7.1 To get to the Top

When I graduated high school and prepared myself to come to Cornell where I would meet all new people and be in a completely different surrounding I spent a lot of time reminiscing on the fact that I would be leaving many people, places and experiences behind from high school. Engulfing in my first year at Cornell I really learned which friends I will remain close with. Not that it came as a surprise to me, but my best friends from my club rowing team are the girls that I can still rely on and know that we will always hold our bond. I think my rowing team can definitely exemplify Haythorhwaite’s ideas on community. Within our team there was an assortment of relationship spanning from having no bond between my Mercer club group with the Peddy School team that shared our boathouse. To the weak ties between some of the men and women on my team to the strong ties between the girls in my boat. The bond that we formed came from a close understand of each other and our mutual goals. Our team was one of high academic and athletic expectations and our goal was to win nationals. We trained 3 hours a day, 6 days a week, 3 seasons a year and spent every other waking moment together at the library or complaining about all of our mutual pains and stresses, despite most of us going to different schools. Looking at our SNA properties that make us a community I think our strongest bond was our common ground. When we would tell our school friends about rowing or talk about common injuries no one would really understand us. Most of my teachers knew little to nothing about the sport and people didn’t understand my team’s level of commitment to our goal. Often my school friends would be upset with me for missing weekend events with them because I gave up so much time to hang out for the team. This level of sacrifice was a source of common ground among the girls in my boat that we shared together. The idea of reciprocity on our team was also a huge factor in our accomplishment of eventually winning the national championship. The amount communication that needs to go on between the rowers, coaches and coxswains is huge. The idea of peer and coach feedback is what makes any rower better. Every day our coach would talk to us about everything from technique to goals to our everyday choices and then in the boat we’d get constant coaching from our coxswains and then on the land after practice was the time for the rowers to talk among each other and with the coaches to ask questions and relay our feelings about how the team was going. This team was definitely my strongest community in high school and from those four year, my friends, bonds, and lessons learned are the most memorable and life changing to me.