Burk, Joseph W.
Rowing
b. Jan. 17, 1914, Beverly, NJ
Burk rowed on the University of Pennsylvania crew that won the Childs Cup in 1935 and 1936. He was the captain of the 1936 crew. But he's best known as a champion sculler and a college crew coach.
He won the national single sculls championship four years in a row, from 1937 through 1940, and he was the Diamond Sculls champion at the Henley-on-Thames Regatta in 1938 and 1939, when he set a course record and was named winner of the Sullivan Award as the outstanding amateur athlete of the year.
After serving in the Navy during World War II, Burk became freshman coach at Yale. In 1951 he returned to Pennsylvania as head crew coach. Burk took an analytical approach to coaching, developing a point system to rate his rowers and pioneering the development of an electronic dynamometer to measure the power of individual oarsmen. He left coaching after the 1969 season.