As Cambridge Rindge and Latin High School’s top girls’ rowing boat glided toward the end of The Head of The Charles Course, the four rowers needed a boost.
On pace for a program-best finish, senior coxswain and captain Ada LaMaster delivered the word her teammates needed to hear — and they still recall six months later — “rhythm.”
“The best thing [coxswains] can do is make you feel immersed in what you’re doing,” classmate and teammate Laurel Moldrem said. “And that’s what Ada does.”
The Falcons tied for the program’s best finish at the world’s largest rowing competition, in the fastest time ever for a CRLS girls’ four. LaMaster played a key role. Much of her responsibilities center around guiding the four rowers behind her while motivating them to push beyond their limits.
“Your limit isn’t actually what you think”
It’s an attribute she learned from navigating through her own challenge. A rare neurological disorder diagnosed in sixth grade necessitated the use of a wheelchair at most times, forcing LaMaster to stop the activities she loved; skiing, soccer and climbing. She eventually found rowing, and later coxing, the sport and role that in many ways defined her high school experience. She’ll continue collegiately at the Division 1 level at the five-time national champion University of Washington, which has produced every U.S. Olympic coxswain since 2004.
“I know that people have their limits, and a lot of times your limit isn’t actually what you think it is,” LaMaster said. “It’s something I learned in rehab and going through life like this.”
The disease that changed her life came without warning. After a day of skiing early in 2020, LaMaster remembers waking up in the middle of the night unable to move her left leg. She went back to bed, but in the morning couldn’t get up.
LaMaster then spent two weeks at Mass General Brigham for testing and care, and was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease, transverse myelitis, a rare neurological disorder caused by spinal cord inflammation. The doctors don’t know why it happened.
“It’s just kind of a freak thing,” LaMaster said.
A sixth-grader at the time, she missed all of January and February, and because of the COVID-19 pandemic did not return to in-person schooling until the end of seventh grade. Her treatment included steroids and plasmapheresis, also known as therapeutic plasma exchange, as well as about four years of physical therapy.
She has partial movement in both legs, more so in her right, but feels more on the left. At home, she uses a walker.
“At the beginning, it was really hard, especially just because I couldn’t really do anything that I liked to do before,” LaMaster said. “My parents [Steve and Rachelle] did a really good job of coaching me through it, making sure that I wasn’t like ‘oh, my life sucks.’”
Her parents looked for competitive athletic opportunities for their youngest daughter, and found rowing. LaMaster started with the Para & Adaptive program at Community Rowing, Inc. and joined the CRLS rowing team as a freshman. Participating in a school sport gets students out of gym class, save for freshman year, so her parents suggested coxing.
LaMaster knew few of her new teammates but soon found a love for it. She studies the role relentlessly and cares deeply about success.
“It definitely is a little bit of an obsession but in a good way,” said LaMaster, a National Honors Society member, AP Scholar and sings in the CRLS a capella group Fermata Nowhere. “[Crew] provides me with a lot of structure and has definitely had a positive impact on my life.”
Stitching together a team
Coxing is often described as a crew boat’s thread and needle. LaMaster’s job is to bring the four rowers on her boat together to maximize speed and efficiency.
She does it through technical knowledge, communication with coaches, and perhaps most importantly, understanding the rowers at an individual level and how they can best work together. For example, CRLS rowing does not incorporate a “gather,” a slight pause after finishing a stroke. It’s incumbent on LaMaster to keep it that way.
She studies data taken from erg testing on land. In real-time, LaMaster monitors splits with a CoxBox — a device with a digital stroke rate monitor, stopwatch, and speaker — and pushes her teammates based on their expected outputs.
“It’s a lot of knowing how hard people can theoretically go,” LaMaster said, “and working to push them towards that and also exceed that goal so they can go faster.”
CRLS crew’s spring season includes about a half-dozen regattas, including the Northeast Regionals in New Jersey and Massachusetts Public School Rowing Association states along the Merrimack River in Lowell. LaMaster eyes a bid to nationals for her CRLS swan song.
“She is probably the most competitive human being I’ve ever met,” said CRLS coach Lane Lauriat, a sentiment repeated by her teammates. “She’s relentless in getting better and has done a lot of work to improve.”
After a summer highlighted by a month-long Europe trip with her father and her best friend, she’ll head to the opposite coast in late September to start as a scholarship student-athlete majoring in neuroscience.
LaMaster doesn’t view herself as an inspiration but understands why others might. She’s focused on living her life and doing what she loves.
“The fact that she’s in a wheelchair is part of her life, but that’s not how I see her,” her teammate, Moldrem, said. “She’s such an amazing person. It’s clear she’s pushed through everything.”
A stronger
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