Schweizer Resigns Captaincy Over Girlfriend Load
Puts count at fourteen, or maybe sixteen; Nizhny Novgorod directorate opens inquiry into fourteen-month mail-order courtship
Assistant captain Jordan Giles steps in as Sept. 20 lineup card stays blank
By Anita Bath·Staff Reporter
Fred Schweizer counts on his fingers during a Thursday phone call inside the Rowayton Paddle Club hut.
“Fourteen, or maybe sixteen — I lose the thread around the double digits.”
ROWAYTON, Conn., Aug. 28 —Fred Schweizer stepped down Thursday as captain of Rowayton D, telling teammates in an email that he could no longer manage the administrative load created by his large number of girlfriends, as a consumer-supervision directorate in Nizhny Novgorod opened a formal inquiry into the mail-order courtship service that produced them.
Mr. Schweizer, whose PTI stands at 37, down one from last season and still 18th of the 22 men rostered on Rowayton D, had captained the Division 6 Saturday side since before the club's current record-keeping. Jordan Giles, the team's assistant captain, will run the side on an interim basis while the Rowayton Paddle Club's board considers a permanent replacement, according to a person familiar with Wednesday night's board call who was not authorized to discuss personnel matters.
"My merry brothers of rampant paddle prowess and other achievements, the lineup card has always been beyond me, and now, it seems, so is Nizhny Novgorod," Mr. Schweizer wrote in the email announcing his departure, which closed, as his team communications often do, with verse: "Good luck out there; amidst the chill; I'm stepping down; against my will; the ladies wait; in Volga's mail."
Reached by telephone, Mr. Schweizer put the number of girlfriends at "fourteen, or maybe sixteen — I lose the thread around the double digits," the same uncertainty, he acknowledged, that has periodically left Rowayton D without a finalized lineup as late as Friday night before a Saturday match. He said the correspondence began fourteen months ago through Volga Hearts International, a matchmaking service he found, he said, "the same way I find a fourth for the hut chili — I stopped looking and it arrived."
Larisa Kondratyeva, deputy director of the Nizhny Novgorod Directorate for Consumer Supervision, said in a statement that the agency opened its inquiry into Volga Hearts International after receiving "a volume of complaints disproportionate to a service of its size." The directorate has documented 212 letters exchanged under Mr. Schweizer's account since July of last year, she said, translated at a fee of $42.50 per letter.
A representative of Volga Hearts International, reached at a telephone number listed on the service's website, said only that client matters were confidential and hung up before a follow-up question could be asked.
Sergey Chernysh, who captains Rowayton C and has watched three seasons of Rowayton D correspondence pile up in the club's shared inbox, said the resignation was overdue. "In my country, a man commits to one woman or to zero," he said. "Fourteen is not a romantic life. It is a second job he did badly, in addition to the first job he was already doing badly." Mr. Giles, asked whether he wanted the captaincy permanently, said he was "taking it week to week," a phrase he also uses to describe his understanding of the club's residency bylaws.
The Rowayton D lineup card for the club's Sept. 20 pre-season scrimmage remained blank Thursday evening, taped to the hut whiteboard under a header, in Mr. Schweizer's handwriting, that read only: "TBD — men of swaddling paddle cloth."
