I have always been a very athletic person. Since I can remember, my parents signed me up for all sorts of races and sports classes. I always enjoyed it. Although I loved sports, nothing stuck. I tried so many different things: basketball, trail running, track running, dance classes, rhythmic gymnastics, and others. Every time I tried something new, I would stick with it for a few months, maybe a year, but nothing more than that. I loved moving around, teamwork, and competing, but I always got bored after a certain time.

Until I tried rowing.

I joined rowing in late 2018 after a year of not doing much sports. When I joined, I didn’t know much about the sport; I had only ever seen them from a distance. Even then, I thought it looked pretty, and that admiration would only grow with time. Being on the river and that close to nature was something I liked. I spent about a year and a half in rowing. I participated in my first national competition, placing third and gaining a new level of discipline and admiration for the sport.

Then the pandemic hit.

Unfortunately, things didn’t go so great, and when I stopped being able to train in 2020, I lost all motivation. I stopped talking to friends from training, stopped joining Zoom training sessions, and left the sport. I was so convinced I was not going to row again that I didn’t even make an effort to keep training and just shut myself off from everyone. In a way, the School of Humanity helped me. In 2021, after a year of not talking to anyone, I joined the School of Humanity summer school, which made me interact with people daily. It reminded me how much I missed seeing my friends.

So, in August 2021, I went back to rowing. It was amazing to see my friends again and to be able to row again. It felt like everything had returned to normal, and I was enjoying it again. In 2022 I started getting recognized as an athlete with high potential and started being considered for more important competitions. I was selected for the Association Nationals, so instead of representing my club, I was representing my region, which has 5 clubs overall. This was my first big achievement, especially as we won, competing against the best rowers in the other regions of Chile.

Following this, I started getting called in for nationwide training camps with the best people in the country for my age group. It felt great to be achieving things, though this was not without its trials. After the 2022 club nationals, in which I placed 1st and 2nd in different races, I was invited to row every rower my age's dream: The Open. In The Open, you compete against the top rowers of the country for a spot on that year's national team. This meant a summer of super hard work training to perfect my skills on a single skull (a single rower boat).

It was difficult in every way possible, especially as I had to balance training with school, and I had been told to lose weight by the nutritionist. I had to push myself physically and mentally. After a while, I started to lose hope in my abilities. I was not performing very well, and my coaches did not seem impressed or hopeful. It felt like my whole summer and all the sacrifices had been for nothing and almost made me give up... Almost. With 2 weeks left before The Open, I realized that putting too much pressure on myself was pointless, and I switched from an “I can’t disappoint people” attitude to an “I am doing this for me and only me” one. I stopped caring about the results, and it made all the difference.

Without caring about the result and focusing only on performing my best, I grew more confident in my abilities, and when the time came to race, I faced it with a sense of calm that I didn’t know I had in me. The sense of relief I had when I found out I qualified was unlike anything I had experienced before, and although there were still 3 weeks of intense training ahead of me, the worst of it was over. Those 3 weeks felt like a time warp, repeating the same routine every day, training 2-3 times a day. But it was nice to be around a group of people with a shared goal. And as the date of the South American championship grew closer, everyone started to become nervous.

And then the day to travel arrived. We packed up and left what had been our home for the last 3 weeks and headed to a different town where the competitions would take place. It was truly surreal to compete as it had been a dream of mine since I was 11. Wearing the National rowing kit and rowing in that boat and knowing it was a reality gave me a truly euphoric feeling. Finally, getting up on that podium and receiving my medal, knowing my hard work had finally paid off, was indescribable. I cannot wait to try again next year and keep making my sporting dreams become a reality.

I think rowing has taught me a lot, but overall it has taught me resilience. Especially in the summer of 2023, I learned how to push through failures and low points. There were moments when I thought giving up was the only option. Like everything I had worked for was just not enough and I should just cut my losses. But instead, I stayed, I pushed through that failure, and managed to make good out of a stressful situation. And that is a mindset that I would not have learned if it was not for this sport. I believe this sport has helped me become a better, more mature person.