Opinion by Ashley Beall

Teammates. You can’t live with them and you can’t live without them.

They are the puzzle pieces that form the bigger picture.

Each individual piece is important in order for the team to be successful.

When you’re on a team, it’s basically a built-in family.

You spend a good majority of your day with them, and you know they always have your back.

But just like in a family, tensions can arise.

Right now we are in the stages of our season where we will basically all be together all the time.

It’s sometimes hard to remember not to snap at one another after a stressful practice or a tough day.

Rowing is a mentally straining sport and it can wear you down.

I’ll be honest: I’m guilty of snapping at my teammates. I sometimes get so overwhelmed that it just kind of comes out in a big burst.

It’s not their fault that I’m so upset, but I can’t help but let it out.

We’re all guilty of this at one time or another. It’s just how you move past it that counts.

At our Saturday practices, we usually have boot camp with our weights coach but this weekend he had a previous commitment, so our head coach and our assistant coach came up with drills for us instead.

We ended up finishing our practice with a 20-minute yoga session to clear our minds.

I’m not very flexible and I’ve never been really good at yoga, so I wasn’t sure what exactly I was going to take away from it.

It wasn’t until the end when our assistant coach was talking us through the stages of mentally staying strong and trying to find that ember that burns within us to keep us mentally strong and to remind us why we row.

After we finished, our head coach talked to us about how this is the breaking point in our season.

We are all going to snap and break down and get on each other, but it’s how we move past it that matters.

We’re all a part of the same boat, figuratively and literally, and we each play a key role in the boat’s success.

One person can’t win the race for us.

We have to be able to trust in each other and not take it personally when a teammate snaps or has a moment of emotional breakdown.

We move past it and focus on making the next day better than the previous ones.

Beall is a sophomore public relations and English double major and can be reached at [email protected]