the term in it herself: a bad catch kills your run, a good one sends you soaring. The title is doing double duty, which is the show at its most confident about the sport.

How a regatta works

A regatta is an organised rowing competition made up of several races. Season 1 builds towards the Haverford Cup, which is invented for the show, and stops off at an indoor competition on the way.

Did the Crew Girl cast really row?

They trained hard for it. Neither Martineau nor Clark had rowed before, and Clark learned at the Vancouver Rowing Club alongside Braun, whom he had known since 2019.

The production also brought in Terry Paul, the Canadian coxswain who won gold in the men's eight at the Barcelona Olympics in 1992.

It shows. Whatever else Crew Girl gets wrong, the boat looks like a boat full of rowers, and our Season 1 review rates the rowing as the best thing in it.

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