Essay 6: The Boat That Came Second

The Architecture of Wellbeing Series

This is a story about a rowing race, but it’s also about how capacity behaves inside a group system. The quickest way to describe what happened is two words: Cool Runnings. It is about 90% true. The remaining 10% is artistic licence to protect the privacy of those involved.

Five kids put their hands up for rowing, which meant five kids were in the boat.

Go to any major river in any Australian city and you will see the private school crews on the water. Rowing is, by and large, a rich kid sport. A school with the budget for a handful of $30,000 boats is the entry point. Some programs have families who donate that figure season after season to see their name on the hull. Those schools have ample boats to train ample bodies. Some kids join a rowing program and their parents buy an ergo for the home gym.

None of these kids were short on opportunity. They had access to a sport that exists because schools and families can afford it. But even within that world there is a hierarchy of resources: programs with deep benches and multiple boats, and those one learning mistake away from forfeiting several races.

This program sat closer to the latter.

The pool of interested kids was much smaller than their competition. A rumour circulated that the other schools stacked their crews for better results. Although that was probably folklore, I must say a few of those children looked like they could grow a moustache better than my dad in the 70s.

Loads of kids had turned up for the come and try day, but once word got around that there would be 5am starts down the track, children and parents alike quietly pulled the pin. The more naturally talented athletes drifted back to basketball, volleyball or another tall kids sport that kept reasonable hours. Honestly, fair. Expecting growing teenage boys to get up that early is asking for a boulder with BO to be pushed up a hill.

What was left wasn’t the ideal five, but it was the five whose conditions allowed them to stay. Fortunately you only need five kids for a boat to race - four rowers and a cox - so the program went ahead.

One of those kids was navigating a health challenge that hadn’t been properly understood yet. He didn’t want to be there and his parents had encouraged him to give it a go for the full season before quitting. The fact that he had shown up week after week was itself an act of quiet courage. Not a discipline problem. A conditions problem.

Another was close to six foot tall by his thirteenth birthday. When your body is changing that fast it’s almost impossible to get good at any sport. His hand-eye coordination, temporarily outpaced by his own skeleton, meant he moved like a newborn giraffe on the side of a hill. Still, someone with a trained eye looked at this kid and thought: put that coat hanger in a boat. The architecture pointed toward what would arrive two or three years from now - long levers that would eventually become an advantage, even if his knees were the widest part of his legs now.

At home he had a sibling who seemed to win everything. Success that showed up while they still had toddler forearm rolls. A bedroom full of squishmallows covered in blue ribbons offered the kind of visible proof of sporting success our lanky teen was yet to earn. His introduction to rowing had not been glamorous. The year prior he had served as the Year 7 call-up for another sparse crew. Dropped into the boat to get enough bums on seats, it was a baptism of fire. Those kids lost their race by nearly two minutes, delaying even the race scheduled after them. When they finally crossed the finish line, the child sitting behind him vomited straight down his back.

Still, he came back the next season so the coach gave him a nickname: Big Chief.

A kind and gentle kid with very long legs was our third. He had been a strong rower the previous term but broke his arm in the school holidays. He kept showing up to training anyway, which was a season-saving move in itself. Since numbers were short, Broken Arm had no choice but to swap places with the coxswain. The tiny outgoing Energiser Bunny who had been coxing - perfectly suited to the role - now had to sit on a floatie lift to fit in the boat. Despite not having trained a single ergo, Energiser Bunny was a regular at run club and had absorbed some technique as a cox, so could keep up surprisingly well.

Broken Arm was genuinely scared of steering the crew wrong and taking them into the reeds. Before each race he could be seen with his Dad privately rehearsing the encouragement he would call out to the rest of the crew. He practised being loud enough for them to hear. His presence made the boat easy to spot: a great dane puppy squeezed into a space designed for a chihuahua. Headset on. Steering with his good arm. The other in a black cast draped across his knees which themselves folded up to his chin.

Our fifth kid, reliable and technically minded, came from a family infrastructure that meant he would be at those regattas regardless, because his older sister was a rower. He wasn’t the tallest or fastest, but he seemed to know everyone and his steady presence had been part of what kept the rest from pulling out when the 5am starts loomed. He was the Social Glue, and his motto seemed to be: if I’m at the regattas, I may as well be in the boat.

And this group were in the boat.

Week after week they slogged it out to no avail. At least, that’s how it looked at the time.

Watching your children build resilience is harder than people like to admit. We tell ourselves we put our kids in sport for the teamwork, the fresh air, the movement, the discipline. All the things we tick on the permission slip. What we don't write on that form is: I also want my child to feel like a winner sometimes. And every single Saturday, these kids lost. Badly.

As a spectator you stand along the riverbank trying to work out which boat belongs to your child. What time is it? Has their race started? Which boat is theirs - can you see it? What colour hats are they wearing?

Ah. There they are. That boat.

The one coming last by half the river.

These boys knew exactly where they sat in the pack, teenagers are hyper aware of social signals. They had slumped shoulders after each race. Other crews celebrated finishes thirty or forty seconds ahead of theirs. Through this massive losing streak their young coach really held down the fort. Never looking at the other boats, he was relentlessly growth-oriented and steered them back to their own race.

“That was the most cohesive I’ve seen you row. Next, I want you to match that and aim to shave ten seconds off your time. You’ve got it in you.”

Trouble struck the night before the second-last Saturday of the season. The boy with health challenges was seriously unwell and would not be returning to rowing - or any sport for that matter - for a while. Doctors had finally found the problem, and the advice was that he shouldn’t be walking on flat ground at the moment, let alone hitting 180 BPM on the water.

These lads had scraped through nearly an entire season with exactly the minimum number of kids required. They had one more Saturday race before the big one, the Head of the River, and it looked like they would have to forfeit due to numbers, it was rotten luck. So a Hail Mary message went out to the parents’ WhatsApp group asking if anyone knew of a younger kid who could step in. The answer came quickly.

Enter the Dynamo.

A wiry Year 7, not technically old enough to compete yet. His “yes” was halfway out of his mouth before the question had even finished being asked. In most rowing programs an underage call up looks like a kid being chucked into a seat - or chucked on, as was the case for Big Chief the year prior - to fill the numbers. Expectations tend to be low because the skill, the confidence and the size just aren’t there. But this kid was feral for it. Too small for the boat. Too young for the race. But completely certain rowing was his sport, grinding out ergos and watching YouTube technique videos because he loved it. Something in him had decided: game on, moles.

He grabbed that seat like a golden ticket, and the next day they raced for the first time as a team.

Six boats on the water. All season, one of them had been coming last by enormous margins. The last minute crew change was expected to make that gap even worse. While we waited on the bank the usual pack came through. We squinted toward the distant back looking for our boys, eyes searching for the crammed knees and the black cast. Our hearts sank. They weren’t there.

Oh no, we thought. Something must have gone wrong. A false start perhaps, or the dreaded steering into the reeds. Then the knees were spotted, but they were not way out back.

Broken Arm was steering their boat in the bloody pack.

Big Chief, who couldn’t see much without his glasses, was just rowing - but geez his form looked strong. The rest of the crew kept pace beautifully, two kids now on floatie lifts in the middle engine, moving like one organism. The system had clicked. Their coach hustled down to the water’s edge to see closer to the finish line. This time they definitely didn’t come last. They came second out of six, shaving more than a minute off their best time, ever.

The unanswerable question is: what made the difference that day?

Was it the Dynamo’s tenacity? Broken Arm learning to cox? Big Chief slowly growing into his body? The Social Glue’s technical steadiness? The Energiser Bunny’s cardiovascular grit? Their coach’s philosophy?

The answer is yes. All of it. And none of it.

For the length of one race, a capacity blue zone existed.

I can’t recall who won the race that day. It was probably the same crew who always did. But I will never forget the sight of those five second placers walking up the sandy riverbank carrying their boat, shoulders back. Two with floatie lifts shoved down the front of their zoot suits, looking like underfed pigeons. Broken Arm in his black cast, smiling shyly, and the rest grinning ear to ear as they walked through the crowd to a standing ovation that Big Chief could hear but not properly see because his glasses were in his sports bag.

Epilogue:

The season continued. At the Head of the River they lined up again, this time in matching Spider-Man socks their coach had bought in a quick dash to Target the night before. They didn't win a single race that season, but they did receive an award in the end: Most Improved. As it was handed out to a room full of clapping families, Big Chief's sibling was heard to say: "Oh good, he finally won something."

Next season you can go down to the River Torrens and see Big Chief happily yapping away to his mates having found a sport that fits him. Social Glue may have lured a few more kids into the program. Broken Arm will be back rowing in the boat once his cast is off, and a mid-year growth spurt or two could mean fewer floatie lifts in their boat.