Senior Spotlight: Colin Kruse
Fundraising Chair
Hometown: Los Angeles, CA
Major: English and Political Science
Port or Starboard: Port
Favorite Seat in the boat: 2
What did you do in high school? How and why did you join Northwestern Crew?
I played tennis in high school. I was a pretty average high school doubles player. I don't think it really satisfied this competitive energy. I think rowing was in the back of my mind coming into college. One of my teachers in high school rowed at UCLA and then a family friend, a kid, two grades older than me, ended up rowing at Boston College his freshman year picked it up and loved it. And so I definitely had this competitive itch. I happened to have a class with somebody on the team, and he made it seem really, really fun and a good group of guys, good group of people. And so I showed up to a practice, I had no idea what I was doing, came back the next day. My friend who rowed at Boston College told me that the first two weeks are kind of the toughest to get used to, like the schedule and stuff. I made it through those two weeks, and I'm still here.
What’s your favorite memory from being on the team?
I feel like COVID has kind of killed a lot of really good potential memories, unfortunately, especially regatta-wise. I'd say getting back on the water spring quarter was really great, just because it'd been like 18 months since we'd been on the water as a team, and so I think I after a whole school year of erging and not really being with the full team and just kind of waiting for that, that that call to be made to let us get on the water, that was a really satisfying moment.
What’s your favorite part of regattas? Do you have a favorite regatta memory?
I'd say the eight we put out in Indianapolis this past year. Obviously we didn't really come close to winning, we finished seventh. But we hung in there really well. Before the start time, I think we huddled up and we're like, “It's only 3700 meters, let's just send it.” I think we were really flying, we held off another boat. I thought we were getting stronger as we got further into the race, and I think everybody thought that it was a really good row and we kind of knew if we can keep training like this and put together pieces like that every single day on the water and have that type of mentality, we could do something with this.
Do you have a favorite coxswain call?
I kind of like the chaos towards the end of a race. You're in the last 500 meters and the coxswain is losing his or her mind, that's kind of fun. I've always appreciated that. I think you kind of are at that point, you're tired, you're running on fumes every part of the stroke. It's very not mechanical, but you're not thinking about what you're doing. You're just trying to give it everything and you just hear all this screaming and the other coxswains from the other boats, hopefully you don't hear any because you're in front of them. Whenever the cox is like, "250 left" there's actually not 250 left, they just want you to yam on it a little bit more.
What’s been the most rewarding part of crew for you?
I think it added a sense of discipline and order to my life. I think it changed me a lot as a person. I think it made me much more diligent, like I know that I have to wake up at 6am tomorrow, so you know what, I'm going to go to bed at nine and get all my homework done. I think it's the reason why I'm writing a thesis and I'm doing all these other things outside of crew, but I think I feel good about doing them because I have crew. I think crew might the underpinning thing in my existence at Northwestern.
How do you stay motivated and how are you currently staying motivated?
I think I'm just really excited for one last spring season or full spring season because I haven't had that since freshman year, so I'm just excited to get the chance to go to ACRA and to go to the other regattas. I'm motivated every day and look, maybe I'm not the fastest kid on the team, who knows where I end up in terms of lineups. But as long as I'm in a boat at the end of the year and as long as I can represent my school and represent my team on the water, that's all that really matters.
What’s been your biggest struggle or difficulty on the team?
I guess psyching myself out sometimes isn't the best. I think everybody deals with this, the little things, you know. The sport is about incremental gains, you can't be fast by just doing 2ks every day. I think that's part of being a strong human, being a strong individual is getting the job done. That's how I kind of view it, I kind of live by the maxim of “do it now.” So, why wait when you can do it now and then be good and get it done?
What will you miss the most?
I think I'm gonna wake up the moment I graduate, or the moment we don't have practice, and I think I'll want to be back out there. I think there will be this itch inside of me to come back out to practice, and be able to see my friends and be able to row. I know there's gonna be a rowing shaped hole in my life, definitely.