"Yes u can!"

Below is a letter sent from Terry Kent to USACK Sprint National Development Director, Mac Hickox regarding the team's recent experience at the 2009 Junior Sprint World Championships in Moscow, Russia. Says Terry Kent, "I saw the tough time our team had over there and I thought I'd send a note to the athletes. If you think this is helpful, please feel free to pass it on to any of them."

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Hey everyone,

I saw that Jr. Worlds was a tougher experience than many of you might have expected. I once had that experience, too.

You can look at that two ways. One is to get discouraged, "wow, those guys are so fast, how can I ever race with them?". The second way is to get inspired.

You just had the priviledge to see how athletes are doing our sport at a really high level.  If you love paddling, that's very cool to see.  I wanted to write this to let you know that you can reach that level, too.

When I went to Jr. Worlds in 1981, we had a very good Jr. Team.  That year in the Sr. K-1 1000m at Nationals, my junior teamate Matt Strieb won and I got 3rd against all the best on the senior team.  Yet, we still went to Jr. World in Bulgaria and got beat up. Matt didn't make finals in the singles and my partner, Gus Peterson, and I got 5th in our semi. We just couldn't believe how good the euros were.

We made friends there with an Italian guy who won a silver medal in the K-1 1000m at Jr. Worlds.  His name was Daniele Scarpa.

When I went back home and starting working towards the '84 Games, I was lucky in that I had senior teamates like Greg Barton and Terry White who hated to lose to the euros, even though it seemed to happen a lot.

Over the next three years we often got to train with some of the fastest guys from the Swedish, German and French teams when they stayed in Newport Beach over the winter. We learned that, yes, they were faster, but if we raised our expectations of how hard we should go in training, we could keep up with them in workouts.

Terry White will always be my hero, because he was the first American to go after those guys in workouts down in Newport. Once I saw that he could do it, I started to believe I could keep up, too.  I'd try to stay with them for one piece, knowing it might blow me up for the rest of the workout. Then, it got easier and easier. That translated into success in Europe. When you are on the startline with a guy you know you can keep up with in workouts, it gives you the expectation you can keep up with him in the race.

Three years later, Terry White and I finished 4th at the Los Angeles Olympics in the K-2 1000m, just missing a bronze by two tenths of a second.  I didn't care all that much about missing the bronze because I was so psyched we beat so many of the euros, including Daniele Scarpa of Italy, who finished 5th.

My point is that if you look at how fast those guys are and decide you want to be that fast, too, you can do it.  But, you are going to have to do things in training that make you race faster - for me that was training with people much better than I was.

Good luck in whatever you decide is your course to follow. I hope I get to see you achieve great things in 2012 and 2016.

See you back at the LPI,

Terry Kent

Tags: Canoe Sprint, US Junior National Sprint Team