Three Cheers for the OAP
I am shocked to find that a week has passed and a word has yet to be spoken about our embarkation unto the mandatory USOC Olympic Ambassador Program that took place January 25-26. I suppose, then, that the dubious honor of recounting our adventures at the OAP falls on my shoulders—since I am sure that the avid readers of RowCoachMedia are as excited about reading about the OAP as we were to attend.
2008 marked the first year ever that the USOC organized programming for all of the nation’s Olympic hopefuls focused exclusively on the role of the “Olympic Ambassador” and its privileges and responsibilities. Athletes from all over the country and from many of the thirty one different summer games disciplines gathered in San Francisco last weekend for a two-day event led by the USOC, former Olympians, and an improvisational theater group called Performance of a Lifetime. The goal of the programming was to “[reaffirm] the wonderful example many of [us] currently display at competitions and in [our] communities,” and to pass along the understanding that “it only takes one poor example to taint all the hard work and goodwill generated by the majority of America’s athletes.”
The weekend started off with a bang…also known as a four hour flight delay due to inclement weather in the Bay Area. We ladies spent the delay in the “comfort” of the San Diego airport. However some of the men’s team on an earlier flight were not so lucky, and got to spend the delay in a holding pattern, and then on the tarmac in Oakland. A rousing game of “would you rather?” with Susan kept us entertained while the flight time got pushed back later and later until we weren’t sure if we were going to get to San Francisco at all. United came through for us, though, and we made it to the San Francisco Hilton Towers just a few minutes before dinnertime—enough time to stash our luggage and meet and greet our male counterparts just in from Clemson.
We had missed some of Friday’s programming, including the session on Chinese culture (which I had been looking forward to most), but we were kept busy with other sessions late into the evening which included (but was not limited to): about 200 of us walking around a room in slow motion and speaking gibberish to one another, rolling around on the ground, and drawing pictures. Little did I know by the end of the weekend I would have zapped, boinged, and whooshed a number of my teammates as well as having roleplayed myself into a relationship with a man plagued with psoriasis and hemorrhoids…but what else is new?
The purpose of these exercises was to get us to “get the most out of the programming” by having us throw our typical social inhibitions to the wayside and immerse ourselves in the culture and spirit of the weekend’s training. Some were more willing to do so than others, but I think we were all able to share laughs over our activities while still communicating the goals of the people at POAL and the USOC. A few of the major topics we covered in discussion during large and small group sessions were:
Additionally, one of the discussion topics I found to be especially pertinent to my participation in the conference was the shared feeling of prematurity in attending an OAP before having been selected to the Beijing delegation. In spending the weekend with a variety of athletes representing other sports, we were able to meet synchronized swimmers, boxers, and others who already have their tickets to China. Their qualifiers and selection processes have been played out and there are athletes out there that know, and whose families know, that they are already signed up to get to Beijing and compete six months from now. For those of us with particularly late qualifiers or selection (USRowing names June 25th as the final naming date this year), attending a conference essentially designed for chosen delegates seems a bit like putting the cart before the horse. I know as an athlete not yet selected that I have a primary goal of making the team, and that goal has to come before I even begin to think about travel plans, visas, or telling my family or absolutely anything else. Make the team. That’s it. Nothing else matters if I don’t get selected. Yet there we sat for the better part of two days, talking about walking the walk and filling a role that hasn’t become real for us yet. It wasn’t easy to compare notes on the subject with athletes already on their way, but it was interesting and exciting to learn about other athletes’ journeys through selection and qualification.
I felt the best part of the conference was coming together with so many athletes from all over the U.S., and getting to hear their stories. There are a lot of Olympic sports that I know very little about—despite the fever and press that surrounds the Games every quadrennium. And I found that the same was true for our sport to other athletes, as many of the men and women I talked to knew very little about our training, or about or qualification processes. No one seemed irritated by this general lack of shared knowledge between athletes though, and we all took our turns happily explaining how things worked. It is an exciting prospect to think about possibly seeing some of these same friends at the Olympic Village in Beijing this August.
And as always, it was great to see the men’s team after having been separated from them since November. We also got two free t-shirts out of the deal!
Amazing Awaits,
--MK