Hey. Welcome to Driven.

This column is meant to be a diary of sorts about coxing and my experiences with it. I should explain the title. It has two meanings really. My coach Ed, always trains his coxns to sit low in the boat. The analogy he uses is : "who's driving and who's along for the ride.?"I personally would much rather drive a Ferrari then ride in one.

The second meaning is that I am driven. I am always driven to do my best both for myself and for the others in the boat and on the team. Let's start off with background info. My name is Blair Wilson. I live in Seattle Washington and I am a junior in high school. I started rowing the summer of 1999 and started coxing in August 2000 for the masters team. I was going out for girls lightweight in 2001 when I decided to cox for the boys and give up rowing. Fall of 2001 I was in the 3V boat and spring 2002 I was in the JV eight.

Now I cox for the heavyweight varsity which pretty much brings you all up to speed. The second week of August we, the varsity candidates, started training. The guys switch sides every year so their backs don't get injured, and switching sides is like learning to row again so we took the novice pocock out with spoons. The Moriarty (the novie pocock) is like the early 80?s Chevy station wagon of boats. The skeg has been broken off to the length of the rudder (gotta love those novie girls!) and the boat is too soft to set up, no matter how many people you have sitting out. We rowed outside hand and inside hand only, alternated full and ¼ or ½ slide, did pauses hands over the knees, ½ slide and double pauses, by fours and sixes and would finish the practice with anywhere from one and a quarter laps to three laps full pressure by sixes.

(All eight full pressure at a 30 it normally takes the boat 10 minutes or so to get around the lake.) I stayed pretty quiet during practices just letting them get used to their sides and make the adjustments Ed (coach) was talking about. As boring as it was, I wouldn't trade the time for anything. Chris, my stroke seat (at least for now) pointed out the Starship Enterprise in the clouds. (Star Trek anyone?) Pat, my seven seat, observed on the first day as we attempted to row away from the dock by fours dead slide "If Muppets could row this is what it would look like." I learned that even if I mess up the calls switching sixes they will automatically go to the next six because they know my pattern, stern 6, bow 6, stern pair bow 4, stern 4 bow pair. (I may have messed up the calls a few times after vacation.) And most importantly I learn that even boys love flavored chapstick.

Thanks for visiting. I hope you enjoyed it. Thanks in advance to my crew for being understanding and okay that I use your names and not aliases, if any of you read this. Thanks to Penguin for helping me with the title and to Tasha for being a self proclaimed groupie.

Never forget to fight.

~YogiB

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