If You Had Less Courage…as a Rowing Coach

If you had less courage, you’d work with some athletes who will never make the national team.  You’d actually be a much larger rowing club without a ruthless eye for athletes who value your coaching ability, expertise, are hungry to benefit from it, make you smarter, and embrace your unique ability as a club to produce results.

If you had less courage, you wouldn’t call foul on some of the ways your club committee are spending money, chasing vapid sports science trends, playing politics, and holding your influence at bay.

If you had less courage, you’d renounce the data at your fingertips about the selected athletes’ performance. You’d absorb it but tell yourself that the laws of gravity don’t apply to you and that “things are different here” and assure us that you have your reasons for the selection compromises.

If you had less courage, you’d keep adding people to the squad because that’s what healthy clubs do, but you’d also keep your head down in the craft, working in the business instead of on it because that’s where you are comfortable. After all, you’d tell yourself, flat organisation structures are the thing these days and these new athletes are better at self-managing their performance.

But you don’t have less courage, which is why I love you.