Matthew Boccella

My favorite moments at Carroll were my times I spent with my friends on the crew team freshman and sophomore year. 

The best times were when we were doing the fast workouts in the gym with all the guys around when the coach was blasting metal from the speakers during the 1:30, 1:00, 30:00s and yelling in your ear to hit your mark and drop your split further. Even though it was exhausting and painful, it felt so good to compete and to finish in first place after the workouts. 

I also enjoyed the down times during the spring practices. We would hang out in the locker room before practice. One time we found these poles in a pile of junk in the locker room and started fighting with them. On occasion, if there weren’t enough people to take out a second boat, the extra guys would do a land practice. On those days, the coach would go on the water with the rest of the guys. I remember it was the first time I met my friend Gordan Stamler. We were doing a land workout together. Our workout was to run a couple miles on the Schuylkill trail and run back by the end of practice. 

Freshman year was also the year when I learned about more music and started expanding my interests. My new friends on the team introduced me to rap and metal. After the season and the school year ended freshman year, the team met up at my house to celebrate. I remember that was the first time we all met up together. The guys brought over some meat and we had a barbeque out by the pool. I set my Xbox to a TV outside so we could play some games as we ate.