It takes individual effort and teamwork to make the boat go, and Riley Knight showed both those attributes at junior national team trials.
The 17-year-old from the Nanaimo Rowing Club was selected to compete for her country at the CanAmMex Regatta in Sarasota, Fla. from July 16-17. It will be her first experience representing Rowing Canada at an international event.
“It’s huge,” she said. “It’s not worlds, but CanAmMex, to wear the maple leaf, it makes me really proud and I’m super excited.”
Knight earned her spot based on her performance at trials in Welland, Ont. earlier this summer. Trials were intense, she said.
“The first day it was all single, you are [trying to row] the fastest, go, go, go,” she said. “And then the second and third day you kind of have to ditch that whole mindset and you have to learn how to row with people you’ve never rowed with before, really well. Trying to ditch that mindset of ‘I’m the fastest’ to ‘we’re the fastest’ is a challenge in itself.”
She had a pretty good idea afterward that she was part of the team’s plans, and was “super pumped” that the Nanaimo Rowing Club’s Craig Rutherford was chosen as a coach for the event.
Rowing Canada will send three quads worth of rowers, and will determine at the regatta how it will break the athletes down into doubles and singles competitors.
In addition to the CanAmMex, there’s a lot more rowing in Knight’s future. Just before leaving for Florida, she will compete at Rowing B.C. championships at Victoria’s Elk Lake. Then at the end of the summer, the Wellington Secondary School grad will head to London, Ont. row with the University of Western Ontario program.
“Their boathouse is shared with the women’s and men’s rowing national team there, so they get to see them, and they have tons of really good coaches there,” Knight said.
In the meantime, she said she’ll stick with her training program. Practising with the Nanaimo Rowing Club is productive, with a lot of high-level athletes around Knight’s age division.
“We definitely use it within our training to push each other to get better,” she said. “And also to see, on the water, oh, that’s what that looks like, technique-wise, because you can’t see yourself when you’re rowing. So they teach you just as much as your coach does.”
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