The Rhetoric of PSU’s Crew Team Recruitment

Grand Valley Rowing Club
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My roommate and I constantly look for new activities to try out. We’ve dabbled in yoga, knitting club, ballroom and salsa dancing, and countless other seemingly random clubs and activities. We hold this obsession up to our intellectual curiosity, when in reality it is more likely our attempts to discover a true passion or talent while we are at Penn State and are exposed to so many activities not available in high school or in the “real world.” In any case, our most recent pursuit was the Penn State Women’s Crew (or rowing, as it’s often called) club team. We had received a flyer in our mailbox for an informational meeting. Usually such announcements go straight to the recycling bin, but this one caught our eye. Not knowing much about crew, we took a second look at the paper. The picture of smiling girls in a boat, looking like they were having the time of their lives, definitely drew us in. The rhetoric and persuasive powers from such a simple photo were unbelievable; it made us want to learn more about the Crew team and potentially join. Already remotely in shape from daily gym workouts, we figured it wouldn’t hurt to attend the meeting.

Fitsugar
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The night listed for the meeting on the announcement came around, and we headed out. If we thought the flyer was enough to influence us to join, the team was even more convincing. Yeah, we would have to get up at 5:30 every morning for the 6:15 workouts, but the camaraderie and amazing workouts promised seemed to make it worth it. The girls were extraordinarily friendly and perky (especially since they’d been up since 5:30!), pointing out various pros, humorously including the fact that the boys on the team were cute, but also maintaining complete honesty. They were sure to warn us that our bodies would hurt immensely and it would be a love-hate relationship with the sport. However, we immediately felt as if we fit in, and laughed constantly with the team. And we found ourselves stumbling out of bed the next morning before the sun had even risen and dragging ourselves to what was promised to be a workout that would put us in pain. But a good pain, apparently. And it was – two full hours of intense cardio, abdominal workouts, skill practice rowing on the ergometer, and an absolutely insane circuit-training route.

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By the end, I certainly felt muscles I previously didn’t know I had. I felt good though. Good enough to come back the next day. They had successfully lured in my roommate and me. We were pumped; we were ready to commit. Unfortunately, the end of practice also brought with it what would be the end of our short careers as rowers: the news that we would have to pay a four hundred dollar fee. All the effectual rhetoric in the world couldn’t convince us, two essentially broke college students, to pay that.