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WHY I GIVE
Lindsay Shoop

On September 4, 2005 0.38 seconds stood
between 4th and 2nd place in the Women’s Eight
Event at that year’s World Championships in Gifu, Japan.
For the women of the 2005 US Women’s Eight, those tenths
lasted an eternity. Yet, those tenths were also a blessing in disguise.

December 2005 through March 2006 was a long, hard winter. I do
not recall the weather exactly, but for those of us who were in the US
Women’s Training Center, the training was just that. We had entered
the Training Center in the year or years prior with high hopes, full
of exuberance, and naivety. And following some devastating losses
through the 2005 competitive season, all we knew was that we had
trained more than we ever had in our entire lives, but it was not enough...
We had to find more.

Late Spring 2006, a crew consisting of eight women who had been
training in three pairs and one double were set into a lineup. With our
coxswain at the helm, we took to the water excited and a little nervous
for a first row in the big boat...

We were a shark.
For the nine of us in that early 2006 Eight, we knew we were onto
something special. However, we could not help but recall those 0.38
seconds from less than a year before.

We kept our eyes focused and continued to train in determined fashion.
We savored our advances, but never got too far ahead of ourselves...we
had yet to have outside competition.

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