Bucknell University Athletics
Bucknell Women's Rowing Journal - Hilary Strong
6/9/2009 8:00:00 AM | Women's Rowing
June 9, 2009
Four grueling intense weeks. That was all the time we had to come together from different boats to build a ten-person unit to race at the IRA National Collegiate Rowing Championship on Lake Natoma in California. As a freshman, I had no idea what to expect out of these four weeks. Would we be able to repeat the successes the team had enjoyed in the past? Within the first week Coach made it clear that in order to maximize our speed and to be successful acting like mere freshmen was not an option. We had completed freshman year and it was time for us all to step up to fill the shoes of the rowers who had come before us. At first I had no idea how I was going to do that or if it was even possible. During practice it sometimes felt like we could not get anything right or take any good strokes, but we kept working hard. Day by day and week by week the boat seemed to be coming together as a unit. Our unit. Our project.
But would all the pieces fall into place by race day? Would we be ready? We were going to be racing teams that had been practicing together all year. Even in our final practices on Lake Natoma before the racing began some strokes still felt shaky. The night before the heats, all 10 of us gathered in the Vogelsang living room. Katherine asked us what we were going to rely on and what we were excited for with the racing about to begin. All the responses had a similar underlying theme, we were going to rely on all of our progress and we were excited to see what we could do during our first race together. The heat was exciting; we edged out Princeton by 0.2 seconds advancing us to the grand final. The race felt good but as we discussed it, we knew there was more in us. We had not fully unzipped yet. So we put our first race behind us, and focused our attention to the grand final: our last race together.
As we sat on the starting line, the starter polling the crews, I could feel the excitement within our shell. We were ready to fully unzip, to lay everything out on the table. We were pressing not only for ourselves, for our unit, but also for our team and all the rowers who had come before us, for our school, and for all our supporters. Representing all of these people at a national championship is quite the opportunity. Our final race was composed of a fast start followed by four 500s of tight competition. After seven fleeting minutes, we passed Stanford in the final strokes crossing in second earning ourselves the silver medal. I could not have imagined having silver around my neck four short weeks ago when we started training.
We lined up next to the best lightweight crews in the country, laid all our cards on the table and today we happened to be second. With such a tight field, on any other day the results could have been totally different. Each person in our unit gave to the unit every day during training. Coach always reminded us only to give to the boat but the one thing I can say I have taken from this experience is to never underestimate yourself because you will be surprised with the results if you believe. We believed in our way, the Bucknell way. Although it may not be the conventional way, with the Bucknell press we made this boat real.
- Hilary Strong '12
