By all accounts, Bill Sanford is the modern-day patriarch of the Syracuse men’s rowing team.

After leaving the Army in 1959, the Syracuse native enrolled at Syracuse with his younger brother, Tom. The pair competed on the crew team for four seasons, during which they won a Pan-American Championship and were a runner-up to Navy for the Olympics. Upon graduation in 1963, Sanford became the freshman coach. He didn’t leave until 2002, when he went to work in the Onondaga County Legislature.

After graduation, Tom Sanford became a teacher and eventually the head coach of the Marist crew team where his son, Tom, Bill Sanford’s nephew, still coaches.

During his time, Bill Sanford brought the SU rowing team to national prominence and experienced some difficult times at one of the oldest rowing programs in the country. After taking the varsity head coaching job in 1967, he struggled to recruit talent during the Vietnam War and his team felt the effects.

‘There were just so many distractions going on,’ Sanford said. ‘Until in 1971, I had a good freshman class come in. And in 1972 as sophomores, they put us on the right path.’

From 1952 to 1992, Syracuse hosted the IRA Regatta (otherwise known as rowing’s national championship until 1997). Sanford led SU to its fifth IRA Regatta victory in 1978 before hitting another speed bump.

In 1982, the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry switched to a two-year program, thus cutting a good portion of Sanford’s walk-on talent. Handcuffed with only two scholarships, there wasn’t much he could do. When SUNY-ESF changed back to a four-year program in 1984, the SU and ESF presidents no longer allowed dual degrees.

It’s a problem, Sanford says, that still haunts the team until today.

‘That’s too bad because each year we got good physical walk-ons, but they couldn’t row for us because they were foresters,’ he said. ‘The ’90s were very mediocre, even though we were turning out better crews because the other teams were getting better.’

In 1990, SU went undefeated in its regular season only to finish third in the IRA Regatta. With increased scholarship restrictions and still no ESF students, Sanford decided to step aside in 2002.

Sanford still hopes that SU and ESF may share athletes again for all sports. For now, he believes that third-year head coach Dave Reischman has the team on the right track, though.

‘Dave Reischman is in there and I think he is doing a great job.’ Sanford said. ‘He is maximizing what they can do. He is a good technical coach and the kids like to row for him.’

Sanford’s daughter, Kris, is the women’s rowing coach at SU, and Bill Sanford and his wife bought a retirement home on Onondaga Lake overlooking the 1,500-meter mark of the course.

After spending time in the Onondaga County Legislature and the New York State Assembly, Sanford now works at Brown & Sanford Consulting Firm. Among other things, he is working to help clean the lake and is hopeful that within a decade, it will be safe to swim and fish there.

Said Sanford: ‘I’ve seen it change over the years, and I’ve seen man ruin the lake. But man can make it cleaner too.’

Published on January 24, 2006 at 12:00 pm