college crew
People say that crew is a cult, and I absolutely agree. I went to the informational meeting for the ucf crew team yesterday, and it wasn't that the meeting itself was putting pressure on anyone to join, as far as what the coaches said or the video they showed us. It was more the group of varsity rowers (tall, muscley, and very intimidating looking women athletes) that stood around the perimeter of the room scowling at the little novices who had no idea what they were getting themselves into. They weren't scowling, necessarily, but they were definately scoping out who they thought would make it just by the way these girls sat, their posture, how attentive they were, what they did with their hands. The thing is, I was doing the same thing. As I am a coxswain and do none of the heavy lifting, I was scanning these girls not so much for signs of weakness, but for signs of strength. Trying to boil down these partially clueless young minds to know who would be able to push past that threshold and just say "f it, I'm going for it." It sounds unnecesarily intense if you've never done crew before, but for those select few that weren't just in it, but felt something for, all this makes perfect sense. This is the kind of cult crew is; a family that wants you to do more than you ever thought you could. When you're there (if you survive through an entire season), you look back and you know that you've accomplished something amazing that you couldn't have done on your own. Only about 30% of crew is what they expect of you, and the other 70% is what you come to expect from yourself, and somehow you always find that you can give a little more. As soon as I stepped inside that meeting room last night and they showed the video of one of their races, I knew that I would spend the next 9 months waking up at 5 in the morning to serve this cult we call crew.