He starts with an outline, applying black pencil to paper. After tracing the bare bones of the image—silhouettes rowing on the Snake River—he begins to apply color, eyeing his artwork from close and afar to help him see what might be missing.
“No ‘happy little trees’ here,” he says, referring to Bob Ross, host of The Joy of Painting on PBS from 1983 to 1994. “Happy oars.”
Ken Struckmeyer works in stages over several days to produce one of his sketches, among the most popular items up for auction during the annual Cougar Crew Days gala, the Washington State University club’s biggest fundraiser. Since 2008, Struckmeyer’s sketches have earned more than $25,000 for the team he used to coach. In 2024, one went for $2,000, the most a single Struckmeyer sketch has fetched so far.
Struckmeyer, who coached Cougar Crew for 20 years from 1973 to 1992 and remains the longest-serving coach in the team’s history, donates one to four drawings per year. The first year, he donated two, fetching $100 and $175, respectively.
The retired WSU landscape architecture professor has no formal art training. “One day I just started,” he says. “Cougar Crew was asking for auction items, and I thought I’d do a couple of these and see what happens.”
He’s also dabbled in drawing during trips overseas—France and Italy in 2008; Venice in 2011, Portugal in 2016. Sketches from those and other locales adorn the walls of the Pullman home he shares with his wife, Marj. They met in Pullman in 1974, set up by one of his students.
Struckmeyer was 24 in fall 1972 when he joined the faculty at WSU, coaching crew from 1973 to 1992. In his drawings, he hopes to capture “special moments for the kids” he coached, noting, “some of these kids are now in their 60s and 70s. When I started coaching, I was just a year or two older than they were.”
Today, “even guys who didn’t row for me are buying my sketches,” Struckmeyer observes. He creates his drawings in his daylight basement, working from photographs and taking “artistic liberty.” All his sketches show rowers on the Snake, encased in the walls of the canyon.
Struckmeyer sees the space as a “cathedral. This is a special place to row. All the kids who rowed on the Snake River revere the setting. I try to capture the feeling of the canyon walls and the water. You can’t show the sounds, but you can show the space. You can capture a memory.”
WSU rowers on the Snake River (Sketch by Ken Struckmeyer)
Fun fact
Ken Struckmeyer isn’t the only Cougar Crew legend to contribute handmade items for the Cougar Crew Alumni Association auction. Paul Enquist (’77 Mech. Eng.), a gold medalist in men’s double sculls at the 1984 Olympics, has donated crimson-and-gray hats that he’s knitted. Last year, the first year that he contributed his knitted hats, two sold in the silent auction for $95 and $105 each. Since they were so popular, he agreed to make six more for $100 each.