So, rowing. (Or, I'm going out now and I may be some time.)
I don't know if Duchess's passion for rowing will last. But it is real passion. Every weekday she hustles out of school so she can catch a ride (with the family of a teammate) to the river, where she rows for two hours. Then she takes the bus home, eats dinner, showers, does her homework, texts (her rowing friends) as long as she can get away with it, and goes to bed. Every Saturday morning she gets up at 6:30 to take the bus to the river to row for 3 hours. She talks incessantly about pieces and ergs and strokes and 2Ks and the 3V and 4V boats. (Her goal is to get a place in the 4V boat so she can go to a regatta in San Diego; they're only taking the top four boats. Odds aren't great.)
I think this is great, mostly. She's outside, on the water,* moving her body, for hours a day. She's learning how hard she can work, a boundary she's never even come close to testing before, and that's incredibly valuable. Crew is (as I predicted, because I'm so good at parenting) basically perfect for her because it's all team. Your performance is your boat's performance, and it depends on your teammates and your ability to work together. All her life, Duchess has wanted to be part of a real team, to be part of effective and difficult collaborative work to achieve a shared goal. This is pretty much her dream.
I went to the "novice parents meeting" and listened the head coach talk about rowing, and everything he said made me think "Okay, THIS is why she likes this." He says rowing is a sport of repetition, and you get better mostly by doing a lot of rowing. He says that it's totally fine for kids to come to one or two practices a week, and some kids do that, but they just won't get much better, and they won't earn a place in the better boats. He says "there is no sacrifice; there are only choices." When Duchess's boat got first place in a race, and all the kids got medals to hang around their necks, her coach made them put their medals under their shirts so they wouldn't seem like they were gloating. There's an antiquated and certainly un-American emphasis on cheerful humility and endurance,** plus straightforwardness, grit and commitment to the team. Plus a little cult of personality around the head coach, who would totally have gone on Scott's Antarctic expedition and has zero interest in bullying or manipulating kids, but also zero patience for excuses or whining.
And she's achieving some initial success, in spite of being not terribly strong or fit, for the same reason she's at least a little good at everything; she pays attention, a deeply under-rated skill. This is a sport where paying attention and putting in the hours can get you pretty far. I don't know when she'll run up against her limits (of strength, of physical geometry, of sheer grit) and see other kids advance past her, and I don't know how she'll respond when that happens. She may just lose interest; there may not be sacrifices, but the choice to spend 20 hours a week doing one thing is a hard choice when you're a person who is interested in most everything. In the meantime, though, I'm enjoying watching her dive into this.
*It's really cool, being down on the river. Even just walking down to the dock gives me a little thrill; seeing Portland from its river is so different, and you're reminded that hey, there's nature here. Duchess spends an astonishing amount of time travelling back and forth under all the bridges, experiencing her city in a way that most people never do.
**I think of Apsley Cherry-Garrard almost every time I have to listen to Duchess talk about rowing longer than 90 seconds.
I think this is great, mostly. She's outside, on the water,* moving her body, for hours a day. She's learning how hard she can work, a boundary she's never even come close to testing before, and that's incredibly valuable. Crew is (as I predicted, because I'm so good at parenting) basically perfect for her because it's all team. Your performance is your boat's performance, and it depends on your teammates and your ability to work together. All her life, Duchess has wanted to be part of a real team, to be part of effective and difficult collaborative work to achieve a shared goal. This is pretty much her dream.
I went to the "novice parents meeting" and listened the head coach talk about rowing, and everything he said made me think "Okay, THIS is why she likes this." He says rowing is a sport of repetition, and you get better mostly by doing a lot of rowing. He says that it's totally fine for kids to come to one or two practices a week, and some kids do that, but they just won't get much better, and they won't earn a place in the better boats. He says "there is no sacrifice; there are only choices." When Duchess's boat got first place in a race, and all the kids got medals to hang around their necks, her coach made them put their medals under their shirts so they wouldn't seem like they were gloating. There's an antiquated and certainly un-American emphasis on cheerful humility and endurance,** plus straightforwardness, grit and commitment to the team. Plus a little cult of personality around the head coach, who would totally have gone on Scott's Antarctic expedition and has zero interest in bullying or manipulating kids, but also zero patience for excuses or whining.
And she's achieving some initial success, in spite of being not terribly strong or fit, for the same reason she's at least a little good at everything; she pays attention, a deeply under-rated skill. This is a sport where paying attention and putting in the hours can get you pretty far. I don't know when she'll run up against her limits (of strength, of physical geometry, of sheer grit) and see other kids advance past her, and I don't know how she'll respond when that happens. She may just lose interest; there may not be sacrifices, but the choice to spend 20 hours a week doing one thing is a hard choice when you're a person who is interested in most everything. In the meantime, though, I'm enjoying watching her dive into this.
*It's really cool, being down on the river. Even just walking down to the dock gives me a little thrill; seeing Portland from its river is so different, and you're reminded that hey, there's nature here. Duchess spends an astonishing amount of time travelling back and forth under all the bridges, experiencing her city in a way that most people never do.
**I think of Apsley Cherry-Garrard almost every time I have to listen to Duchess talk about rowing longer than 90 seconds.
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