In her debut as a coxswain, Katelin Snyder steered the boat into a dock.
“The hull cracked in two places,” she said. “Our boat man couldn’t fix the boat. They had to send it back to Vespoli [a manufacturer] to get repaired.”
That was high school. Snyder then went to college, to the University of Washington’s storied rowing program, where she set a precedent.
“At school, we did swim lessons in the lake,” she said. “It was like a 52-degree lake. And I’m from Florida. It got cold, and my limbs stopped moving, and I started to sink.