A word from the captain

First Mays colours at last!

It's over.

Things I accomplished as THBC women's captain

• Putting together a full crew early in Lent and Easter terms, which stayed almost entirely consistent.
• Getting three women who had quit and sworn they'd never row again to come back -- and enjoy it!
• One of them is now going to trial for the university boat.  I'm taking credit if she ends up being a rowing super-star.
• Taking a full VIII to training camp in Henley
• Avoided getting spoons in both sets of bumps (just barely...)

You can know all these things and yet...  I also know that the women's second boat essentially didn't exist and was a joke in both sets of bumps, and that we're now dangerously close to falling out of the first division of bumps if next year doesn't do better.

Upon finishing my duties, I expected to feel thrilled, happy, released, or even just relieved.  I feel none of these things.  I mean, I did have an odd realization while checking my phone on Sunday that there was no possible way for it to contain a crisis I would have to fix; that was cool.  But on the whole, I just feel drained.  It's not that I'm sad not to be captain anymore; I'm sad that it's over without my having gotten any success to show for it.  There are any number of reasons and excuses for it, most of which I couldn't help.  But still, I wish my legacy had been more than going down three places in bumps both times and not much of any other racing to speak of.  Last year's captain and Martin the boatman have made it very clear what they think of my leadership and the results I brought about.  They are what make me angriest, because they have undermined my efforts in a number of ways and then been judgmental about the consequences.

Honestly, the biggest difference I made was also probably the least noticed in certain quarters: it was a shift in the atmosphere.  Under the previous captain, despite her very healthy opinion of herself, almost no one was happy.  Very few women wanted to be in the first boat, and all of the novices who started last year quit.  Every single one.  This left me with almost no one to build a crew out of.  Now, I don't want to be just a club that turns up for laughs; I want us to be competitive.  But no one is going to choose to spend 14 hours a week doing something that makes them miserable -- certainly they're not going to continue doing it for two more years.  So I've tried my damnedest to get the good vibes flowing again.

As I've been disgorging my woe to everyone lately, the same comments tend to come up repeatedly.  First, I probably learned a lot from this experience.  Maybe that's true, but I certainly didn't learn how to be firm or disciplinary or especially persuasive (which would've helped), nor did I learn to distance myself emotionally from the situation.  I did learn to ask people even when you think the answer will be no, because sometimes you'll be pleasantly surprised.  Second, they say what a great thing captaining will be on my CV.  I think that would be very true if the person reading it had any idea just how much work it was.  I'm not convinced anyone who hasn't done it themselves could possibly understand what it took.  Finally, I'm told I've done a great job in difficult circumstances.  That's nice as far as it goes, but I can honestly say I hope never to have to receive that dubious compliment again.

I have a strong sense of the history of the club, which is part of why I want to contribute to its glory, not some 'inevitable' ebb in its success.  So for my speech at Boat Club Dinner on Saturday, I focused on what makes me proud personally as a rower, and what I hope is also a point of pride for the girls in my boat who are new to rowing this year.  Women only started rowing bumps in 1974, and then it was in IVs.  I went through the crew lists and counted how many different women had earned first-boat colours (i.e. the crescent on my pocket, like a varsity letter) in May Bumps.  (And yes, I'm spelling 'colours' Britishly because it's a British concept/tradition.)  To date, only 165 women have gained that honor in the history of the club.  Six of them did it for the first time last week.  One of them was me.  My name will be on the honour boards that go up in the boathouse, and when rowers are looking up at them during core exercises 200 years from now, they won't know anything about the results or the tears or the petty jabs.  Hopefully they'll be inspired to be part of the big picture, too.