Chapter Four
Four
Inside her white vinyl tent, Carla is perched in a director’s chair, her windbreaker’s declaration of TEAM USA facing me. She lets out a snort of laughter directed toward the laptop balanced on her knees. Which is playing…a TikTok video?
It’s the last thing I’d ever have expected to find my coach watching.
Actually, no, the last thing is one of those sappy rom-coms with an ensemble cast of famous people.
But TikTok would have been a very close second.
And yet, here she is, watching a screen with a profile video of young kids in unisuits doing some coordinated dance.
I clear my throat awkwardly. “Coach? You wanted to see me?”
Carla slides her laptop onto the stack of papers and clipboards adorning her makeshift desk—a card table—and tosses her reading glasses on top.
She bolts upright to face me, fists on her hips like a superhero.
Even from this angle, I have to crane my neck to look her in the eye.
I don’t dare look down. Carla’s athletes hold their chins high on and off the water.
Her eyes roam my face, and my breath stills.
“Kath.”
“Coach?”
She rubs the back of her head where her hair is buzzed close to her scalp. “Tough break on that race. What happened?”
I shake my head, trying to sort through the tangle of memories from the last hour. “I was fast off the line and settled into pace, but when I hit the thousand—”
She folds her hands, steeples her index fingers, then tilts her head. My shoulders stiffen. This is Carla’s X-ray vision pose—the one she assumes when she’s examining my soul. Or whatever is even more core to my being than that. My to-do lists, maybe.
“No,” she says. “What happened?”
I’m not sure how much I should share. I hate that she’s looking at me like she’s wondering how much disappointment I deserve. Then again, Carla has very little patience for excuses and interpersonal drama, so oversharing might backfire.
I keep it vague. “I—I had some bad personal news. Right before the race.”
She fixes me with a purse-lipped stare. “I’m sorry to hear that. But we both know this has been going on much longer than just today.”
Despite my best intentions, my eyes drop to my cracked red, white, and blue toenail paint. I suppose that’s true. I don’t have the breakup to blame for the race in France. Or the ones in Germany.
“Kath.” When I look up, Carla nudges her chin toward the director’s chair. “I need you to sit down.”
My heart freezes. Carla has been my coach for nearly four years and, for all the tough talks she’s given me, she’s never once asked me to sit down. She delivers bad news with the swift precision of a surgeon cutting out a diseased kidney. This woman has never even heard of the word coddle.
“This is about the Worlds team, isn’t it?” I ask.
She shakes her head minutely. “This is about your residency.”
“My…what?”
“Your performance in this regatta has brought down your standing rather significantly.” Her voice is uncharacteristically soft. “You no longer meet the minimum qualification for Olympic Training Center residency.”
These words punch a hole through my center. My scalp tingles and fingers go numb. It’s like my body is responding before my mind even has a chance to process what’s happening.
“You mean…”
“You’re going to have to find somewhere else to train.”
There is no air in this tent. I’m floating, like the sensation that sometimes happens during a race, in those moments when I’m in such intense pain that my mind disconnects from my body as some kind of demonic self-defense mechanism.
The training center is everything to me. Everything. It’s my home, my coaching, the literal roof over my head. The weight room, physical therapy, medical care, all of my meals. I can’t be a rower without the training center. I don’t know where I’ll live without the training center.
“I’ve…You’re telling me…”
How did this even happen? How did I miss that this was a possibility?
A few years ago, when I first qualified for training center residency, I was tracking my standing obsessively.
But I guess I’ve been so focused on everything else—my sponsorships, qualifying for Worlds, Olympic trials next year—that I started taking what I already had for granted.
“You can re-establish residency at the next qualifying event,” Carla says, not unkindly. “That would be Pan Ams.”
“Pan Ams,” I whisper.
I would have to win the Pan American Games to make a straight qualification there.
And winning seems unlikely at best, impossible at worst. I can beat the Argentine and Chilean women when I’m at the top of my game.
But the Canadian is like a tank on a Jet Ski.
I couldn’t beat her if Carla sprinkled me with fairy-coach magic dust.
My coach squints at me like she’s reading all of this mental calculus. “This isn’t a death sentence. Pan Ams won’t be until the end of September. You have two months to train.”
Train where? My sponsorships barely pay for my travel needs, so I have almost no savings. No money for rent or dues at a top-tier club. Crashing with a friend is impossible—they all live in the training center. “I don’t even know where I’ll go.”
“You’re from Berkeley, right?”
“Yes, but…” I haven’t lived in Berkeley since high school.
I’d have no other rowers for pacing, no dining hall for meals, no trainers to tape my shoulders and wrists.
I’d have to move back into my mom’s house, which can best be described as the landfall of a tropical storm.
“There’s nothing for me there. I’d be all alone. ”
“Actually, you wouldn’t.” Carla moves to her desk and flips through a stack of papers until she finds a business card near the top.
She hands it to me. “There’s a solid youth club in the East Bay.
It’s currently headed up by Adrian Crawford, a very promising coach.
I can talk to him for you, see if he’d be willing to let you work with his team.
Plus, I think going back home and training in a less demanding environment could be good for you.
Get away from the pressure of all this—just for a while. ”
I stare down at the plain-looking card—inscribed with the address where I first got on the water.
Carla is looking at me expectantly, like I’m supposed to be grateful.
I try not to look incredulous. I’ve been living in the training center for four years.
Before that, I rowed on my college varsity team.
Before that, I made the Junior Worlds team.
And, still before that, at the very beginning of it all, I learned to row at this very youth club.
“I’m sorry”—I splutter out—“you want me to train with teenagers?”
Carla purses her lips. “Is there something wrong with teenagers? Are they offensive in some way?” I’m about to stammer out an explanation but she folds her arms and plows forward.
“You need a coach and other boats to pace you. The guys will be about your speed when they’re in doubles.
And, from everything I’ve been able to tell, this coach is excellent, which is why he’s currently under consideration for a position with the junior national team. ”
“Junior national team,” I repeat.
I’m not trying to be arrogant here. Really.
It’s just that there is an order to things, a progression.
In rowing—in all sports, really—you take certain steps forward, pass certain milestones.
I’ve earned my progression. I had to train, race, and win for my spots.
Going back to training with a youth club isn’t like taking a step or two backward: It’s like nearing the end of Chutes and Ladders and getting sent back to the start.
To make it all worse, somehow, I’ll have to go from that starting place to winning Pan Ams. In two months.
I know Carla believes her athletes can do anything we set our minds to, but right now it’s like she’s saying this Adrian guy in Berkeley will teach me to sprout wings and fly over the course. It’s impossible. It’s—
I remember something. A few years ago, one of the men’s pairs lost their training center residency, but their ornery coach urged USRowing to keep them on anyway. They got to stay.
“Overrule.” I whisper the word like a prayer.
Carla blinks. “I don’t have that power.”
“Right, but you can make a recommendation. You can ask the board to override the rules.”
Carla’s scowl burrows deeper. “They won’t go for it.”
“You won’t even ask?” I say, voice rising because this is the only way forward that doesn’t involve growing a pair of wings.
“Not without concrete evidence of improvement that I can give the board to back up the recommendation,” she says. “Because it’s not just your performance that’s the problem. It’s your lack of adaptability.”
My insides flare as a frustrated growl nearly escapes my throat.
I can’t believe this is the reason she’s giving up on me.
For the last month, Carla has been obsessed with this idea that my routines have gotten too involved and are now working against me.
But every time we discuss specifics—changing how I spend my rest day, modifying my sleep schedule—I can point to clear reasons why I have the system I do.
“My routines make me a good athlete,” I say for approximately the thousandth time. I wouldn’t need to keep repeating myself if Carla listened.
“Clearly they don’t or you wouldn’t have strung together so many questionable performances.”
I step back, surprised by the sting in her voice. “There have been extenuating circumstances.”
“Such as?”
“Such as getting dumped on a dock.” I’m losing my professional cool here, but I can’t help myself. The unfairness is as palpable as fire ants coursing down my limbs.
Carla gives me a fleeting, sympathetic smile before launching back in. “And France? Germany?”
“My relationship has been on the rocks for weeks.” As soon as I say the words, I can feel the truth behind them.
Sofi was right about Maxwell. He has been the problem.
The last few weeks have been tough on me and Maxwell has only made that worse with all his pressure and opinions and disappointment.
He’s made my emotions more volatile. Thrown me off focus.
“If anything, what I need is more stability and predictability. More routine.”
Carla massages the bridge of her nose, looking like she’s counting to ten in her mind. Distantly, an announcer crackles over the loudspeakers, calling out finishes.
“All of that only hurts you,” she says. “Particularly when it starts spiraling out of control. Your refusal to see that is the problem.”
Spiraling out of control? How does that make any sense? My routines give me control.
“I need an example,” I say. When my coach narrows her eyes, I add, “Let’s discuss an example. Please.”
She taps a long finger against her folded arm, eliciting a soft whisper from her windbreaker. “Why were you arm wrestling with a stranger for a lemon bar last night?”
“How do you know about that?”
“Answer the question.”
I smooth a hand across my braid and tug at the frayed end. “I needed to eat one before my race. It’s a pre-race superstition. All athletes have them.”
“Right, but not all athletes have so many. Not all athletes have beliefs so deep-seated that they can never be changed. Not all athletes are certain they’ll fail if they don’t follow their plans precisely.
Obviously, this isn’t about a lemon bar.
It’s about how you eat, recover, and train.
It’s about how you prepare for races and whether or not you make real changes when you lose or if you just keep doubling and tripling down on the same failing strategies. ”
She presses her hand to my shoulder. “Having routines is good. Being so dependent on those routines that you’re unwilling to change them, even if they aren’t serving you anymore?
That’s not. I want you to find a way to be okay without lemon bars in your life.
Maybe some time away from the training center will help. Maybe Adrian can help, too.”
My ears ring with a high-pitched whine. She’s abandoning me. I’m going to lose my spot. I’ve already lost my spot. And—barring magic or a miracle—there’s nothing I can do to get it back.
There’s sandpaper scraping against my eyeballs. Outside, music fires alive with a pumping bass, punctuated by shouts and whoops of glee. The races are ending and the after-parties are getting warmed up—a loud, jarring overtone to the misery inside this tent.
I blink hard against the coming storm. After all of this, I’m sure as hell not going to let Carla see me cry.
Chin up. Chest forward.
“I appreciate your consideration,” I say quietly.
“I know this is tough, Kath,” Carla says. “Try to relax tonight. Get your mind off it. You can pick back up in a few days.”
I nod, fighting back tears. Carla releases me, stepping back. I’m sure she knows I want to be alone and she’s not about to stand in my way.
As I hurry toward the exit, she calls after me. “This isn’t impossible.”
Without turning, I nod and draw back the flap, using an elbow to shield my eyes from the blinding sunlight. I want to believe that, too.
But I don’t.