March 5, 2004

Throughout the season, members of the UNC rowing team will provide TarHeelBlue.com readers with an inside look at the Carolina program and the experience of being a varsity athlete at North Carolina. This installment, the 12th of the 2003-04 school year, is by Emily Dondero, a sophomore from Greensboro, N.C.

There's a new energy under our oars and it feels great. Everyone on the team has adopted a new attitude for this spring. We are taking the program to a new level, and we are finding that it is not because of our talent, nor the extra hard work (because that has been there all along), but rather our believing in ourselves that will make the difference. We've already seen the benefits from it in the scrimmage racing against Duke, and we are ready to build momentum during Spring Break and leading to our race against Clemson.

As we make habit into character, we all adopted words of encouragement. We wake up and say, "Today is what you make of it." We practice and the coxswains remind us, "If you're going to take a stroke, make it the best you can." We go about as normal students remembering, "It's all about the choices," and as we race we know, "You'll pass out before you die." The last phrase compels us to push ourselves to our physical and mental limits.

While we gear up for spring break in South Carolina, we are as equally excited about two-a -ay practices, film sessions, and conditioning as we are about the practical jokes to be played, intense games of dodge ball, and our new slip-n-slide fashioned from the plastic wrapping of our Vespoli boat. The truck and trailer are all packed up and the boathouse will be a quiet place for the next week, but as we infiltrate the other Carolina we are taking more than boats, riggers, oars, extra socks, multiple blue t-shirts, sunscreen and, of course, cameras. We are taking the best possible attitude and intensity, and what we come back with will be the result of hard work and teamwork.