Elijah Lembo '21 Recruiting Profile

Crew is something that I started in my first year of high school and it quickly became my main sport and a passion of mine. I received my Black Belt in Tae Kwon Do after seven years of training and considered continuing to train alongside rowing but the time commitments competed and rowing won. I care about working to improve my skills and help my team be the best it can be. In a shell, it is about working with others and rowing for all of us. In the last 500m when it feels like all of my energy is spent, it becomes about finishing strong for the other people in my boat. To do that we have to trust and care about each other and work to build each other up. This is a skill I learned in Tae Kwon Do. When sparring it is incredibly important to be able to trust your partner and know that while they are going to push you, they will do it in a way that is beneficial. Rowing involves many partners, but it calls for a similar trust between teammates spurring each other on with good intentions.  Lack of trust and collaboration impede learning and can be potentially dangerous. As a student-athlete, asking questions about how I can improve has always been important to me, and I often check in with my coaches to see if there is anything that I can work on to improve my rowing. I do this because crew is something I love and something that I see in my future.