A Final Goodbye - Perfect is...

Last night marked the official end to the 2007/2008 season. The rowing dinner is always a fun-filled event and sometimes emotional event where the season and the girls are celebrated for a job well done.

I don't usually have to formally say anything at the rowing dinner (Matt H is the boss, so he gets to do all that!), but this year I was asked to give the farewell prsentation to the seniors that were leaving the club. I have coached these girls for two seasons now (about a year and a bit)... and I was grateful to be given the opportunity to say goodbye and convey to the parents and the other girls some of what I have been through with these seven girls and the influence they have had on my life.

I'm not usually very good at speaking to that many people... coaching finds me at the back of a boat shed four or five times a week speaking to only a handful of athletes at a time. So getting up in front of 150 people was quite daunting. The farewell went off very well nevertheless, and I was glad to see (after some feedback afterwards) that most of the parents and the rest of the club shared in what I had to say.

So, as a final goodbye to Amy, Phil, Jess, Alex, Aimee, Ashley and Bron, I've posted my speech that I presented on Friday night. Keep in touch guys... even though you're not rowing with us anymore.

"About two weeks ago I was asked to say a bit about each of the 2nd year opens... and for two weeks now I’ve been struggling to come up with anything at all. I thought I could go into some stories of what they got up to during this season, but nothing felt like it fitted into a farewell speech. Maybe it’s because I have a really bad memory… but the more I thought about it, the more I came to realize that it’s hard to say anything about the individuals when they all have so much in common.

So in saying farewell to these seven valuable members of our club, let me start with some history… a brief background.

On the first weekend of March 2006, St Andrews won 3 of the 4 available gold medals in the Open age-group at the Junior National Championships. It was a tough regatta and had been a challenging season for every club. I should know… Maxine and I had to settle for Silvers because of it. For St Andrews Rowing Club and the opens whose last season it was, it was a fairytale end to a perfect season… and it was a very hard act to follow. Those who were left lived in the shadow of that victory and it was very tough trying to relive that perfection. I’m not sure that anyone realistically believed that the opens could carry on at that level, but the expectations were always at the back of our minds.

When I came to St Andrews a year ago, the reality was setting in that the Opens were not as fast as St Mary’s or St Stithian’s… or Holy Rosary, or VLC… and yet, those seven girls… the last of that group, never stopped striving for that ‘perfect’ race… that perfect result… number one. After all… only the winners get remembered - it’s a hard fact of life.

Thinking about the word ‘perfect’… I saw a movie about two weeks ago called Friday Night Lights. It’s an American Football film where the coach (Billy Bob Thornton) has this line that he always says to his athletes: ‘be perfect’… and everyone assumes that to mean ‘be the best’… ‘win’. But I don’t think it means that at all… to me, being perfect is not about winning all the time (that’s pretty impossible anyway), it’s not about being better than others (because you can’t affect how good they are, you can only be the best you can be), it’s about how you play the game… it’s the sort of person you are to those around you, it’s a trust that exists between the members of a team that they will do their very best, not for their own sake, but for the sake of those in the boat with them, perfection is about being honest to yourself and honest to your team mates that you did everything you could to make that boat or that age-group as fast as they could be…

The quality that these seven girls have in common is they are perfect… to me, to their teammates, to their coaches. They played the game better than anyone else, they never stopped fighting, they gave everything they had and then some, and helped to build an age-group that has surpassed all of my expectations… an age-group that we as a club can all be proud of.

It’s always sad saying goodbye to those who have had such an influence on our lives, but know that they have left us all with a club that is back on its feet… they are part of this phoenix that has risen out of the ashes.
Amy, Alex, Phil, Bron, Jess, Ashley and Aimee… thank you. You have been a pleasure to coach and Nick, John and myself are so honoured to have had a part to play in your lives. We’re going to miss you guys."

Thanks for an awesome year guys. Keep rowing, and keep being just the way you all are...