Since arriving at Princeton in the fall of 2008, junior Barrett LaChance has been an integral member of the men's lightweight crew that won the Head of the Charles the past two seasons. In this interview, LaChance talks about the strides he's made since freshman year and his love for ’90s grunge music.
Q: What was your “welcome to college” moment?
A: My “welcome to college” moment was probably the first night back from OA, when my group tried to go to the Street as a pack, clearly looking like freshmen. We passed a group of upperclassmen who all made fun of us and told us frosh weren't welcome out (at Tower, I know ...), so we sheepishly turned around and hung out in someone's dorm room. That was my first real good taste of good old-fashioned Princeton exclusion.
Q: What is the greatest highlight of your sports career?
A: With the exception of actually getting recruited to college for a sport that gets zero street cred outside of the Ivy League and business world, I'd say winning the Head of the Charles Lightweight Eight for the past two years. Hopefully something I'm more proud of will crop up later this season. We've had a pretty great season so far, but the competition at Eastern Sprints is going to be even tougher than the regular season, and our narrow loss to Harvard last weekend left something to be desired.
Q: Who is your quirkiest teammate? Why?
A: The lightweight crew team is made up of pretty much the quirkiest people I can think of. [Junior] Christian Klein's got to take the cake, though. He's part robot, part 50-year-old man and part insanely hardworking athlete. He would make an ideal character in a Mel Brooks spoof on the Jetsons.
Q: What is your funniest story about your coach?A: During the massive storm this spring, my coach stayed up all night after abandoning his car miles from his house drinking coffee and making sure his basement didn't flood. The next day before practice he, in his deliriously caffeinated state of mind, gave us a full rundown of his night. He said he took Flip Cam videos of himself in his basement bailing out the water, and at about 4 a.m. walked around his neighborhood in the flooded streets “looking for good transformer fires.” He later gave someone on the team his Flip Cam to see video of one of our practices that he had filmed. The videos from that night were still on it, so we all got to see his Blair Witch-style cinematography of himself imitating the sounds his car made when it broke down.
Q: What has been your most embarrassing moment at Princeton?A: Probably the time during freshman year I had a bit too much at a crew party, ended up extremely attracted to one of the girls on the team, and the two of us displayed said affection by pretty passionately making out for most of the crew team to enjoy. A picture or two was taken of us, which recently resurfaced on the Cloister listserv. I like to think that I've come a long way since freshman year. If nothing else, then my haircut has.
Q: What's the best part about being an athlete on campus?
A: I think the fact that you've always got a group of friends. From day one on campus, I felt like the guys on my team were always there for me. They're always around, and you're pretty much forced into trusting every one of them. There's always at least one other person willing to hang out if you've got nothing to do, and always jokes and team gossip to be spread.
Q: What's the worst/hardest part about being an athlete on campus?A: Probably the same thing as the best part ... Because there's so many people, they're always around to distract you and convince you to do something stupid and blow off work. God knows how much better I would have done in classes the past two years if [junior] Dan Nickel wasn't always around.
Q: What's your favorite thing to do when you're not rowing?
A: I really like bumming around Cloister with the other guys on the team or the rest of the club. There are some really comfy couches and some really hilarious conversations that go on in the living room of Cloister all day.
Q: If not crew, what other sport would you play?A: Throughout the entire winter when we are training indoors and it’s dark and cold out I wish I were still playing hockey. Then I come back to my senses and just stare at the erg monitor ahead of me for another hour-and-a-half.
Q: What would you do if you were coach for a day?A: If I were coach for a day, I could possibly go the Tom Paulett ’09 route, who is currently one of the intern coaches, which includes sleeping in until God knows when, then rolling down to practice and coaching for two hours, then filling my night with as many YouTube videos as possible. The other thing I'd love to do is drive the launch around and wake out all the other teams’ boats on the lake. Specifically the open-weight women. Not for any reason in particular — I just think they'd make the biggest fuss about it.
Q: What's your favorite class you've taken at Princeton so far?A: I really enjoyed CHM 207. It was taught at the time by three guys named Bob, so that’s pretty sweet already. Plus just about every day at the end of lecture one of the professors would blow something up. Pretty much an ideal class for a science nerd like me.
Q: Who gets the most girls on the team? (Who has the most game off the water?)A: Well I know a [senior] James Donovan and [freshman] Tyler Nase have been reading up in their free time on exactly how to game chicks through this book called “The Game.” It’s this book that looks like the Bible (black-leather-bound, gold edges on the pages) but pretty much just tells you the best ways to hit on chicks. I can't speak to its success for them though. I think freshman Hugh Kohl’s got to do pretty well for himself. Between the British accent and the don't-care hairdo, the dude just exudes sexuality. I mean if I were a girl I'd be into him. That's all I'm saying.
Q: Do you have a particular pre-race ritual?A: Friday nights I tend to eat as much as can humanly fit into my stomach. Then once I digest some of it, I do it again. It's not really a ritual or a superstition — more just something that I'm completely helpless against that my body does without my mind approving after a week of keeping my weight down before Friday weigh-ins.
Q: Is there any music in particular that inspires you?A: In my opinion the heyday of the music world came in the ’90s with grunge-style music and the era of one-hit wonders. It just doesn't get any better than Eagle Eye Cherry, Spin Doctors or Sister Hazel. Also pretty much any song title that scrolled down the screen during that TV infomercial for Buzz Ballads would be on the list.
Q: What's the most embarrassing song on your iPod?A: It's only embarrassing if I deem it so. So despite the fact that I have a superb collection of Disney, S Club 7, Backstreet Boys and ’N Sync (all of which I know all the words to), I'd probably be more embarrassed by "The Christmas Shoes" by NewSong. It's basically this ballad about this kid whose mother is really sick, and he doesn't have enough money to buy her shoes to wear on her deathbed. It's really sad and depressing, and yet it always tends to come on the radio around Christmastime ... I suppose it's to remind you that even though it may be the most wonderful time of the year, you shouldn't forget to be depressed about something anyways. Yeah, not really a keeper. I think I'm gonna delete that one now. Also, “Imma Be” by the Black Eyed Peas just got added to my library last night and was deleted today. That song never should have been made.
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