Sunrises, Eagles and Herons, and Soggy Pants

I started coaching at the Pocock Rowing Center in August 2015. My very first on the water experience was riding in the launch with Bill Clifford, the Varsity Junior Boys head coach. The weather was incredible. We took a few eights out into Lake Union. The sun was glistening off the water, partially blinding me it was so bright. The kids were pumped to be back on the water after the summer away from the team. Bill’s enthusiasm and leadership were palpable. It gave me a good feeling about moving here and taking on my new role at Pocock.

Over the past two years I have worked with just about every age group, skill and experience level, and type of team there is. I have coached private lessons, corporate rowing events, Seattle Fire Fighters, Ancient Mariners, Novice Junior Boys, and masters scullers. I have gone through all of the typical ups and downs of being the coach of an outdoor sport. I’ve been amazed by the weather and the scenery, bald eagles and herons sailing above while my scullers row out towards Lake Washington. I have been annoyed and agitated that it is raining AGAIN. I have been awed and inspired by the sun rising over Bellevue and equally underwhelmed by the drip drip dripping rain soaking through my survival suit, three pairs of gloves, two rain coats and a pair of rain pants. At a certain point you just have to give in to the weather, but it doesn’t make soggy pants feel any better.

I have also experienced ups and downs with the routine and the coaching. I have had incredible highs feeling like I’m on such a roll and broadening everyone’s horizons with my creative and innovative coaching antics. Some of the best sessions on the water have been with my adult sculling classes. They feel like brainstorming sessions or a great philosophy class. They are so open to new ideas and drills and ways of thinking about technique. They might not know it but I have learned so much from them since coming here and I feel like I am the best coach I’ve ever been as a result. But, in many instances, I have also felt stagnant, nagging, and bored with saying the same things over and over again. I have said this before and I’ll say it again: If I never utter the words “get to starboard” again in my life I will die a happy woman. But the repetition, however annoying, is inherent to the sport.

In the past few months I have gone through some personal ups and downs complicated by a car accident, an iPhone that took a free fall from my pocket into Lake Union, and a major career transition. My scullers, who see me most frequently, have noticed the changes in me, and like the amazing people they are have never wavered in their support and love. I have been called “sweet and terrifying,” an “unruly teenager,” with the very infrequent middle finger thrown in by one of my sauciest rowers. But there is love and respect behind these encounters.

I think the first two are perfect descriptions of me. I am full of love and the desire to help others achieve, but I am also picky and have high standards and am so impatient. When I was in Boston I coached a wonderful small group of women who noticed these same emotional ups and downs. They would see me walking towards the boathouse and could tell when I was upset about something. Before I could see them they would scurry into the locker room and discuss me being in one of my “moods” and what to do about it. But instead of just saying you’re a jerk, see ya later, they stuck with me. The embraced me regardless of my faults, frustrations, and mistakes. My scullers here in Seattle are the same way. They know I know a lot about rowing but they don’t hold me on a pedestal that prevents me from being human. You don’t often find this kind of love in the real world.

And this is something that strikes me about the rowing community and rowers in general: there is a tenacity, a fight, and unwillingness to give up or give in on each other, themselves, or the dream of taking the perfect stroke. Their wisdom has had a profound impact on me. I have learned something from every single rower I have coached. They understand the ups and downs, the imperfections, the moods, the transitions. They’ve been there.

I have had moments where I have wanted to scream at all of them and moments where all I have wanted to do is hug them. There is such a strong sense of family, ties that bind and connection. It is SO hard to leave that and to enter a world I know nothing about and no one in. And it would be easy and comfortable to stay. But they know and I know that it’s what is best for everyone. You have to leave before resentment takes hold and makes you into the person you don’t want to be. They have been so supportive of my transition out of coaching but I can hear the tinge of sadness when they say congratulations. I think that’s how life is, you know when your time is up, and you’re grateful, excited, and sad all at once.

I got into a tense situation with one of my sweetest and most gentle scullers the other day. She was doing a drill but didn’t understand what the purpose was and I got frustrated because we had done it before and I didn’t feel like explaining it to her even though she was doing it wrong. I got upset. She got upset. She rowed away from me. I took a moment to cool off. And then I came back to her and explained it and tried to clear the air. Later on in the session I told her that I was just trying to make her hate me so that when I left for my other job she wouldn’t miss me. And she said that she thought it was the other way around. That I was trying to hate them so that I wouldn’t miss them when I left. It was a poignant moment for me, realizing that she was right. After practice I gave her a big hug and we talked. She said I reminded her of her daughter, who never gave she and her husband any trouble her whole life until she left for college. She said she behaved just like I had been on the water so that when she left for school she wouldn’t feel the ache of missing them so much when she was on her own for the first time.

Transitions are hard. I’ve experienced this push/pull with every team I’ve ever been on. You can’t imagine the team not being exactly as it is, but inevitably somebody graduates, or decides to stop rowing, or pursues something else. And the team is altered and becomes something new. At first it doesn’t feel the same, but then it starts to feel ok, and then eventually it becomes the team that you can’t imagine ever-changing again. Staying or remaining unchanged is easy even though it’s not right or what’s best for us. And I don’t want to hate anyone or make them hate me in order to make that transition easier. I’m trying to be appreciative of these incredible, loving, accepting, thoughtful, insightful, passionate, hilarious, hard-working people who I have had the privilege to come to know these past two years. And I do feel sad to be leaving them. I’m not a heartless shell of a human after all. I cried at Wall-E.

I’ve got three more sculling classes and then I’m done. I won’t be getting into launch 4 with my coffee, megaphone, and Jansport backpack full of secrets and meeting them by the house boats any more. But hopefully I’ve left them with enough nuggets that they’ll continue to hear my weird analogies and movie quotes in their heads while they’re out on their own with the sunrise, eagles and herons. I won’t miss the soggy pants.