Gold!

Yesterday, in the last race of the day at a very windy Kailua Beach Park, my team paddled with everything we had to win against at least 10 other boats. And I got a gold medal to hold tight in my hand and take home with me. It felt so good.


It's my second gold medal and only my fourth medal ever. Gold is not unusual on our team. It's sort of expected that we'll win most of our races. But this medal is special. Yesterday I felt 100% in the boat. I didn't make a mistake, I kept my power up, and I paddled a ton on the left side to help keep us from huli-ing (flipping). I feel like I really, really earned it.

Doesn't look like we're going to win but we did! We're the boat in the back.

We beat the the second place boat by less than a half a second (that's still a win!) and the paper declared it the best race of the day.

My name in the paper!

When I was a kid I didn't play sports. I never got a trophy, a ribbon or a medal. It wasn't until high school swimming that I won anything. And even then the reward was just a ribbon if I was lucky. So these silly little medals are really exciting.