Senior Talk
Christi Niehans
September 6, 2000
A year ago I might have
said, “I’m independent. I work well on
my own. I can do a four person group
project single-handedly. If you want
something done right, you do it yourself.”
Well, self-sufficiency has
its values. Truly independent women can
walk from here to the bathroom without taking a friend. Knowing you can accomplish almost anything
on your own leads to self-confidence.
And every now and then, being capable of a four-person project might
just come in handy. Trusting your life,
or the championship title, or even your history grade, to another person is
sometimes a hard thing to do.
Personally, I value my
independence. I am proud of being able
to take care of myself, of having confidence in my abilities, of being able to
travel to the bathroom without a friend.
But what happens when the trip is longer than the distance from here to
the bathroom? What happens, for
instance, when it is 2000 meters?
2000 meters in a crew shell
can either seem like a split second or a very long and painful journey upstream
through the Grand Canyon. But
throughout my last year as a rower I’ve learned how to make those 2000 meters
fly by. You row for each other, as a
team, and you make it fun.
On the first day of the
season, I had forty new teammates, precisely one of whom I knew. But when I call them teammates, that’s not
exactly what I mean. At least not yet. At the time we were a team in name and
nothing more.
Building a team doesn’t
happen overnight. A team is more than a list of names drawn out of a hat. It’s more than eight people who sit in a
boat, looking at the back of someone else’s head. It’s even more than eight people who work together. A real team is a group of individuals who
become indistinguishable from one another.
Who can’t tell the difference between what they want and what the rest
of their team wants; between what’s best for them and what’s best for the team,
because by necessity it’s exactly the same.
It’s about learning to work as one.
Eight people, with the same goal, and the same incredible will to
achieve it. It’s about learning to
trust your team as much as you trust yourself.
Our first day on the water
was a demonstration of how far away from that ideal we really were. Rowing is one of those things that looks
like a walk in the park until you try.
Well it’s more like a walk in the park chained to seven other people,
all rollerblading for the very first time, and each wielding a 13 foot
oar. Let’s just say that we only beached
one boat that day.
Over the next few weeks we
slowly progressed from looking like a drowning windmill to looking a little
more like a boat. But despite our
physically strong rowers, our first race was a disaster. We were front runners. We had a strong start, but halfway through
the race, when boats started to move on us, we stopped thinking like a
team. Some people decided that if we
weren’t in front, we couldn’t win. So
instead, we lost. It was as simple as
that. We didn’t believe in ourselves,
and we just didn’t want it badly enough.
In rowing, when one person
gives up, there is nothing in the world the other seven rowers can do to make
up for it. They can pull as hard as
they want, but the boat won’t gain an inch of water. That’s how mutually dependent the sport is.
We worked on our power and
endurance, but at some point, all teams have power, and strength alone just
isn’t enough anymore. So my coaches and
I started training our boat to think like small children. “If you want something, you will get
it. If you want to win, and you want to
win more than anyone else on the racecourse that day, you will do just that.”
As we each decided for
ourselves what it was we wanted, we began to understand what it was everyone
else in the boat wanted. And we were no
longer just rowing for ourselves. We
were rowing for everyone else. It
stopped being “I want to win,” and became, “The rest of my boat wants to win,
and I owe it to them to give it everything I’ve got and then a little
more.” I came to realize that I had
seven other people in my boat whom I could depend on to do everything in their
power to help me accomplish my goals.
Seven people…pushing themselves past their limits…for me. And in return, I was performing for each of
them.
As I trained with these
seven people, three hours per day, seven days per week, I learned what made
them tick, at what point they felt like giving up, and what it was that made
them keep going. It is not often that someone,
at any given moment during a competition, can stop and tell you exactly what
each of their seven teammates is thinking… .Without even being able to see
their faces. Well I can.
With our desire, our trust,
and our true team that we had built from scratch, we started
winning….Everything. And we never
really stopped.
Success is a precious thing,
and putting my success in the hands of seven other people was a scary thing at
first. But I can tell you now that I
was in good hands. There are no seven
other people in the world I trust more.
Well, I learned that there
was a group project that I could not accomplish on my own: crossing the finish
line. So although I still value my
independence, I leave you by saying, “I depend on other people. I work well on a team. I can’t go anywhere
without seven people following me.”
