EXCLUSIVE: Scowen: Rowing changed my life
Sportsdesk • Published 21 Jan 2012 15:00
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DORNEY Boat Club member and Paralympic rower Sam Scowen insists taking up the sport completely changed her attitude towards her disability.
Before rowing full-time for Team GB at Caversham near Reading, the 24-year-old was studying at Thames Valley University and was struggling to find a job.
The former Ryeish Green pupil was born with one leg shorter than the other and does not have a fully functioning knee, ankle or hip joint on her right-hand side.
She admits she had struggled to come to terms with her disability and tried to ignore it for a long time. But that all changed when she took up rowing in 2008, as she explains.
"I got quite depressed before I started rowing, I couldn't get a job and I had been bullied quite a lot growing up.
"I always hated my leg and my disability and I tried to ignore it for quite a long time.
"As I got older it became more painful and I couldn't ignore it any longer and I absolutely hated it.
"Then I started rowing and realised that actually it's turned into something incredible.
"It's also the fact that I wouldn't be doing it if it wasn't for my disability so I finally feel like it's paid off for something. I'm now doing something incredible because of the fact I was born slightly different and it's made me accept myself."
Scowen races in the Trunk and Arms Mixed Double Scull event alongside Nick Beighton, who has a double knee amputation, and is also very new to rowing.
They won bronze at the Munich World Cup last year and she won gold in Munich with a different partner in 2009.
Scowen feels she owes Terry Hunter, her first coach, her 'entire career' as he was the only coach in the area that would take a disabled athlete.
He recommended Scowen to GB coach Tom Dyson, who sent her to Birmingham where she won an indoor gold medal in 2008.
In 2009, he also pushed for Scowen to have a trial at Caversham and that is what set the wheels in motion for her meteoric rise up the sport.
Undoubtedly it is this experience and the success and enjoyment that she has gained from rowing that has now inspired the Paralympian to pursue a career in coaching.
"He's [Hunter] the reason I got into rowing so I owe him my entire career and I like to keep in contact with him.
"There's something about being on the water. You forget everything else that's going on in your life.
"It's literally me, Nick and the boat and that's all I have to worry about. I really enjoy myself when I'm out there.
"Doing a steady straight paddle completely relaxes me."
She added: "I would really like to get into coaching when I've finished rowing.
"Growing up disabled had quite an impact on my life and my personality and I think when I found rowing I became more confident in myself.
"It definitely changed me for the better and if I could do that for somebody else, get them to find something that they loved and made them happy, it would be a brilliant feeling."
She has already coached a disabled 23-year-old at Dorney Boat Club, who was interested in rowing but had no-one to coach him. With Hunter and Scowen's help, he learnt to row and goes onto Dorney Lake twice a week.
"It gets him out doing something he loves and it was a great feeling to get somebody else to do something that made their life something for the better," she said.
"He was having a hard time, not having a job and not having much of a social life, it was nice to get him into something.
"If somebody else can get that from rowing or any other sport, that would be incredible."
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