Stepping off the plane after an hours long flight, senior Ava Danylyshyn spends her time getting into the water to practice with her team. Next thing she knows, she is crossing the finish line. For Danylyshyn, the realization that she was in Brazil, competing for Team USA in an international competition for outrigger canoeing, didn’t come to mind until the moment she and her teammates finished their race.

This summer, Danylyshyn traveled to the International Va’a Federation World Distance Championship off the coast of Niterói Beach in Rio de Janeiro—with a view of steep cliffs, and bountiful nature—along with her teammates. There, various canoe races took place among different age groups and team sizes. There were races with only one individual paddling but also ones where there were six seats in a single canoe. This six-man race is what Danylyshyn competed in with her team. 

“It was really different from paddling in the Pacific Ocean, because when you are getting in the [same] water multiple times a week for a year, you get a feeling of what the water is like. You can kind of predict it,” Danylyshyn said. “Then going and paddling in the Atlantic Ocean, you could get a feeling of, ‘Oh, this feels different.’”

This past season was only Danylyshyn’s second, having started outrigger only just over a year ago. Aimee Spector, Danylyshyn’s coach and school to career workability coordinator, describes how fast a learner she is and how her athletic ability is not the only thing that makes Danylyshyn a good athlete to coach.

“You can train up an athlete physically. You can send them to the gym or get them out into the canoe. But some of those [other] qualities are hard to teach, like motivation, or commitment or dedication. […] It’s easy to work with Ava because she already brought all that with her. I just had to teach her how to hold a paddle and make the canoe move,” Spector said. 

Other Redondo students on Danylyshyn’s team are Paloma Dawson, Georgia Hughes, Daelen Purohit, Ian McClain and Cole Crouch. One of Danylyshyn’s teammates, sophomore Georgia Hughes, who met Danylyshyn through outrigger canoeing, describes Danylyshyn as already being a strong athlete from the moment they met.

“The first day she got there, she completely rocked it. […] We were training on OC ones (one-person canoes) and doing time trials. She showed up for the first day, and she absolutely smoked a bunch of people. It was so cool,” Hughes said. 

In Brazil, Hughes and Danylyshyn, along with their four other teammates, competed in a 15-mile race. Team USA was competing against a lot of strong teams, but going into it, the team prioritized focusing on themselves. 

“I really enjoyed the race, because there was such a positive environment the whole time. I think we even set that up before the race: We discussed [that] we want this race to be super positive. We wanted to stay motivated the whole time,” Danylyshyn said.

Community is also a big part of the sport. Spector says that the community is very tight-knit, and, on the water, the teammates lift each other up.

“You have a safety net. You have people who you know will be there for you, and that is a comfort unlike any other. You know that there are people there and that you are not alone,” Hughes said.

According to the teammates, being part of a team means being there for each other. Danylyshyn acknowledges that being in a race can be tough, and it is inevitable to hit “a wall” at some point. However, she says that the positive energy that comes out of it all pushes her through. With her being responsible for calling out changes when team members alternate the sides they paddle on, she especially appreciates the support she receives.

“There was a lot of responsibility to make sure the timing was working well, that I was working with my teammates, calling the changes loud enough and making sure I was still encouraging everyone,”Danylyshyn said. “But during the changes, I felt really inspired, because [when] we would do a change, we would say, ‘This one’s for Izzy,’ who is our steersman. Or we would say, ‘This is for Aimee, our coach.’ Thinking about those people in the back of my mind while I was paddling, I felt really inspired the whole time.