Ashley “Didi”: My Passion

Video: Crew

Footage shows Didi and teammates rowing on the Connecticut River; Didi speaking directly to the camera; crew coach and Senior Lecturer in Physical Education and Athletics Jeanne Friedman speaking to the crew team; team members picking up and carrying their boat to and from the water; team competing in a race surrounded by cheering spectators

Audio from video

Ashley:

“I started [crew] in high school. I was looking for a new sport to do; something new because I felt it was a new time in my life and just a new step for me. What goes through my mind when I’m on the river—in any boat, in any situation—is really the ‘strokes’—the other woman who are in my boat. What are they giving to be there at that moment? What are they sacrificing? The time, the people they could be with, the work they could be catching up on. What are they sacrificing? It’s about the sacrifices that you make for each other. What you give and what you take. And it has to be at some kind of equilibrium between the two for people to become one.”

Coach Friedman:

“Didi is one of those great athletes who not only is a great athlete but just has a good heart. Always willing to do whatever you want her to do. Very dependable. Very reliable, which is why the team voted her to be a captain. And she’s also one of those people who just…you know she’s not going to let go. Until it’s over, she’s in the battle for everything she’s worth.”

Ashley:

“Jeannie, my coach, is awesome. I think she’s very inspirational. She’s someone I can go to at anytime and talk to about anything, though we love to talk about crew. Jeannie’s a woman who shows her teammates and shows her rowers that you can be anyone you want to be, that you can be any size, any kind of woman, and survive and make a living for yourself and stand out.”

Coach Friedman:

“You know it’s not a popularity contest because it’s not that you have to love your strokes—it’s not that you even have to like them—but there’s got to be something that is in them that inspires you. You’ve got to have that inner, inner something that people respect. And I think Didi has it.”

Ashley:

Trying to work as one in a boat and trying to become one with your teammates I think is the biggest challenge in life. A lot of people talk about how crew is not about achieving things as a boater, as teammates, but it’s [about] achieving things in life. And I think that that’s a great lesson to be able to open up to people; to be able to tell them and to ask them what they want in return from you and then to be able to give it. I think if people know how to reach out to others and how to compromise or to learn what their weakness and strengths are and to be proud of them, I think it’s the most beautiful thing. Crew for me is kind of another world. It’s a time for me to escape into and to enjoy and to connect with people on another level as you have to do to be able to move a boat.

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