Sports

In Motion: When Sport Becomes Your Life

Rowers training at Pocock Rowing Center's High Performance Program put careers on hold, survive on meager earnings, and train for hours each day in the quest to compete on an international level.

Katherine Robinson knows she didn’t choose an easy lifestyle.

She rises before dawn to join her teammates in cold, dark winter morning rows. She returns to the boathouse in the afternoon for a second punishing workout. To support herself, she fits in a part-time job at REI that barely allows her to scrape by. She can’t afford to rent an apartment on her own, so she chips in for a room in a house filled with roommates.

But, on a clear morning, when Robinson rows out toward Lake Washington and sees the sun rising behind Mount Rainier, she realizes that it’s all worth it. She has one chance in life to row at a national level, and she’s going to give it her all.

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“Whenever the dark winter days get to me, I ask myself if I’d rather be doing something else with my life right now,” Robinson said. “The answer is always no.”

Robinson is one of 14 athletes training to be world-class rowers at Pocock Rowing Center’s High Performance Program. The Seattle facility just entered a new partnership with U.S. Rowing that will enable the athletes to take advantage of national coaches, resources, and networks.

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At Pocock’s High Performance Program, athletes are gunning to make the U.S. Rowing National Team. If they succeed, they’ll compete against the best rowers in the world. Pocock High Performance Team Coach Steve Dani said he would consider the year a success if just a handful of his athletes make the cut, so competitive is the quest for a national team spot.

The Pocock High Performance Team began in 1998, when coach Emil Kossev established the program at Pocock Rowing Center, a boathouse next to the University Bridge. Kossev left in 2006 to take a job with the Canadian National Team. In the years since, the team has rotated through four different coaches.

Dani took over last summer, and he plans to stick around. He sees consistency within the coaching staff as key to attracting high caliber athletes and creating a winning team. On a personal level, Dani embraces the chance to work with rowers at the top of their game.

“I want to coach people who are as dedicated to the sport as I am,” Dani said.

The High Performance Team rowers devote their lives to the pursuit. They’ve finished their collegiate rowing careers and know they have until roughly age 30 to compete at the top. Most sideline future job or schooling ambitions to focus on training.

Robinson, 23, resembles a typical High Performance Team member. She has been rowing with the Pocock group for a year and a half. She finished her undergraduate education at Williams College, and, at the urging of her college coach, began exploring elite training programs around the country. The Everett native saw Pocock as a natural fit.

To attract talent like Robinson to Seattle, Pocock must compete with other high-performance programs around the U.S. Pocock’s greatest edge, Dani said, comes with the ability to row year-round in the mild Northwest climate. U.S. Rowing has partnered with just one other West Coast training center: California Rowing Club in Oakland. The other seven partner training centers are located back east, enabling Pocock and Seattle to stand out.

But Pocock also must contend with the reality that national training camps and races take place on the East Coast. Those training in far-flung Seattle must travel long distances and buy expensive airline tickets to compete. Last summer, Robinson took two months off from her job at REI in order to attend a camp on the East Coast.

To compete with the nation’s top athletes at the eastern camps, the Pocock High Performance rowers must embrace new physical challenges. When Robinson left Williams, she felt she hadn’t reached the peak of fitness or strength. At Pocock, she began to learn what her body could handle. By working out 30 hours a week and pushing herself toward more demanding goals, she took herself from what she calls “good shape” to “excellent shape.”

While Robinson enjoys discovering how far she can go, she also admits that the regimen isn’t easy. In the winter, she feels the mental fatigue of rowing in the dark every morning. Since the afternoon practices aren’t coached, Robinson and the other rowers must rally themselves and each other to complete workouts.

“It helps so much to have teammates,” Robinson said. “When we feel like, ‘ugh, we don’t want to go on this run,’ we can at least say, ‘let’s go together.’”

But in many ways, the physical challenges pale in comparison to the economic struggles of rowing on the national level. In many European countries, the state funds amateur athletes, including rowers. Not so in the U.S. Here, the athletes must make it on their own.

“The biggest challenge takes place off the water,” Dani said. “You know the workouts will be hard, but the burden of paying rent and finding flexible jobs takes a toll.”

Just two of the Pocock High Performance Team members work full-time jobs, and both enjoy flexible schedules and accommodating supervisors. Most, like Robinson, hold down part-time gigs. One rower works at a Lululemon store, and another teaches fitness classes as a gym.

While these jobs provide more time for training, the paychecks don’t go far. Some, like Robinson, rent rooms in houses with multiple roommates. One of Robinson’s teammates lives in a backyard cottage owned by a couple that attends her church. Adult recreational rowers at Pocock Rowing Center frequently donate airline miles or funding to help the elites.

Robinson said many athletes leave the program before they’ve peaked physically because they can’t handle the financial stress.

“Financially, it’s month to month,” Robinson said. “It’s a tenuous situation.”

The life of a Pocock High Performance athlete isn’t easy, but Robinson also recognizes the incredible opportunity she has been afforded. Many athletes dream of competing on a national or world level, and very few get the chance to do so.

“We all struggle, but we sacrifice for our art,” Robinson said. “Rowing is our passion.”


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