Be Grateful, Be Humble, Believe

Belief in the possibility of an uncertain outcome:
sprinting in the semifinal at Worlds, missing the A Final
by one pixel in a photo finish.

These were the three themes from my talk to the athletes, parents, and coaches of the Merion Mercy Academy girl's crew this past Friday evening.  Our Malta Boat Club President Mike Brown had invited me to be the guest speaker for their spring cocktail party gathering, held out of none other than the Malta Boathouse itself.

Rowing has brought out many emotions, many thoughts, not all positive and sunshine, but there are three defining feelings returning again and again year after year, defining my rowing, and ultimately my life.  Rowing has made me humble, much more often than it has made me proud.  Rowing has made me so, so grateful to be where I am, to be working with the people around me, grateful for the experiences we've shared, grateful to be able to still use my body to move a boat around on the water.  Never forget: Using your body is a gift.  At certain times, rowing, especially the big events, the championship races, the milestone erg tests, the new plateaus in the sport (we so very rarely get right), have pushed forward a concept, an emotion, a possession down to my soul of pure, brilliant belief.  Steve Perry, my coach during my time with the Dartmouth 150 Crew, would often say "believe, BELIEVE!" but it was not until my Junior year, at the 2007 Eastern Sprints, that I understood fully what he meant.

To illustrate the point, he once sat us down after a hard practice for some video review.  First we looked at footage of the Olympic A Final of the 2004 Light Men's 4-, the highest standard of speed, technique, and ferocity.  Not only were the athletes rowing just about perfect (with some minimal but noticeable stylistic flair) but they were all attacking it furiously, harder than most rowers will ever experience in a boat.  There's a lot to be learned from this video, but Steve pointed out specifically how aggressive all boats were being on the drive.  Then (womp womp) he put on some footage of our varsity light eight from that morning.  We assumed it was some strokes during the warmup.  Then he asked "what do you guys think?" Someone raised a hand and tentatively offered "...is this the piece?"

"EXACTLY" replied Steve.  "Do you SEE what I'm talking about when I say you guys are not going hard enough?!" We all sat in ashamed silence, some smiles were cracked.  We really had no concept of what it meant to go hard.  When we thought we were at max... what showed on video was about 80%. In order to SEE someone going 100%, you have to be at another level.  You have to believe.  Before we could overthink this though, Steve launched into a hypothetical situation, mercifully turning off the video.

"Let's say you're piecing the men's Olympic Champions from 2004, the USA heavy eight, at their best. Are you going to win."  Someone offered "Well, we could possibly..." and Steve said "No.  No you will not win.  It's ok.  They will destroy you.  They're faster.  That's that."  Where was he going with this?  "You start the piece... they get up.  All of a sudden, they catch three boatstopping crabs in a row, and now they're 2 lengths down on you guys.  What do you do?"  Before we could really reply, Steve clued us in.  "You would go. Crazy.  Tell me honestly you would not be pulling harder than you ever had in your life.  Wouldn't you?" (yeah...) "So... nothing changed in your boat, except at first you had NO CHANCE to win, and now, you have a chance... you BELIEVE you can WIN."

To be continued... next time I'll go into the stories shared at the Merion Mercy cocktail party - thank you again to Mike Brown and the ahletes parents and coaches of Merion Mercy Crew!