Athlete of the Week: Lily Sexton

The crowd cheers as Exeter’s first girls’ boat surges ahead of the opposing team. Now pulling harder and faster than before, the girls smoothly round a bend of the Squamscott river, a familiar feeling to them from their long and strenuous practices. Although every teammate is rowing their hardest, the power behind this surge of speed comes chiefly from a core group of strong and devoted rowers. Leading this group is Exeter girls’ crew co-captain Lily Sexton.

Sexton, a senior, has rowed crew ever since her prep year, when her friend and roommate senior Ashley Baxter convinced her to try out for the team. Before trying out, she had always assumed that she was a basketball player like her older brother, whom she looked up to, but when she began rowing, she quickly realized that her real talent was in rowing crew. “When I tried out for the crew team my prep year and discovered that it was something I could be good at, I started to focus more on rowing,” Sexton explained.

Still, Sexton did not have an easy path to becoming captain of the team. She had to put intense effort into improving her times and making her way up through the ranks from junior varsity to varsity, and eventually to rowing on the first boat by her upper year.

“I have learned over my four years that it is important to be strong individually, but also strong collectively.”

Sexton said that her years on the Exeter crew team have made her a better Exonian and that these years have built up her courage and individual prowess. “I have truly enjoyed my time in the boathouse during my Exonian career,” she said. “I have matured as an athlete and a student, I have won two New England Championship titles, and I have had a blast doing it all.”

Most importantly, however, Sexton spoke about team pride, the power of collective effort, and the importance of learning to work together in a sport where one can sometimes feel it is all-for-one, not one-for-all. “Everyone wants to row fast, and pull impressive erg scores, but if the people in the boat aren’t moving together on the water, they will not win the race,” she said. “I have learned over my four years that it is important to be strong individually, but also strong collectively.”

When asked to describe the crew team, Sexton said that the girls’ team had “a strong reputation in the New England area.” She enumerated the accomplishments of the team over her four years here­­—in both her prep and lower year, Exeter’s first and second boats won the New England Interscholastic Rowing Association (NEIRA) Championships, which placed Exeter’s team first in New England.

Despite a few setbacks last year, when the girls’ team received fifth in New England, she has tremendous hope for this year’s prospects. “Our performance last season has only motivated us to work harder and row faster this year,” Sexton said. “We are still figuring out exact boatings, but we have a lot of strong girls on the team this year determined to cross the finish line first,” she said.

Although she had to stop rowing during her upper spring after she sustained a back injury only two races into the season, Sexton said that time off gave her room for rehabilitation. Over the summer, she rowed with the Cambridge Boat Club, a rowing club based out of Cambridge, Mass., which hosts the Head of the Charles Regatta each year.

While excelling in the crew boat, Sexton finds time to become involved in clubs and in the dorm. She served as a co-Editor-in-Chief of the 2015-2016 PEAN and is currently a proctor in her dorm, Wheelwright Hall. She also played on the junior varsity basketball team during her prep and lower years.

Overall, Sexton is an example of a person who, through dedication to her sport and efforts to foster team spirit, has achieved many of her goals—to improve her individual times and to gain the opportunity to hopefully lead her team to victory. “I have truly enjoyed my time in the boathouse during my Exonian career,” Sexton said. “Rowing has taught me how to work hard for what I want, and how to be a teammate while doing it.” It is both her personal and team-oriented striving for success that make Lily Sexton a model athlete, teammate and Exonian.