“Physical limitations only exist if you’re willing to find them.” This is the philosophy of Mitch King, a coxswain for River City Rowing Club in Sacramento, CA. Every day he does countless things that doctors said were impossible when he was a kid diagnosed with Cerebral Palsy.
Mitch doesn’t call himself a disability advocate, doesn’t want to be an inspiration, and would rather folks didn’t try to tiptoe around his disability.
We talk balancing coxing with graduate school, collaborative coxing, finding tenths of seconds on the erg, and shattering expectations.
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QUICK LOOK
00:00 - Intro
02:10 - The Huddle
04:38 - Rate Your rowing week: 1-10… quickly turns into swapping coxing stories
10:05 - The Hot Seat Q&A
15:44 - Coxing origin story
19:24 - How rowing helps student athletes with discipline and time management
21:22 - Erging with the team began as a means to understand what his athletes were going through, and became an outlet for moving beyond internal and external limitations of his Cerebral Palsy
29:18 - Collaborative coxing: getting to know your rowers, giving and receiving feedback, sharing race strategies, leaving your worries on shore
35:08 - Diagnosed with Cerebral Palsy as a kid, Mitch wants strangers to assume he, and other people with disabilities, are competent and capable
38:50 - It’s okay to ask, and it’s okay to say “disabled”
43:21 - Being an inadvertent ambassadors for people with disabilities, how we’ve been socialized to understand disability, and rebutting the notion of being an inspiration
49:03 - Mitch’s rowing pitch
50:00 - What’s next and hoping to make it to Head of the Charles
49:56 - Outro
54:48 - Outtakes
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To get links to the people, clubs, and events mentioned in this episode, check out the show notes on our website.
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This episode was made possible in part by Barb, Breakwater Realty, Concept2, EB5 Investors, RowSource, and our Patrons.
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