Facing Fear in Sport
Good Wave on the Chattahoochee River - Columbus, Georgia.
I read a New York Times article earlier this month called “What Scares the World’s Most Daring Olympians”, and I’ve been thinking about it ever since. With the Winter Olympics having just wrapped up, I witnessed athletes at the top of their game flying through the air at incredible speeds. As I read the article, I wasn’t thinking about Olympians though, I was thinking about myself and whitewater paddling.
This part stuck out to me, “The athletes who perform these daring feats are not crazy. They are not reckless. But they do have one thing in common that might surprise those of us who watch. They are scared. Every one of them.” Fear is an innate part of being human. It is the trigger that causes the fight, flight, or freeze response. It is every athlete’s best friend and greatest enemy. With too little fear, athletes get hurt. Fear keeps you alive. With too much fear, they never reach their potential. It’s debilitating. Dealing with fear is a balancing act.
It’s reassuring that even athletes at the pinnacle of their sport get scared, just like I do when I’m facing down an intimidating rapid. Sometimes I can push through, quiet the fear, and send it. Other times I have to step away, make a portage, and plan to come back another day (or not).
I have two thoughts that help me when I’m in that situation, scouting on the banks or in the eddy above a drop. The first is one pro kayaker Anna Levesque told me when I attended her Ladies of the Lower Gauley trip in 2019. She said something like, “When we’re in these situations, our brains are telling us all the negative things about how this might go wrong. Our line leader may have told us about people who have been hurt on this rapid. Don’t focus on that. Instead, tell yourself about all the ways it will go right. Think of all the friends you know who have sent this rapid successfully. Picture yourself doing it perfectly, and plan the moves you need to make to have that vision become the reality.”
The second thought I have at the top of a rapid is more of a mantra. It’s from an anecdote someone told me about Dane Jackson (one of the best whitewater kayakers in the world) from when he was a young child. I don’t know if it’s true or not. Essentially, there were some folks scouting a rapid, and Dane paddled up, heard them say they were scared, and said, “What are you scared of? It’s just water!” and then jumped into the monster feature and surfed it. So now when I’m scared, I tell myself, “It’s just water!” (Of course, it’s not the water that’s scary. It’s the rocks, sieves, undercuts, and strainers. But telling myself “it’s just water” helps me put things in perspective.)
Once I’ve paddled into a rapid and I’m past the point of no return, I only have two thoughts: 1. lean forward / 2. paddle hard.
The NYT article only focused on fear of getting hurt, though. In my experience, there’s a second type of fear in sport. Fear of being judged. Maybe it’s called something else. It's a fear of looking stupid. Fear of not being good enough. Fear of letting down your crew. But those fall under the same category. It’s made worse because I am often the only woman, or one of few women on the river. Every time I make a mistake, I wonder if other boaters are judging me as a woman instead of as an athlete.
I don’t have to wonder about it, actually. I know they do. Because when I first started getting into this sport, I was always being compared to the few other women that my friends knew. “Wow, keep that up and pretty soon you’ll be better than Sarah!” people with well-meaning intentions would say as a compliment. Sarah is a great boater, so being better than her would be a real accomplishment. But it’s not a compliment if you raise one woman up by putting another down. My comparison scale wasn’t about whose skill level was most like mine, it was about which other women they knew in the sport.
I try hard not to let these things get in my head when I’m on the river, but it’s pervasive. I like to paddle ahead or fall behind my group to practice stern squirts and other skills I’m not good at yet. I don’t want other people to see my failed attempts and think, “She’s not very good,” or worse, “She’s not as good as I thought she was.” Secondarily, they might offer tips about things I can do better when I don’t ask for them. Most of the time my friends cheer me on and encourage me, but the number of times I’ve been mansplained to while trying something out discourages me from doing so in front of an audience.
Unfortunately, I don’t have any mantras or anecdotes that help me overcome the second fear. I just have to remind myself that I love paddling, and I can be a role model to other women and girls who want to do this sport, too. If more of us are out here, trying and failing together, it’s much less intimidating. And always, more friends = more fun.
This past weekend, I was lucky enough to attend a playboating clinic with Clay Wright, another professional whitewater kayaker, and a true OG in the sport. There were playboats there to demo, but the second fear held me back. I didn’t want to look stupid. I stayed in my Antix 2.0, because I’m more comfortable in it, and I convinced myself that I would be better off applying the techniques to a boat I own and use. I regret now that I didn’t take advantage of the demo boat opportunity. Sometimes the balance of fear weighs down in the wrong direction. That regret spurred more negative thoughts: Why didn’t you take full advantage? You’ve been at this sport for four years now! Why aren’t you better? You’ll never be as good as everyone else. It’s not true, of course. I don’t aim to be a professional kayaker at the top of my sport, but I am a damn good kayaker, and getting better all the time. I don’t have to be at the top of my sport to reach the top of my game, which is where the real victory lives.
I had never met Clay Wright before this clinic, so I didn’t know what to expect. Like all professional whitewater athletes I’ve met, he was incredibly nice and supportive. My biggest takeaway from the event wasn’t the skills he was teaching me, however. It was something more important. I saw him make mistakes. A guy at the top of the sport, who has been doing this for decades, who has won multiple world championships, who invented several whitewater tricks that are considered standards today. But this weekend, he didn’t nail every trick on the first attempt. He wasn’t able to catch every wave. It was cathartic.
When I watch Olympic athletes, there’s no doubt in my mind, these people are the best of the best. They’ve trained their whole lives for this. They competed to be here, even if they get last place. When they make a mistake during their competition, it feels like an anomaly, not a commonplace occurrence. But watching Clay out there teaching and playing in the creek, I realized, even the best of the best in sport make mistakes. It’s not an anomaly at all, it’s part of the process.
If the best people in my sport aren’t perfect, why do I put that pressure on myself? The fear will always be there, I know. It needs to be. It’s what keeps me alive. But maybe I can keep learning and getting better at managing my fear. In the future, I hope my fear will continue to keep me safe, but maybe I’ll get better at keeping it from holding me back.
