Life as a walk-on rower: Karina’s story

“As a walk-on, it feels like you are starting lengths down, and you keep on pushing and pushing as hard as you can, hoping you’ll catch up whilst not knowing where the other boats are or how much you are moving.”

From a small town in North Carolina, Karina is currently in her Junior year at Princeton University and walked onto the rowing team in the fall of her freshman year. 

Like many walk-ons, Karina found joining a group of athletes who were performing at the highest level of the sport in their hometown daunting. After joining, it’s a battle to catch up, having to learn years’ worth of the sport in a single semester to make the team. 

Growing up, sport was always in Karina’s life. From learning to ride a bike at the age of two to playing football on a co-ed team with her brother at the age of four, she had an insatiable appetite for new challenges. And, being the daughter of rowers and one of five siblings, competition was in her blood. In 1996, Karina’s mother was part of the Princeton women’s crew, the same year Lori Dauphiny was appointed head coach. It has been 29 years, and Dauphiny has seen mother and daughter alike pass through, making their mark and leaving an impact. 

For Karina though, her athletic journey growing up was not straightforward.

For Karina though, her athletic journey growing up saw many changes. In late elementary school through early middle school, she veered away from sports in general and a lack of enthusiasm set in, but this didn’t last long. If one has the natural inclination towards sports, it will always find its way back to the person.

It found its way back to Karina through track. Karina’s event was hurdles, often 55m hurdles but sometimes alternative distances: she was powerful and could jump high at speed. In this period of her life, she would learn valuable life lessons from her coaches, Coach Burton and Coach Shelf.  They were adamant about having an influence, setting an example and proving to the group of adolescents that anything was possible if you just showed up. 

“Not many of my teammates were able to drive, so I found myself driving around for hours doing a carpool to practice,” she tells me. 

“There was an understanding that if people weren’t down at the track, where else would they be? Most people were running because they had nowhere else to be.”

This instilled a valuable notion that if her peers could show up with nothing but themselves and a tracksuit then she, coming from a warm family home, could do so much with having support and being supportive. Although she had this, in many ways Karina felt lost in high school, and this is where she explained she started to grow her faith and respect in God as he guided her through these tough times. 

The track coach was never easy on the group and had strict rules in place to keep the group in line, emphasising that if they ‘talked back’ or showed up late, they could be subject to endless burpees and infinite track laps. Even getting a bad grade in school would mean hill sprints. It was that simple. 

Karina said, “He would walk around with a deck of cards. If we did something wrong, we would have to pull from the deck of cards and add a zero to the number on the card we pulled. That would be how many burpees we would have to do.”

Despite this toughness, Coach Burton was kind and generous and wanted to make a change in this group’s lives and the community as a whole. Karina even noticed that when it started getting cold, Coach Burton would go home, grab a stack of jumpers from his closet and bring them down to the track for individuals who didn’t own warmer layers.

“People weren’t running to win a national championship. They were running because they needed to be there,” Karina tells me.

Guided by her coaches and her Christian faith, Karina continued to work hard.

Knowing that rowing is a tough sport that takes no prisoners, Karina had already learned and experienced more than she needed to make her mentally tough for the sport. But for Karina it was never really about the experiences she had had or what she could do, but rather a drive from within and a call from God. Being a faithful Christian, Karina had always turned to God for guidance and foresight into gaining an idea of the path she could take. 

“I just don’t know how anybody could do this sport without a purpose, without knowing that you will be rewarded for your hard work at the end of it” she said.

One day, Karina’s coach showed up slightly late to practice. They were all warming up on the track, making small talk, and wondering where Coach Burton was. To their surprise, he showed up in a full black suit, having come straight from a funeral and refusing to take his suit off. He wanted to send a message. Coach Burton told the group that a student whom he used to coach had just passed away. Learning this led Coach Burton to think of something momentous to inspire the group. He reminded them that they wake up every day, alive and well, and his former athlete wouldn’t get that gift anymore, so what were they going to make of it? Whilst Coach Burton seemed to be serious about the win, looking back, Karina feels that there was more to his toughness than an intention to go fast. 

With that, the group trained together hard, not necessarily for the win but to make moves in their life and do something purposeful with it. Every day, they just showed up.

After sustaining a foot injury at the end of senior year, Karina refused to lose her fitness, using biking, erging, and gym time to stay fit.

Standing on the start line at regionals, she knew her foot was still not ready, but she decided to take the leap anyway. Then there was no turning back, no boot to put on. The gun went off – and she prayed to finish the race without fainting or making an already bad injury worse. 

“I think my mum just closed her eyes because she wasn’t sure if I was even going to be able to finish because my foot was so messed up. But I did finish it,” Karina recalls.

Looking back, Karina is proud of herself for finishing that race because it showed a moment of strength and proved that even when running hurt, she could push through and finish it.

“I didn’t win,” she tells me, “but this wasn’t important. What was important was showing up.”

When the end of high school rolled around, Karina couldn’t help feeling there was more to be done for her in track. But, after contacting the Princeton track coaches, she was heartbroken to learn her times weren’t fast enough. She resigned herself to giving up sport altogether. But one conversation at the end-of-year banquet changed that. And it was a conversation with her old coach.

“You have such a talent for sport Karina. Don’t waste it.” Arriving at Princeton, Karina’s mother convinced her to try rowing to follow in her own footsteps.

So, on a sunny day in October, Karina found herself trudging down the winding cobblestoned path amongst a vast array of woodland trees to the boathouse. Thrown into a whirlwind of new faces, arms-body-legs-legs-body-arms, and a whole new set of rowing vocabulary to learn, Karina embraced the new opportunity.

She recalls former assistant coach Steve Hope telling her, “We don’t have a walk on team so we don’t know where to put you, but for next week you are going to be the first thing on my mind.”

For this, Karina was grateful and being given the opportunity to learn a new skill on such a large programme where she wasn’t the priority at this point felt like a gift. The coaches then organised for Karina to train with the women’s lightweight squad, still picking up the basic skills and learning the endurance element of the sport.

“Coming from doing track to rowing was such a shock. I mean we do 5ks – five thousand meters – that is ten times any race I had ever done,” Karina admitted. 

This change was a shock to the system at first, but after much training, one’s body becomes acclimatised to the prolonged distances and tests. After a few months of training with the lightweight squad, Karina was put to the test. If she could hold her split under a certain target for 20 minutes, she could join the team. All she had to do was finish and, by rethinking the same challenges previously overcome, like her final race at regionals with an injured foot, she knew she could do it. With the faith of God under belt, she lent forward, prayed, and picked up the handle. 

The end of this test coincided with the inauguration of Karina’s debut on the team and she started joining in with daily practices. Initially, this was on the erg, being in the midst of the winter season, but then they shifted to Lake Carnegie, which opened up a new way of living and experience in the sport. 

Moving forward, Karina has stopped mapping out her future because it’s so subject to change that she feels it would be pointless. 

“If you had asked me 3 years ago what I would be doing, I would not have said rowing” she said.

Being a walk-on certainly wasn’t easy for Karina. Blaming herself for technical struggles in the boat and questioning her own ability, the athlete doubled down and worked even harder. Every day, she would head to the tanks after practice and do 50 catches, in a rowing sense of course.

“I just can’t help but want to get better,” Karina adds.

Next year, Karina will be moving into her senior year and hopes to make an even stronger impression on the team. Although Karina started a few boat lengths down in her freshman fall, she has been making moves and closing margins ever since. Both on and off the water, she has become a teammate that I myself and many others are inspired by and aspire to be like. We all look forward to seeing what she does with her tall tales, high spirits and unique experiences which will no doubt contribute to wider changes and shifting marks. 

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