MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – West Virginia University junior rower Jessica Woy says getting into a boat and rowing in sync with eight other people is much harder than it looks.
 
"It is a grueling sport and not a lot of people realize it," she says. "They're just like, 'Oh yeah, it's just like kayaking right?' Not at all. It's full body. It's legs, core, arms and everything, but the payoff … getting into a boat and feeling that run underneath the boat and going fast in a boat, there is no feeling like it.
 
"Getting all eight blades in together and just flying on the water makes it all worth it," she adds.
 
Woy, a Windermere, Florida, resident, did just about every sport imaginable until one day seeing her older sister come home sweaty and exhausted. It piqued her curiosity.
 
"I did soccer, basketball, skateboarding … but I really didn't find my niche in those sports. So going into middle school, my sister had just joined the local rowing team in high school, and I remember her coming home every single day drenched in sweat," she says. "I just did not understand. How do you devote this many hours to rowing? You have no free time anymore. What is so special about this sport? 
 
"It didn't really click until I went to her first race, and I remember sitting there watching the race and watching the team dynamic and realizing rowing is just so much bigger than yourself. It's truly a sport where there is no star player," Woy says. "There is no one person who is going to carry that boat over the finish line. It's everybody giving all that they've got toward moving that boat across the finish line."
 
Woy rowed for the Orlando Area Rowing Society and that eventually led to her coming to WVU to row for the Mountaineers and study psychology.
 
Her Mountaineer career was interrupted right around the time the entire country was interrupted with the COVID-19 pandemic last March. 
 
"I was in the weight room, and we were maxing on squats, I went down into a squat, hit the bottom and it just did not feel right. I felt a sharp pain," she recalls. "I went home for winter break and realized I basically could not do anything. I couldn't practice, I couldn't row or run, it was just too painful. So I got an MRI and they found a tear in my hip, but it actually worked out so much in my favor because I had the surgery March 5 and within the next week everything was canceled. 
 
"I was just able to go home and recover with my family. Everybody was like, 'Oh man, quarantine' and I was like, 'I'm stuck in bed anyway.' It took a little bit longer than I had originally hoped for, but I was able to come back for this spring and just getting back in the boat for the first time it felt like I had two left hands, honestly," she says. "Even though I rowed for eight years, it was definitely weird to get back into a boat, but I picked it up pretty quickly."
 
Woy admits she's most at home on top of the water, sitting in a boat with eight others.
 
"Just feeling the way a boat feels after a year and a half not rowing, it was like getting back a part of who I am, I guess," she says. "When you actually are in the boat, syncing up with eight other people to get the perfect stroke and the perfect balance in the boat to where it's just a click of the oar locks, it's just zoom through the water. 
 
"There is no feeling like it."
 
This week's Life as a Mountaineer was produced by Sean Merinar and is presented by WVU Medicine.