I never believed I would make it all the way through selection. In other years, I probably wouldn’t have. But somehow, maybe just by thinking I could make it through ‘this workout’ – and holding onto that mentality 7 days and 12 sessions a week – somehow, much to my surprise and absolute delight, I ended up in the Cambridge University Women’s Boat Club lightweight eight and raced Oxford on the 24th March.

Although we lost the race, being a part of CUW and making the friends that I did is a victory no one (not even Oxford!) can take away. I have never been so proud to be a part of a team – we were smashed into the ground by ergs and weights and freezing temperatures; we were told we weren’t good enough and we got better; we lost hope and we found morale. There was something indescribably special about CUW this year. We all came from college rowing backgrounds and at the start of the season you might not have been able to distinguish us from any other crew on the Cam. But purely through hard work, high expectations and dedicated coaching, we developed into some of the best crews in the country.

While having a merry (if painful and sweaty) time with CUW, I also got a closer look into the men’s university rowing scene. While not a professional team (the men don’t actually get paid), the Cambridge University Boat Club (CUBC) is just about as close as it gets. And I can’t help but feel, after 6 months of observation, that even with such an incredible team, CUBC is missing out on a key ingredient to success. Yes, CUBC has the brute strength and the experience and the drive – they wouldn’t be the World Champions and Olympians they are without it. But to take on Oxford and fight tooth and nail for Cambridge, I can’t help but feel our Blue Boat just needs…. well, a little more Cambridge flowing through its veins, as thick as the murky, wonderful Cam, ready to defend its home river to the bitter end.

There’s a lot to be said for good coaching and a dose of passion. In rowing, it really is all about the crew. A boat’s merit is not simply the sum of its parts; muscles and experience don’t win a race. The Cambridge University Lightweight Rowing Club (CUL) is similar to CUW in that it welcomes a healthy mix of school and college rowers into its program every year. This next juicy morsel I will share with you is confidential – TOP SECRET! – and you absolutely did not hear it from me. In March, CUL challenged Goldie, the CUBC reserves, to some pre-Boat Race competition. The skinnies (averaging 70 kg) raced the heavies (averaging 95 kg) down a 750m course in Ely. And the skinnies, far and away the underdogs in this matchup, won!

Cambridge loses out by not providing an avenue for non-lightweight college rowers to ask even more of themselves and take their rowing to the next level. The women’s university rowing scene has changed me as an athlete, but even more as a person – without question it’s the best thing I have done while at Cambridge (I’m hoping ‘earning a PhD’ will supersede rowing a tiny bit, but as that hasn’t happened yet, the rankings stand as they are). Yet, what is an achievable step for lightweights and women, who reap the rewards of challenging, competitive programs, is a quantum leap for I-will-never-be-70kg men. With the continual influx of world-stage rowers, Cambridge will never know what these college rowers could do. And it is in this light that even if CUBC wins against OUBC next year or the year after or any point in the future, it still carries with it this unshakeable loss.

Where is the program that does not take world-class rowers and transform them into college students, but can take college students and transform them into Oxbridge Boat Race-class rowers? Where is the rowing program that is willing to churn the milk into butter, instead of scraping the cream from the top? I fear such days may be past and relegated to my own wishful thinking. I suppose my only hope now is, as it prepares for it’s 2015 move to the Tideway, CUW doesn’t follow down the same slippery slope and trade in its wonderful hodgepodge of college splash-jackets for the latest National and World Championship hardware. In my mind, CUW doesn’t need to: even in just a month’s time, our Women’s Blue Boat dropped from nearly two lengths behind Oxford in the Boat Race (a loss of about 7 seconds) to a canvas (a 0.5 second difference) behind Oxford at the BUCS Regatta this past weekend. CUW is transforming college rowers into an unstoppable force and I look forward to seeing where these girls go from here: Cambridge is a springboard for Women’s rowing. I hope it stays like this – this is a recipe for great things.

• The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not represent cuw, cubc, cul or any of their affiliates.