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Duke Rowing Origins: Ella Harris & Anne Klok
5/13/2020 3:47:00 PM | Rowing
DURHAM, N.C. – The Duke Rowing Origins continue this week with a pair of international student-athletes who had to overcome making a fundamental change when they joined the program – Anne Klok and Ella Harris.
Both team members had a wealth of experience prior to making the journey overseas to Durham, but since their earliest days in the sport, they were accustomed to sculling, or rowing with two oars – one in each hand. With sculling events not included in NCAA competitions, Klok and Harris faced the early task of readjusting both movements and mentality in order to get comfortable sweeping, or rowing with one oar.
Like many other aspects of attending college in a foreign country, this came as an uncomfortable adaptation. Klok and Harris approached the change with an open mindset, which allowed for them to accept the necessary coaching and ultimately become invaluable pieces of the program's future. Neither would claim that they assimilated seamlessly, though, and even for a veteran like Klok, she is still reminded in jest of what her rowing background looks like.
"I think it just came with everything being new," she said. "It definitely felt like I was starting over in a lot of ways. I still hear that I row like a sculler, so I guess I haven't fully made the transition. It's very different than what I was used to."
If there is still room to grow for Klok, one might not notice it by glancing at her résumé with the Blue Devils. The junior from Amsterdam stepped in her freshman year and appeared as a mainstay in the varsity-4 lineup, helping the group notch multiple first-place finishes throughout the season and ending the campaign with a second-place performance at the ACC Championship. Her sophomore season proved to be even better, as she helped lead the boat to Duke's first ACC gold medal in program history and followed that up with a fifth-place finish in the Petite Final at the NCAA Championships.
But with her early career accomplishments indicating that the transition to sweeping came naturally, Klok maintains that it was anything but.
"In a lot of ways it's the same, obviously," she said. "You have an oar and you have to go fast. You use a lot of the same muscles, but it's the little things that feel like they're automatic in sculling that you have to relearn in sweeping.
"It's also kind of a different philosophy of looking at the stroke. I always hear that it has to be longer, bigger strokes, whereas with sculling, it matters more to be precise with your blade placement and it doesn't really matter if you have a really long stroke."
As Harris put it, the mental hurdle she had to solve involved starting from the ground up, and being used to the uncomfortably that came with a brand new fundamental approach.
"I'd never swept before coming to Duke," Harris said. "I did feel almost like a walk-on when I started. When you're coming from sculling, you're used to everything being so symmetrical when you row. When you go to sweeping, it just felt so wrong that I found it really difficult to actually put any power down in the boat for ages because I was scared I was going to injure my back, even though coach was like 'You're fine.' It felt so twisted and weird."
However for Harris, the tutelage from Assistant Coach Kendall Schmidt allowed her to make sense of the adjustment while also providing her own feedback so that her foundation in sweeping was built around comfortability.
"At the beginning, when I was learning to sweep, Kendall coached me the most," she said. "She helped me so much and tried to compare things. Her and Simon [Cooke Carcagno], also, tried to relate things to what you do in sculling to help me turn it in my head to work it out for sweeping. Kendall helped me a lot as well by letting me switch sides and seeing which side I thought felt the best. If I had questions, which I very often did, she was always open to questions and helping explain things to me."
The strenuous first couple months with the program for Harris paid off in the spring of her freshman year. The London native jumped into the varsity-8 lineup to start the season, helping the boat earn a top-three finish in each of its first four races. She went on to help the 2V8 boat capture silver at the ACC Championship before competing with the 2V8 squad at the NCAA Championships in early June.
For Harris, though, rowing at Duke was nothing more than a distant possibility when she began the sport as a junior in high school. She had grown up playing netball and lacrosse, two sports that were prominent at Queen Anne's School, where she attended. She first discovered rowing through a British government-funded talent identification program, and similar to her transition to sweeping, the initial stages of learning how to get started were often tumultuous.
"I had to learn to row in a racing single, which is really hard to do because it's tiny and unstable," she said. "For the first three months of rowing, I spent more time in the River Thames in the middle of winter than actually in a boat. I would say that it definitely wasn't straight away when I was like 'I love this.' I was very slow starting at first, but it's the same for everyone in the program that I was on."
Klok's career in rowing, meanwhile, was somewhat inevitable. Both her father, Jacques, and mother, Anita Meiland, competed past college, leading to what Anne described as a heavy influence. In fact, her mother's appearance on the international stage served its own tangible reminder of what the family sport was anytime Klok went to eat a home meal.
"Growing up, my Mom went to the Olympics and we have a participation certificate hanging up in the kitchen," Klok said. "We always were watching her rowing races on the computer, live streaming them. They took me to a Junior World Championship in France when I was five or six years old. I think from when I was very young, I was like 'This is cool, I want to do this.' It was never a question."
But when she mapped out her own path in the sport as a 10-year-old novice, Klok had to do so with a sense of individuality, instead of taking the approach of trying to mimic the success of her parents.
"There definitely was a lot of influence from my parents, so I've always had to try and separate," she said. "Once I got better and got onto the national stage in Netherlands, it became more clear that I had to separate myself from my Mom and that it was my own achievements. Partially, that's also why I wanted to come to the states. I wanted my own start, my own team and no parental influences."
Although she admits there were moments when she felt like she had to live up to the standards they set, Klok never doubted her own passion and enjoyment in rowing. As both her interest and status across rowing circles grew, she noticed that many of her peers were making the decision to attend college in the U.S. and compete for NCAA programs. According to Klok, the potential of studying abroad while rowing at the highest amateur level was an exciting combination.
"I knew I still wanted to continue the sport, so once I started to get recruited at the Junior World Championships, I knew that was something I really wanted to do – to row in college and also to combine athletics and academics," she said. "It seemed like that would be a really good place to do that, and it was obviously a really cool opportunity to go to a different country and different culture."
The reality of rowing at an American university appeared to be far-fetched for Harris, even when she recognized that it could take her further than lacrosse or netball in England. It wasn't until she was researching what college coaches were looking for, when she noticed that even as a novice her 1,000-meter erg time was "not far off," that she viewed collegiate rowing as an achievable goal. She recalls how around the same time she started hitting new marks consistently, she was contacted by Associate Head Coach/Recruiting Director Chase Graham. Those talks, according to Harris, were what ultimately helped her decide on Duke even while her recruiting process was ongoing.
"All the schools I looked at were so different to anything I was used to," she said. "It literally was just the little things. For me, the main thing about Duke was that I felt like I had a good relationship with Chase. Through recruiting, he just put in a lot more effort, I thought, than other coaches. Duke was my first official visit that I came on, and straight away I was like 'There's no point in me going on my other officials."
When Klok and Harris got to Duke in 2017 and 2018, respectively, it was not only sweeping that they had to acclimate to. As international student-athletes, both were exposed to lots of unfamiliarity, which as Klok acknowledged, presented its own set of challenges.
"It was very different in a lot of ways," she said. "Going to college is a big transition for anyone, even if you're staying in the same country. I had to get used to a new language and a new culture, and people interact very differently than they do in the Netherlands. That definitely took some getting used to."
Now that they are fully immersed in both the program and the cultural aspects of American college life, Klok and Harris acknowledge the unique comradery that they experience as Duke rowers, no matter whether the team is together or, in this case, separated for over two months.
"It's amazing," Harris said. "We talk to each other every day, even now when we've been home for eight weeks. Even though we have such big time differences, I talk to girls in New Zealand and Australia every day on a flipped time zone. Everyone is so close and everyone is still talking to the seniors so much."
"I think we did a lot of good work on our culture this year and last year as well," Klok said. "It was an adjustment coming in for me as a freshman because I was the only international student in my class, so I remember I had a lot of questions that seemed very obvious to all my peers in my class. I think we've done a very good job of being accepting of everyone and answering all those questions."
And although the 2020 spring offered just one official meet for the Blue Devils, Harris maintains that the season being cut short will only spark a greater motivation as the collective goal remains the same.
"I feel we'll come back much stronger," she said. "We were already really strong, but just having something taken away from you, like what we had, just makes you realize how much it means to you and how much you want it. I think that this happening has made everyone want it even more and has made everyone appreciate it even more."
#GoDuke
Both team members had a wealth of experience prior to making the journey overseas to Durham, but since their earliest days in the sport, they were accustomed to sculling, or rowing with two oars – one in each hand. With sculling events not included in NCAA competitions, Klok and Harris faced the early task of readjusting both movements and mentality in order to get comfortable sweeping, or rowing with one oar.
Like many other aspects of attending college in a foreign country, this came as an uncomfortable adaptation. Klok and Harris approached the change with an open mindset, which allowed for them to accept the necessary coaching and ultimately become invaluable pieces of the program's future. Neither would claim that they assimilated seamlessly, though, and even for a veteran like Klok, she is still reminded in jest of what her rowing background looks like.
"I think it just came with everything being new," she said. "It definitely felt like I was starting over in a lot of ways. I still hear that I row like a sculler, so I guess I haven't fully made the transition. It's very different than what I was used to."
If there is still room to grow for Klok, one might not notice it by glancing at her résumé with the Blue Devils. The junior from Amsterdam stepped in her freshman year and appeared as a mainstay in the varsity-4 lineup, helping the group notch multiple first-place finishes throughout the season and ending the campaign with a second-place performance at the ACC Championship. Her sophomore season proved to be even better, as she helped lead the boat to Duke's first ACC gold medal in program history and followed that up with a fifth-place finish in the Petite Final at the NCAA Championships.
But with her early career accomplishments indicating that the transition to sweeping came naturally, Klok maintains that it was anything but.
"In a lot of ways it's the same, obviously," she said. "You have an oar and you have to go fast. You use a lot of the same muscles, but it's the little things that feel like they're automatic in sculling that you have to relearn in sweeping.
"It's also kind of a different philosophy of looking at the stroke. I always hear that it has to be longer, bigger strokes, whereas with sculling, it matters more to be precise with your blade placement and it doesn't really matter if you have a really long stroke."
As Harris put it, the mental hurdle she had to solve involved starting from the ground up, and being used to the uncomfortably that came with a brand new fundamental approach.
"I'd never swept before coming to Duke," Harris said. "I did feel almost like a walk-on when I started. When you're coming from sculling, you're used to everything being so symmetrical when you row. When you go to sweeping, it just felt so wrong that I found it really difficult to actually put any power down in the boat for ages because I was scared I was going to injure my back, even though coach was like 'You're fine.' It felt so twisted and weird."
However for Harris, the tutelage from Assistant Coach Kendall Schmidt allowed her to make sense of the adjustment while also providing her own feedback so that her foundation in sweeping was built around comfortability.
"At the beginning, when I was learning to sweep, Kendall coached me the most," she said. "She helped me so much and tried to compare things. Her and Simon [Cooke Carcagno], also, tried to relate things to what you do in sculling to help me turn it in my head to work it out for sweeping. Kendall helped me a lot as well by letting me switch sides and seeing which side I thought felt the best. If I had questions, which I very often did, she was always open to questions and helping explain things to me."
The strenuous first couple months with the program for Harris paid off in the spring of her freshman year. The London native jumped into the varsity-8 lineup to start the season, helping the boat earn a top-three finish in each of its first four races. She went on to help the 2V8 boat capture silver at the ACC Championship before competing with the 2V8 squad at the NCAA Championships in early June.
For Harris, though, rowing at Duke was nothing more than a distant possibility when she began the sport as a junior in high school. She had grown up playing netball and lacrosse, two sports that were prominent at Queen Anne's School, where she attended. She first discovered rowing through a British government-funded talent identification program, and similar to her transition to sweeping, the initial stages of learning how to get started were often tumultuous.
"I had to learn to row in a racing single, which is really hard to do because it's tiny and unstable," she said. "For the first three months of rowing, I spent more time in the River Thames in the middle of winter than actually in a boat. I would say that it definitely wasn't straight away when I was like 'I love this.' I was very slow starting at first, but it's the same for everyone in the program that I was on."
Klok's career in rowing, meanwhile, was somewhat inevitable. Both her father, Jacques, and mother, Anita Meiland, competed past college, leading to what Anne described as a heavy influence. In fact, her mother's appearance on the international stage served its own tangible reminder of what the family sport was anytime Klok went to eat a home meal.
"Growing up, my Mom went to the Olympics and we have a participation certificate hanging up in the kitchen," Klok said. "We always were watching her rowing races on the computer, live streaming them. They took me to a Junior World Championship in France when I was five or six years old. I think from when I was very young, I was like 'This is cool, I want to do this.' It was never a question."
But when she mapped out her own path in the sport as a 10-year-old novice, Klok had to do so with a sense of individuality, instead of taking the approach of trying to mimic the success of her parents.
"There definitely was a lot of influence from my parents, so I've always had to try and separate," she said. "Once I got better and got onto the national stage in Netherlands, it became more clear that I had to separate myself from my Mom and that it was my own achievements. Partially, that's also why I wanted to come to the states. I wanted my own start, my own team and no parental influences."
Although she admits there were moments when she felt like she had to live up to the standards they set, Klok never doubted her own passion and enjoyment in rowing. As both her interest and status across rowing circles grew, she noticed that many of her peers were making the decision to attend college in the U.S. and compete for NCAA programs. According to Klok, the potential of studying abroad while rowing at the highest amateur level was an exciting combination.
"I knew I still wanted to continue the sport, so once I started to get recruited at the Junior World Championships, I knew that was something I really wanted to do – to row in college and also to combine athletics and academics," she said. "It seemed like that would be a really good place to do that, and it was obviously a really cool opportunity to go to a different country and different culture."
The reality of rowing at an American university appeared to be far-fetched for Harris, even when she recognized that it could take her further than lacrosse or netball in England. It wasn't until she was researching what college coaches were looking for, when she noticed that even as a novice her 1,000-meter erg time was "not far off," that she viewed collegiate rowing as an achievable goal. She recalls how around the same time she started hitting new marks consistently, she was contacted by Associate Head Coach/Recruiting Director Chase Graham. Those talks, according to Harris, were what ultimately helped her decide on Duke even while her recruiting process was ongoing.
"All the schools I looked at were so different to anything I was used to," she said. "It literally was just the little things. For me, the main thing about Duke was that I felt like I had a good relationship with Chase. Through recruiting, he just put in a lot more effort, I thought, than other coaches. Duke was my first official visit that I came on, and straight away I was like 'There's no point in me going on my other officials."
When Klok and Harris got to Duke in 2017 and 2018, respectively, it was not only sweeping that they had to acclimate to. As international student-athletes, both were exposed to lots of unfamiliarity, which as Klok acknowledged, presented its own set of challenges.
"It was very different in a lot of ways," she said. "Going to college is a big transition for anyone, even if you're staying in the same country. I had to get used to a new language and a new culture, and people interact very differently than they do in the Netherlands. That definitely took some getting used to."
Now that they are fully immersed in both the program and the cultural aspects of American college life, Klok and Harris acknowledge the unique comradery that they experience as Duke rowers, no matter whether the team is together or, in this case, separated for over two months.
"It's amazing," Harris said. "We talk to each other every day, even now when we've been home for eight weeks. Even though we have such big time differences, I talk to girls in New Zealand and Australia every day on a flipped time zone. Everyone is so close and everyone is still talking to the seniors so much."
"I think we did a lot of good work on our culture this year and last year as well," Klok said. "It was an adjustment coming in for me as a freshman because I was the only international student in my class, so I remember I had a lot of questions that seemed very obvious to all my peers in my class. I think we've done a very good job of being accepting of everyone and answering all those questions."
And although the 2020 spring offered just one official meet for the Blue Devils, Harris maintains that the season being cut short will only spark a greater motivation as the collective goal remains the same.
"I feel we'll come back much stronger," she said. "We were already really strong, but just having something taken away from you, like what we had, just makes you realize how much it means to you and how much you want it. I think that this happening has made everyone want it even more and has made everyone appreciate it even more."
#GoDuke
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