Rowing - a Sport

I’m not sure how it happened. I have no clue really. It could have been on my first day, it could have been yesterday. It could have been during the first stroke of my first race, or the last stroke of a championship race feeling like you gave it your all. Or maybe it was the cold morning practices on Saturdays before the sun rises. I realized that rowing was something I could never part with. Most of us call it a cult, once you’re in, you can’t leave. Others call it a never-ending family.

Rowers are people that are unique to the world of athletics. The most significant difference between rowing and other sports is the coxswain. Also known as the little person who sits at the front of the boat and yells row (we don’t actually yell row). While they are not required to be athletic, they are as integral to the boat as the rowers are. They simply can’t do it without a coxswain.

I am a coxswain for the Three Rivers Junior Rowing team, and it is this role that has led me to the above-mentioned conclusion.

Rowing is a unique sport in that as an athlete, you are backwards the whole time. Rowers do not see where they are going., placing their trust in the coxswain to steer them, encourage them, and to correct their technique. As a coxswain, you see everything within and around the boat. A coxswain’s voice is the only one that is heard.

Leadership is a skill that all coxswains have, but it is quite possibly the hardest skill to learn- how to guide and communicate with people who cannot see where they are going, while they are undergoing physical hell. Its brutal, and even more so when I am called upon to ask more from them when they are reaching the wall to which they cannot continue.

Rowing is a sport that teaches the value of human potential. It teaches you to have goals, and achieve those goals even if it takes a while to see the results, only to take that achievement and then