Experiences on the Crew Team
Sharon Dauson
There are 38,000 undergraduate students at Penn State. The school fields 27 varsity teams. (I choose Penn State as the example only because I am from Pittsburgh and most of my high school friends are Nittany Lions.) Dartmouth, by contrast, has a student body of roughly 4,000, and supports 31 varsity teams. In 2007, Penn State set a record by selling out the entire student section of the football stadium (22,000 tickets) within 59 minutes of tickets becoming available. The Nittany Lions average over 100,000 fans per home game. I don’t have statistics on Dartmouth football attendance, but I am fairly certain student tickets are free and that there are more people on Collis porch than at Memorial Stadium on any given Saturday. My point is not to argue that Dartmouth students are awful fans or to complain about the football team. Rather, I think this illustrates that the purpose of athletics at Dartmouth, and in the Ivy League in general, is drastically different than that of other Division I schools across the nation.
Star high school football players are recruited to Penn State, where they receive huge scholarships and fame in exchange for entertaining the masses. Penn State football players are athletes and they aspire to play professionally. By contrast, football players are recruited to Dartmouth to receive an exceptional education alongside the opportunity to play a sport they love. They entertain no one. Dartmouth football players are students who aspire to be doctors, lawyers, consultants, and (until recently) bankers.
Athletics are important to the Dartmouth community because they are considered a component of the well-rounded Dartmouth Man (or Woman). The final line of the first verse of Dartmouth’s Alma Mater captures the ideal of physical strength and athletic achievement as a dimension of the ideal Dartmouth student: “With the granite of New Hampshire in their muscles and their brains.”
Richard Hovey, who was in the Dartmouth class of‘85 and wrote the Alma Mater in‘94, placed physical achievement (granite in their muscles) on the same level of scholarly achievement (granite in their brains). The Dartmouth Athletic Department operates under the assumption that playing football will make Dartmouth men better doctors, lawyers, consultants and bankers.
One in four Dartmouth students are varsity athletes. Unlike athletes at big Division I schools, Dartmouth’s student athletes receive no athletic scholarships, and Dartmouth is seldom a stepping-stone to professional sports. Once recruited, there is nothing that compels our athletes to continue to play their sports. At some point during all Dartmouth athletes’ four years, they must ask themselves why they do it.
As a member of Dartmouth’s women’s crew team, I have asked myself this question multiple times since arriving here, and have been asked by my few non-rowing friends many more times. I am going to attempt to outline the pros and cons of being a Division I varsity athlete, especially when money and fame aren’t in the cards.
The number one reason I row is for love of the sport. Many people have the chance to fall in love with a sport growing up. Few have the skill required to continue in high school, and it is the fortunate few who get the opportunity to play the sport they love at the collegiate level. It is easy to forget it, in the midst of intense training and stressful competition, but sports are fun. As a Dartmouth rower I have the unique opportunity to train on a Division I team and race against the fastest rowers in the country.
I also row for my teammates. My best friends in the world are the women I met on the team. Through shared experiences and suffering that no one else could comprehend, I have formed bonds that will last forever. I have shared the feeling of absolute jubilation, utter exhaustion, total despair, and uncontrollable exhilaration with my teammates. I have seen them, and they have seen me, at my absolute highs and lows. The bonds formed through sports can rarely be duplicated. The down side to this, of course, is that you cannot choose your teammates. Being on a sports team forces you to spend exhaustive amounts of time with some people you would not otherwise choose to hang out with.
Even from the first day of pre-season practice my freshman year, I felt like part of a community. Freshman fall, there were twenty upperclassmen who said, “Hello” to me in Collis. When I didn’t know where my Hinman Box was, there were people I felt comfortable asking. When I didn’t know what classes to take, when I did not understand what the difference between a 10 and 10a was, I had a network of Dartmouth women who cared and wanted to help. United by the love of a common sport, I entered Dartmouth already a part of a small, tight-knit community. When sophomore fall came around, I felt no need to join a sorority. I understand the appeal of Greek houses, and I am sure if I was not on a team, I would have rushed. But as it was, I was already part of a “sisterhood.” In addition to being part of a community on campus, rowing for Dartmouth has made me part of a larger Dartmouth athletic tradition—the experience of rowing for Dartmouth is one shared by a select number of Dartmouth alumnae that span the world and transcend generations.
Having at least two hours of practice a day, every day, forces me to be on top of everything. I simply don’t have the time to drink heavily or get behind on work. Unfortunately, there are many hours a day spent at practice that could be better spent studying. In general, I would say that if I wasn’t rowing I would probably spend these extra hours doing something frivolous, but there are days when those extra two hours could have left me feeling better prepared for an exam.
Unfortunately, in choosing to row, I have also chosen not to do a plethora of other things. I have sacrificed Green Key Weekends, DOC trips, FSPs, LSAs, crazy internships, spring break trips to the Bahamas, Friday night dance parties, leisurely meals with friends, skiing phys-ed, and sun bathing on the Green. Most of the time, a love of the sport makes this sacrifice easy, but occasionally I wonder as to the other directions my Dartmouth experience could have followed.
Today I rowed on the Connecticut River for what is likely to be my last time as a Dartmouth undergraduate. As I rowed past the land marks that I have passed a thousand times, it occurred to me that when I recall my years at Dartmouth fifty years from now, I am not going to remember where my classes were (or for that matter what classes I took). I won’t remember who sat behind me or in front of me in my freshman seminar (in fact I already forget). I am certain, however, that I will still know how long it takes to row from the Organic Farm to the Ledyard Bridge. I will recall what the sunrise on the Connecticut looks like in the spring. I will still remember the women who sat behind and in front of me in the boat. For better or worse, being a varsity athlete has defined my Dartmouth experience.
