Paul Wilcox’s discussion of the Transatlantic Series and the Achilles Club really underscored how coming together through sports, competition, and shared passions creates a common ground from which people with different backgrounds and worldviews can come together to learn from perspectives that are different from their own. I rowed throughout my four years of high school, and each year, members of the Men’s and Women’s rowing teams of St. Edwards Oxford, a boarding school in England, came to visit my high school in Philadelphia. Though my experience was not nearly as steeped in history and tradition as is the Achilles Club and the Transatlantic Series, I can enthusiastically agree with Mr. Wilcox’s assessment of how interesting, informative, and fun it can be to have the freedom to look at life in a different way. Even though I never went to visit St. Edward’s in England, I learned so much by just talking with the rowers about everyday, taken-for-granted differences. The students from St. Edward’s, for example, found yellow school buses to be exciting and fascinating because they had never ridden in one but had seen them in the movies. My teammates and I, however, had drastically different interpretations of the desirability of riding the bus to Boathouse Row. This example of the school buses is just one of the multitudes of differences between the United States and the United Kingdom that we discussed. In fact, most of our conversations centered around this topic. As the sentiments of Mr. Wilcox and Dr. Hill captured, it can be really inspiring and refreshing to learn that a vast and yet-to-be-discovered world exists outside of our everyday experiences.

As in the Transatlantic Series, there was some friendly competition between our two schools. After practicing together for about a week, boats from my high school and boats from St. Edward’s raced each other in the Head of the Schuylkill. Interestingly, rowers from both my high school and St. Edward’s  even joined as a crew to compete together in some races. Combing this experience of cultural sharing with the experience of coming together as teammates or competitors to celebrate a common dedication to a sport is really powerful. It is difficult to describe, but I believe that perhaps this power stems from the fact that after finding out just how different our lives, perspectives, and traditions may be, we find out how fundamentally similar we all are. We share a desire to continually improve, a desire to endure for the sake of our teammates, and a desire to win. After learning about the rich history of the Achilles Club and Transatlantic Series, I can certainly see why someone would want to re-experience this tradition eighty years later.