On the verge of transferring from Seattle University, Gig Harbor grad tried rowing and found a home

Rowing was not why Abigail Adams went to Seattle University.

In fact, she wasn’t recruited to attend there for athletics at all. Adams’ motivation was to join the nursing program because she always had that dream in the back of her mind.

She fell in love with the idea of taking care of people at a young age because she would tend to her mother and also enjoyed the stories her grandmother shared with her about nursing.

However, after a year of feeling like Seattle University was not the right fit for her, rowing became the reason why she stayed.

“I started [rowing] my sophomore year and I rode this last quarter. I rode all of last year and then I came to school for nursing and for rowing just this last quarter,” she said. “In my anatomy class, the girl sitting in front of me was wearing a rowing sweatshirt one day and it just got me thinking.”

Adams’ freshman year was, in her own words, a struggle. She was not able to establish a community of friends her first year out of Gig Harbor High School.

That led Adams to start thinking about whether or not she wanted to still attend Seattle U. But that spark of curiosity she had after seeing a classmate’s sweatshirt got the ball rolling for her.

“I sent the coach an email. I really felt like it was being called from God almost because this was kind of the last resort,” she said. “I wanted to transfer and told my parents I was transferring schools. And I said ‘okay, I’m just going to join the rowing team.’ I really felt called to it. It changed my entire experience at school, it felt like a different school.”

While writing the initial email to the coach, Adams felt nervous inquiring about something so unfamiliar to her. She grew up playing sports like soccer and running track; nothing remotely close to rowing.

That didn’t stop her from meeting with coach Jenny Park, signing up on the roster and essentially walking onto the team for her sophomore year.

“Anyone can walk on the team, but you’re not really guaranteed a seat to race and so it’s competitive in that sense. You’re trying out to race in a certain boat,” she said. “They make it pretty fair in trying everyone to race, everyone has a pretty good shot… [Coach Park] told me that rowing is all year, from September to May.”

A typical day of training for Adams and the rest of her team begins at 5 a.m., a 20 minute drive to South Lake Union and between 90 minutes to two hours on the water.

Pair that with weight training a couple of days out of the week and balancing the course load a nursing student normally has, and Adams’ all of a sudden found her new community. There are even three other nursing students on the rowing team to give her that extra level of connectivity.

“I’ve had classes at 10:15 so it gives [me] enough time to come back, eat, shower and head to class. I feel like it’s a perfect time actually… It works out really well,” Adams said. “There’s actually three other nursing students who are in my program who are on the team. There’s four of us total, that’s how I manage school work, we just do it together.”

As a member of the rowing team, Adams has found that sense of belonging that she was hoping to find as a freshman.

Teammates are always cheering for each other, pushing one another to get a faster time and all-around be a better rowing team in competitions.

They even have a team slogan that they all believe in: Stronger Together.

“The reason why I love it so much is definitely part of the reason I joined, for that community aspect,” Adams said. “I’ve never had a team so encouraging. Because it’s not an individual sport, one person doesn’t row the boat, you encourage your team. You want every single person on your team to be stronger because the boat is going to go faster.”

The team believes in working out for each other, competing with each other to make themselves better and just all around togetherness as a whole. As they see it, they’re a tight knit family.

And like many families, they have had to figure out their fair share in terms of how to practice during a worldwide pandemic.

One of the things that they have adapted to trying are smaller group practices. Adams and four other teammates practice in a smaller boat than they would use for the larger team practice.

“How practice looked like this year, we practiced in groups of five. So we were in smaller boats this quarter,” she said. “And I was actually able to do my clinical in person. I was at [University of Washington] in a labor and delivery center, but now I had to move back home because my next clinical is going to be online.”

Despite coach Park’s words that the team was the strongest it had been in years, Adams found it hard to hear that the season would be cut short after only one season race.

However, Adams and her teammates all believe that that level of cohesion and success can be reached once again.

“Hopefully I will have one season left, but you got to do what you got to do to survive COVID times,” she said. “Because Seattle is such a busy city, being on the water was the one part of my day where I felt peace. It was a time where I could pray and feel peace, and we could push each other. That was the highlight of every day.”

This story was originally published January 12, 2021 at 6:00 AM.