wonderstrucklife:

reminder to self: teach the team this game

(Source: halliebadger)

It’s the only sport that originated as a form of capital punishment. It’s eight people, pulling faster and faster, knees bent, back straight, oar blades gliding in and out of water against the sun, the wind, and the rain. It’s six a.m. practices and vomiting after erg sessions. It’s crazy; and yet, those who choose rowing—or as those pesky North Americans call it, crew—just love it.

“All other athletes just play games,” says a former rower who does not wish to be identified as such. “In crew you’re fully engaged on a physical and psychological level that you can’t reach in other sports, because in no other sport are your movements so intrinsically and obligatorily connected to your teammates’ in that everyone has to be in perfect rhythm or you’ll lose, (or you’ll flip the fricking boat).”

In other words, although the perfect-body producing physical requirements of crew are certainly an advantageous side-effect of the sport, what draws rowers to the water and keeps them there is the camaraderie. As my friend insists, there is no other sport in which the word “team” means more and to which the word “cult” is applied with greater loving accuracy. Rowers make friendships that could not be forged under any other circumstances—they spend infinite hours each year trapped on a narrow boat, spend even more time in training together, and ally themselves through a mutual dedication to the absolute madness of rowing.

Rowers don’t just love rowing, but also other rowers.

If the overwhelming team aspect of rowing doesn’t prove its status as a legitimate sport, than the sheer mental and physical effort it requires certainly does. Crew is perhaps the only sport that truly works every muscle of an athlete’s body. Back, arms, legs, and core—all feel an intense burn as lactic acid builds during the pure cardio sprint of a race, and in land workouts, rowers cannot concentrate their efforts on a specific part of the body but must instead aim for total fitness. Rowers eat their meals and rotate their sleep schedules as rowing demands of them. In a sport where each tenth of a second matters, a necessarily high dedication to training and physical preparedness makes crew not only a massive time commitment, but also a sport that produces true athletic bodies and spirits.

The extremely high fitness level of rowers should not be understated. However, the hardest part of crew, though perhaps also the most rewarding, is its mental aspects. Unlike “games”, where strategy and constant variation in play keeps things interesting, in crew there is nothing but brutal physical exertion. With no control over where they are going or how fast they are moving to get there (Coxswains man the rudder and mandate the speeds at which rowers should row), the mental aspect of crew is naught but sheer will. When every muscle of a rower’s body is burning, sweat is obscuring his or her vision, breathing is labored, and there are still three hundred meters left to go, quitting is never an option. On the contrary, spurred on by the knowledge that one false stroke can lose a race, rowers draw on their obligations to their teammates and their personal determination to keep going. No other sport allows separate personal determinations to conjoin so beautifully nor captures the drama of pain and perseverance more viscerally. In short, crew is not overrated. It is rather a pinnacle of athleticism, camaraderie, and pure sport. It is, however, still crazy.

-Meghan Brooks

(Source: harvardindependent.com, via twoseatyoureshort)