So, I joined the club rowing team. Even though I was warned by my older brother about the physical demand of the sport of crew, the first couple of practices exceeded my expectations. To any of you who are currently or have rowed in the past, ya'll are crazy. Seriously. What I have come to observe from the few practices on the land and in the water is that rowing takes a certain type of mentality. Unlike basketball or lacrosse or any field sport of similar nature, rowing requires 100 percent attention and effort 100 percent of the time.

If you have never experienced rowing or observed a crew team in boats in the water, optimal speed on a boat requires complete unison by all rowers. It may seem like an easy task, but after 1000 meters pulling as hard as you can, it feels a lot easier to go at your own pace. Fortunately, rowing on the land on “erg” machines serves as a more difficult alternative to actually rowing on the water, for pulling in a boat seems much less intensive because of the decreased resistance.

In the words of my older brother, it did not truly hit me how “masochistic” the sport can really be until the team raced for 2000 meters during my third practice in. How fast you can row 2000 meters on an erg machine serves as a benchmark for comparison when it comes to the rowing world, and it is ridiculous. Picture around fifteen guys in a completely humid room due to sweat, exerting their bodies as much as humanly possible being egged on by the screams of their coxswains and teammates to pull harder. Not knowing how to pace myself, I wore myself out in the first 1500 meters. Bad idea. Little did I know the last 500 meters is the final push, the kick of any running event, and I heard it. Hitting a respiratory and physical wall of pain, I could do nothing but pull harder in the minds of those coaching me. Pain really equals gain to rowers.

From what it seems, the necessity of unison and intense training to be successful produces the most “team”-like atmosphere I have ever experienced.

All in all, my mentality going into the sport was for the purpose of body conditioning, and although that will definitely be true, there is much more to the sport than getting the most swole. There really is something rewarding about stroking in unison knowing that all the effort you are putting in is going toward getting the boat across the finish line. I mean we will see, the boat I was in flipped the second time we rowed on the water. I will keep you all updated.