Goodness, where to start. I don’t think it’s exaggerating to say that sport at Jesus really shaped my adult life – at least the social side of it!
I was never any good at sports at school, I was studious (read: nerdy goody-two-shoes) and musical, and my time was spent reading, and in choirs and orchestras. So I arrived at College with very little physical fitness, ‘not a sports person’. However, I was a 6ft tall female ‘not sports person’, so obviously I was nabbed quickly by the College rowing captain. I gave rowing a go and loved finding that there was a sport I could do, and revelled in the team spirit. My height gave me enough of an advantage to get into W1 even with still a comparative lack of fitness or coordination, and the 5-times-a-week training schedule was completely new to me, but I was happy to discover it was something I could do – I was a ‘sports person’ after all!
I kept up rowing for the first two years & rowed in the Valkyries in third year, ending with three blades and never getting bumped. Even when I finally decided to reclaim my early mornings, and gave up rowing seriously, I was a new person – a sports person – that enjoyed being active.
This saw me joining College netball (which I was still terrible at – but now with a new attitude of enjoying it anyway!), and running 1.5 miles for the first time ever to join the OTC, continuing to push myself further to get to my first 10K. At school, the annual 800m had been the worst day of the year for me (and was the furthest I had ever run), so this was an absolute revelation to me.
So I graduated, but I was now a sports person. My first job involved a lot of travel so I couldn’t do team sports, but I kept up fitness through cycling, gym classes, and running. As soon as I stopped travelling for work, I looked for a new sport to try as my Jesus sports experience had taught me sport is a sure way to meet and bond with new friends. I discovered – and fell in love with – rugby, which I play to this day. I often joke to friends that rowing was my ‘gateway sport’, and I’m forever grateful for that experience.