Left to right, back: Chase Devlin, Nick DiMarco, Eric
Lam, Christian McDermott, Christian Baumgardner, Michael Daddi, Colin
Stewart, Evan Nathan, Coach John Millar, Ryan Fisher. Front: Jason Nika, Tara Miller
The Ocean City High School boys' junior varsity eight crew team won the Scholastic Rowing Association of America (SRAA) national title on May 24 and later thanked a local woman, Tara Miller, for inspiring their success.
Miller is battling Stage 4 melanoma.
Ocean City Coach John Millar told the boys about Miller's fight during a pep talk and urged them
to find courage within themselves.
The team was moved enough by Millar's speech to ask to meet her, but on the day of a scheduled meeting, she was too ill. Instead, she wrote a note to the boys. The team fell short of winning at the Stotesbury Regatta, but brought home gold for her the next week at the Nationals.
Millar had coached Miller's fiance, Jason Nika, at St. Augustine Prep 14 years ago.
The team invited Miller to meet them so they could thank her.
Here is the speech team member Colin Stewart gave that evening:
"On the behalf of the men's junior eight, we would like to thank you, Tara, for the strength your life has given us during our greatest challenge.
Coach Millar said before every race at Nationals, that life is the ultimate challenge and the things we'd face on the water would be nothing to challenge you'd face in life. How we would face our challenge, the opportunity of being national champions, would impact our lives.
Your story of dealing with life's greatest challenges motivated us so much that we can stand here today and say we are national champions.
Before we went out for our race, coach said to change our racing coding. We code everything in the race, like power tens and so forth, to prevent other crews from copying our race plan. He said to change our biggest move at the 750-meter mark to a 'Power Tara,' and he said that while we make that move think about what she is going through and how this four-and-a-half minute race is nothing in comparison to what she has done. So we did.
At the 750 mark, Washington and Lee attempted to make a push back on us, and we did our 'Power Tara.' With that move, not only did we pull away from Washington and Lee by open water and secure our victory, but our boat went the fastest it has ever gone during that middle 500. We would like to thank you for giving us the strength to win our greatest challenge."
Tara has started her own foundation "The Tara Miller Melanoma Foundation." For more information, visit taramillerfoundation.org.— Suze DiPietro
