Course Correction by Ginny Gilder

Radcliffe. That was a big first, but Wisconsin sneaked by us while we were focused on passing the black-shirted crew. Our coxswain forgot it wasn’t a two-boat race. Sometime in the second thousand meters, Wisconsin claimed the lead and didn’t give it up in spite of our mighty final sprint. We finished second.
    I’d thought we were invincible. I hadn’t considered any other outcome.
    â€œLosing sucks,” I told Nat later.
    He frowned slightly, but said philosophically, “You learn more when you lose.”
    He sounded like a professor, but I wanted a sympathizer.
    Nat was right, however. The lessons would follow fast and furiously. I didn’t know until then how much winning mattered. I had taken our crew’s success for granted; it came so easily. Suddenly I had to contend with the possibility that I’d not done my best, not pulled hard enough, or maybe not wanted to win enough. My confidence, hard won over the previous nine months, felt suddenly tenuous again.
    My freshman teammates seemed disappointed but not disheartened: we beat the hated Cliffies, our arch rivals, a never-before-accomplished feat. Captain Chris Ernst was less sanguine, noisily frustrated and disappointed. A senior with no more second chances, she couldn’t understand how Lynne Alvarez had neglected the Wisco crew: that was the coxswain’s job, to know the score and report our position, and help us react and adjust to the competitive situation as it unfolded. Chris knew we would’ve won if our crew had known what was happening during the race.
    But Chris turned away from the done-and-gone Sprints, accepted her second-place medal, and resolved to rally the team to focus on the season’s final race, which would also be her last for Yale. She was determined: we would beat Radcliffe again in two weeks at the historic Yale–Harvard race, which would include women for the first time inthe race’s 125-year history. The Harvard and Yale men’s varsity crews raced against each other head-to-head for four miles on the wide and rough tidal Thames River in New London, Connecticut. The women would race two miles.
    I shrugged off the uncertain thoughts weaseling into my head. We were going to do just fine. Chris had decided; she was my captain, and I trusted her.
    Stormy skies. A chill wind kicking up aggressive waves. Grim water. Two miles: 3,218.7 meters. The starter stood behind us with his red flag held high, rippling. We left as the flag swept down, leaving his command to “Row” behind.
    We started well, but Radcliffe did, too, and kept on going. The boat felt heavy, as if Radcliffe’s speed took us out of our mental game. Our crew lost its concentration, instead focused on trying to catch our competitor. My legs were dead at the halfway mark, empty of drive. A race that started with our determination to win dwindled into a dispirited slog as Radcliffe forged into the lead and didn’t give it up.
    It’s impossible to row a good race if you can’t feel what’s happening within your own crew, and if you’re too distracted to focus. That afternoon we discovered that past performance is not a sure bet when it comes to predicting the future. The Radcliffe women ignored the fact that we had beaten them at the Sprints. They refuted the solid evidence that we were the faster crew. From the moment the race went off, they acted like the winners and left us in their wake.
    After the race, we landed at the Gales Ferry dock. Nat greeted us silently, handed us our shoes, held onto the boat while we ungated our oars, stepped onto dry land, and laid the blades on the dock. Only our coxswain spoke, uttering familiar instructions to guide the boat safely into the shell house.
    We had proven insufficient to the challenge; I had proven insufficient. I had no one to thank but myself. The sting of the moment stirred something inside, my defiant voice. Wait ’til next year. We’ll