Junior Rower: Sophia Staal- My Rowing Experience as a Walk-On Athlete at DUKE
It was the first week of freshman year. I was dazed and
confused, wandering from class to meal to class without any direction. On my
third day of school I auditioned for a play. It was a disaster, I definitely
did not get a callback, and it dawned on me that the interests and activities
that had defined me in high school – theatre and music – were beyond my reach
here; I simply could not compete. So I took a different approach. Someone had
put up flyers around my dorm and at the dining hall that read “Tall, athletic,
or tough enough to make up the difference? Come try America’s oldest collegiate
sport!” followed by a picture of some people rowing. Before this point, I had
given approximately 5 minutes of thought to the sport of rowing in my entire
life. Looking back, I cannot tell you what inspired me to write down the email
address on that poster and send a message saying “I’m tall and athletic, I’ll
try out.”
When I
showed up for ‘practice’ the next week, I didn’t know what an erg was called,
or how to use it. I didn’t know what a coxswain was, or how to spell it (who
does?), and I also believed that I was joining a club sport. It has been two
years and two months since that day, and a lot has changed. I have not only
learned how to use an erg, but I have come to love this strange, seemingly
torturous apparatus, just like I have come to love everything about this
strange, incredibly difficult, beautiful sport. I went from thinking “I’ll just
try this for one year” to thinking, “four years is not enough give me more!” It is the most challenging, most rewarding
thing I have ever done, and I cannot even imagine my Duke experience without
DWR.
I know how
lucky I am that fate put this opportunity in my way. But I am even more
grateful because I get to be part of this team now, when we are right on the
verge of achieving something amazing: going to the NCAA Championships.
It is a huge goal. But when I look around me at practice, and see my teammates
crushing it every day on the erg, in
the boat or in the weight room, there is no doubt in my mind that we are going
to achieve it.
