7/19/10

THE EIGHT WON GOLD!!! WOOOOOOOOOOO!!! Yes yes yes yesyesyesyesyes!!!
Ahem. Now that I've gotten that out of the way...let me break down the last couple of days for you.
On Sunday the B eight had their final in the intermediate eights race. They came sixth place, but considering the fact that this is the TOP six, it still wasn't that bad a turnout. We had a practice in small boats Sunday evening, and spent much of the day anticipating the rapidly approaching regatta and the final indicator of what we'd put into the past month of training.
Today we woke up at an insanely early hour (ie, six am) to be shuttled to the race course. It was rather violently rainy this morning, and as we all sat under the large white pavillion tent, the start to the day seemed less than promising. Luckily, the rain had entirely cleared up by 8:45, which meant the races could begin roughly on schedule. The first race we entered was the women's double. We had two boats in it, and while the B boat was first and the A boat was second, the A boat was awarded the gold medal because the B boat was entered as an "exhibition boat". In the straight four we placed last, but it was really more of a learning experience than a heavily weighted boat. It was the eight that we had all trained for and bet a month of hopes and fears and sweat and blood and pain on. For each of those 240 strokes, we had taken thousands of practice ones, and sitting up at that starting line and thinking back to the first day when we all flocked into the campus of the college for the first time...it was surreal. As a boat, we'd pulled together and eaten together, watched crappy movies and braided eachother's hair, punched and tickled and hugged each other and there we were, poised at the starting line on a cloudy day in Tennessee that, to most people, would be like any other but that was to us, the momentary pinnacle of existence.
Nine sisters, winning together.
No one else had a chance.
We just threw it all down on the water and the boat literally SURGED. By the first five hundred we were on the bow ball of the other two boats, and we just kept opening the gap, finishing the piece eleven seconds ahead. The power coursing through that boat was immense, larger than life. It was, in all respects, the perfect race.
And then it was over.
And we returned to the real world, and derigged our boat and posed for photos and updated our facebook statuses. We went to a barbeque and played silly games and flirted with boys. Some of us left. The rest of us will part tomorrow.
But we didn't forget. We will never forget.