As a matter of fact we did! I’m a state champion from like 30+years ago. It was a shirt race, meaning the loser had to turn over his team t-shirt to the other team. I was the proudest owner of the t-shirt of our arch nemesis.
It’s was also a requirement to win at State, to earn my own team’s t-shirt. So I finally had my team t-shirt too!
For about 30 minutes, because then I stroked a four man boat to a 4th place finish where I lost it to another team. I thought I had earned the shirt and coach would replace it, but nope that’s not the way it works. I was pissed. I never would have run that second race if I had understood that.
But I just have to give credit to our coxswain. He called the race perfectly and in no small way contributed to our win.
Coxswains are often looked upon like a kicker in American football. It doesn’t matter how bad the team messed up for the last three hours, if the kicker misses that crucial last kick, the whole game was lost due to him. This is because coxswains are dead weight. Since they don’t row, all they do is slow us down. This is why they are usually women, because woman are generally smaller and lighter. Ours just happened to be a small dude that earned his ride that day.
Well… Did you win?
As a matter of fact we did! I’m a state champion from like 30+years ago. It was a shirt race, meaning the loser had to turn over his team t-shirt to the other team. I was the proudest owner of the t-shirt of our arch nemesis.
It’s was also a requirement to win at State, to earn my own team’s t-shirt. So I finally had my team t-shirt too!
For about 30 minutes, because then I stroked a four man boat to a 4th place finish where I lost it to another team. I thought I had earned the shirt and coach would replace it, but nope that’s not the way it works. I was pissed. I never would have run that second race if I had understood that.
But I just have to give credit to our coxswain. He called the race perfectly and in no small way contributed to our win.
Coxswains are often looked upon like a kicker in American football. It doesn’t matter how bad the team messed up for the last three hours, if the kicker misses that crucial last kick, the whole game was lost due to him. This is because coxswains are dead weight. Since they don’t row, all they do is slow us down. This is why they are usually women, because woman are generally smaller and lighter. Ours just happened to be a small dude that earned his ride that day.