Mitchell Stroud
Blog 4
For my final personal blog, I chose the Ten Eyck boathouse on Lake Onondaga in Syracuse, New York. For me, this symbolized the culmination of 6 years of hard work. I started rowing in 7th grade for fun and to lose weight but I never expected it to lead to rowing for the 10th ranked university in the US for rowing or rowing in college in general. The lessons that I learned in just one year rival the 6 years of lessons I learned while rowing in middle and high school. I was given a rare opportunity by being recruited here. I was not nearly as fast as the rest of the freshmen that were recruited with me, but I was eager to prove myself and gain fitness. I would like to say that I gave it everything I had, but rowing taught me to never make excuses and that just feels like an excuse to me. Most of the year I was nursing an injured back and I made the decision that the benefit of rowing for 3 more years did not outweigh the cost of permanent back problems. I could write for days about how hard that decision was to make and how it made me feel, but I’ll summarize it to this: I gained a second family up there that year, and being stripped away from that and the sport I dedicated my teenage years to is very painful.
But enough of the sob story, let’s talk about how cool the boathouse is. You would think that coming from the Chesapeake boathouse here in OKC to this more traditional, no frills boathouse, that I wouldn’t like it. This could not be further from the truth. Walking into the boathouse, you are immediately hit with a wave of history and nostalgia. From old oars hanging on the wall, to the trophy case in the corner, you feel overwhelmed by the amount of hard work and dedication that this building was essential to. The boathouse has an actual house attached to it, and the head coach lives in there to keep an eye on everything. They would always string up Christmas lights upon the pillars and the balcony that overlook the inlet where we would launch the boats. It was always beautiful to see the lights from the water as we would end a tough practice and carry the boats back into their bay.
