May 21, 2001

Meredith Krull is a rising senior from Raleigh and a member of the UNC rowing team. Following the graduation of teammate Laura Fogt, Krull has stepped in to provide TarHeelBlue.com readers with an inside look at her team and the experience of being a varsity athlete at North Carolina.

Hi! I'm Meredith Krull, and I'm a rising senior on the UNC women's rowing team. I know Laura Fogt has done a fabulous job corresponding with all of you for the past two years, and I am tremendously excited to be the newest author of Rowing Along!

So much has happened since we competed at the ACC Championships on April 28. The night after the race we held our annual team banquet, an event that everyone looks forward to. Everyone worked really hard to make this year's banquet the most memorable ever. There were audio-visual presentations from the coaching staff as well as from the athletes.

In addition, many awards were given out. Some awards were serious, such as junior Kelley Gates receiving the Carolina Spirit award. However, some were exhibitions of our team's great sense of humor, such as sophomore coxswain Sarah Ketchie being named, "Most likely to need a forklift to get into her boyfriend's car!" It was a true testament that while we are all focused on doing what it takes to go fast, we still have a good time!

I left the banquet convinced that I had just experienced every emotion known to mankind. We laughed at all the inside jokes, we cried when Joel expressed his sincere gratitude to this year's seniors for their dedication to our team, and we left having a better understanding of why it is we are so in love with our sport.

This sense of purpose, along with our intensified appreciation of our experiences here as a part of UNC athletics, gave us the extra energy and motivation to keep focused on training for South/Central Sprints May 12-13. We knew that as the end of the season quickly approached, we had to treasure each practice that we would have together as a group. And we did.

When we rowed over the course last Friday in Oak Ridge, it was clear to everyone that our development as athletes and as a team had reached its highest point of the season. We carried ourselves as true Carolina athletes. We had come together. We raced each race as hard as we could and when it was all over we shook hands with our colleagues from Michigan and wished them luck at the NCAA Championship. There were no regrets, only a feeling of accomplishment.

Finally, when we returned to Chapel Hill, we looked forward to our last two days together. Each of us knew this entailed a series of tests on the ergometer. We were all tired from the weekend, physically and emotionally drained. However, each athlete stepped into the erg room on Monday morning ready to commit to finishing out the season with the same intensity we have on race day. For our seniors, it was their opportunity to prove what they had accomplished. For the others, it showed us where we had come and where we need to go. It was a great way to end the year.

What was most remarkable about the last few weeks of the season is the incredible growth of Carolina Rowing. It is so timely that as we prepare for the departure of our seniors, the women who were a part of the first women's rowing team at UNC, we take each lesson they learned, each experience they shared and come up with the original mission of Carolina Rowing. We pull hard, but we have a lot of fun, too!

Each of us has exciting plans for the summer! Look for updates every couple of weeks to hear about Coach Joel Furtek's trip to the Henley Royal Regatta and what each of us up to!

Yours in Carolina Blue,

Mer