May 25, 2006

The Dad Vail Regatta is one of the largest regattas held on the Schuylkill River. Passing by you would think it was a giant carnival that stretched from St. Joe's boathouse down to Columbia Bridge. Especially with all the tents, shopping, food and, what do you know, this year you could win an authentic John Deere hat by riding one of the tractors. I remember going to watch the Dad Vail in high school and I could not wait to finally go to it in college; but it wasn't for the John Deere hat or free samples of ice cream. Behind all that, in the grandstands, you can hear everyone cheering their team on as competitors make the last 450-meter push to the line. That's why we were here, to push it to the line.

The weather had been crazy and we sat in our team mini-bus together; doing our best not to lose our focus as we waited for the thunderstorms to stop so we could launch for our race. I was stroking the 2 V8+ and we had placed first in our semifinal earlier that morning and had made it to the grand final. When we were finally able to launch, we did our warm-up as planned. Every stroke was done with purpose as we made our way up to the starting line. Before we knew it we were aligned and the starter began the countdown. "5-4-3-2-1. Set. Go." We were off, each stroke harder than the one before. We settled into our rhythm and the race became one giant pack, six crews within inches of each other as we made the turn under Strawberry Mansion Bridge at about 500 meters down. University of Buffalo began to pull away and we hung on to second in the middle thousand by a length behind them. Every stroke hurt. Every stroke had to be harder, had to find more. We were starting to make up ground on Buffalo and pushing away the rest of the competition as we approached the 700-meter mark. And when our coxswain called the sprint with 600 meters to go, the only thing I distinctly remember thinking was, "This is going to hurt" and I could not tell you a thing that happened after that.

We were able to grab silver and just missed Buffalo by less than two seconds. Many crews may see second place as a disappointment; it does, after all, mean you're only second best. Some crews might even be bitter about a silver, but those crews don't understand the meaning of this sport. When you look at your teammates at the end of a race and see every bit of their soul and physical being torn out of them and put on the line, you learn something new about yourself and that is never a disappointment. Bucknell had its strongest showings at the Dad Vail regatta this year. Two boats advanced to the grand final along with a first-place finish in the Varsity 8+ petite final. We might have been a dark horse before but no one left that Saturday afternoon not knowing who Bucknell University was and we're going to continue to come back hungry every year for more. Right now we're training for IRAs and hungry to go after those two seconds, go after that little bit more in us so we can contend with some of the fastest and most respectable crews in the nation.

Bucknell rowing has been an amazing experience for me this past year and I am excited for this final race and another three years! It has made me discover a lot about myself as an athlete, person and student. But the most important thing I think I've taken from this team is that when you dream big and sweat a lot, more than you can imagine is possible.

- Caitlin Doolin '09