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It was at their lowest point, Kathleen Brown recalls, that she remembers seeing the sign. Brown and her son, Colin, her oldest of four kids, were driving near their Maryland home, but also into the unknown of the spinal fusion surgery he was about to have.
The words were spray-painted on the side of a levy, near the Anacostia River, and they spoke to her.
It gets better.
She turned to her son, who was then in seventh grade.
"Look, Colin," she said, "this is our lowest point, but from here on, it's going up. We're at the top of the roller coaster right now, and it's all about to get better."
Colin’s had been a life of setbacks, but ones he and his family had faced head on, especially as he began to believe in what he could do.
"I definitely felt like that was rough to get through, but look at where we are now," his mother says.
When he was 10 weeks old, Kathleen says, Colin caught infant botulism, a rare neurological condition that can occur when infants under 1 consume a type of bacterial spore called Clostridium botulinum.
He was also diagnosed at five months with neurofibromatosis Type 1 (NF1) when he developed its distinguishing "café au lait spots." NF1 causes bone deformities, and Colin developed a Baker's cyst on his knee, which got him to Matthew Oetgen, an orthopedist at Children's National Hospital in Washington, D.C. It was a precursor to a scoliosis diagnosis.
By the time he got to high school, he faced a moment that has come to define him in the face of struggle. It was on the water, too, but this time after he joined the crew at DeMatha Catholic in Washington D.C.’s suburbs.
"I think what Colin’s done this past year, it's one of those things that can be transformative to his class," says Rich Blorstad, DeMatha’s head rowing coach. "He's had his trials and tribulations. He's gone through some things to get to where he is. And when the other guys see that, that's what inspires the rest of the team to come up with you.
"He's inspired those guys who are around him to elevate, not only to themselves, but everybody else on the team."
Rowing is a rigorous sport in itself. Here’s how Colin, who turns 15 this month, after a wave of setbacks, has thrown himself into it and what his story can teach parents and kid athletes about the power of a sport.
During the COVID period, when Kathleen was around Colin all the time, she saw one of his shoulders was higher than the other. She wasn’t sure if it was just the way he had been sitting during virtual learning.
They saw Oetgen, who officially diagnosed him with scoliosis, which causes a side-to-side curve of the spine.
"That was a bummer," Colin’s mother says with a sigh. "We started going back every six months or a year for Dr. Oetgen, and X-rays and follow ups, and every time it would curve just a little bit more."
The orthopedist fitted Colin with a stomach brace, which he wore for 18 hours a day. Being Colin, who had learned to take whatever news comes in stride, he wore it on the outside of his shirt.
"He figured everybody's gonna ask questions anyway, so it was a good way to just rip the Band-Aid off," his mother says.
She remembers watching a 4-year-old boy who was also wearing a brace smile when he saw Colin.
"It was like, maybe some good can come out of this," she recalls.
It wouldn’t be easy. Oetgen says sometimes NF causes issues with the shape of bones. In Colin’s case, one of his ribs can become unstable and dislocate from where it sits on the vertebral body and push against the spinal cord.
In March 2024. Oetgen and a neurosurgeon opened up the spinal canal and get the rib out of it so Colin could safely straighten up his spine. Using screws, they inserted a rod to the vertebral bodies of the spine and a rod attached to the screws to straighten and maintain the alignment of the spine.
"The recovery was rough," Kathleen says. "The first three weeks were really bad. The first three months were hard."
By May, Colin was back in school part time. By summer, he asked his doctor if he could pursue one of his favorite pastimes: Riding a roller coaster. Oetgen approved.
"That was terrifying for me, but I let it go, 'cause the doctor said it was OK," his mother says. "So that was really a great day for him. It was kind of our turnaround."
FROM 2025: Cassie Sengul found golf to ease cerebral palsy, and became a star
When Colin entered high school in the fall of 2025, the principal urged incoming freshman to try something new, whether it be a team or a club. Colin saw an interest meeting for a crew camp.
He had played soccer but he lacked confidence, his mother says, playing alongside kids who had been in the sport for a long time. Rowing was an opportunity to prove himself at something in which everyone was learning from scratch.
"I think I can count on one hand in the 15 years I've been coaching the number of athletes who have come in with experience," says Rich Blorstad, DeMatha’s head rowing coach. "The vast majority, a lot of them have never played sports before, and try rowing because they found that it's a way to get outside and be active in the community with no experience necessary.
"We get a lot of guys who have done no sports before. But we also get guys who find that other sports are either too competitive for them or it's just not the culture they want to be in."
Blorstad says DeMatha draws boys from about 100 different middle schools. The sport made Colin an instant group of new friends, and threw him into a culture of togetherness. You are bound to your teammates by an instant bond of getting through its physically grueling training as a unit.
There were no cuts, but it’s a battle of attrition. During the course of the novice season, a rower’s first one with a school, those that remain on the team by the spring are the ones most willing to pay its physical price and endure inevitable setbacks.
Colin learned to row but also about his limitations, but then also how to power beyond them.
"He was very open with his teammates about sort of what his deficiencies were," Blorstad says. "He had a pretty weak core, given the procedure he had gone through and he struggled a little bit in the fall. As a rower, you have so much power in your legs, but if your core can't engage and transfer that power into the handle, you can't support that power in the boat and contribute a lot to the speed of that boat.
"He came with a little bit less of a cardio base (and) his core strength wasn't quite there, but all fall, he worked on rowing technique and learned how to move a boat effectively. And then in the winter, he really dedicated his time. The winter season (is) a drag. You're indoors staring at a screen (on the rowing machine) for an hour, hour and a half at a time, and there's no break. It's not fun. He committed to the grind. He worked his butt off and was able to develop that strength over the course of those three or four months that we were inside.
"He went as hard as he could. He was just limited by his own body."
Knowing that crew was such a heavy team sport, Kathleen reached out to the coaches about her son sometime early in the fall season. She wanted to know if Colin couldn’t handle it.
"They said he's fine and that brought me a lot of relief," she says with a smile. "When they were talking about they have to bend over and touch their toes, I was like, 'Well, he can't do that. He's got a big old rod in his back so he literally can't.'
"He's doing good and gained an inch or two after the surgery. He went in shorter than me, and he came out taller than me. The surgery really straightened him up. It kind of coordinated him better, if that makes sense, because he was crooked before."
The simulating machines that most competitive rowers use are called ergometers. They are known to rowers, mostly with disdain, as "ergs." You pull on a chain, your force powering a wheel that spits out a reading on a screen in front of you with every stroke.
There is a tradition where rowers who finish with the faster times on erg tests stagger to the sides of other teammates to urge them through their final, punishing strokes. Blorstad says his top varsity rowers would unstrap their feet and cheer on the fastest freshman.
Often, one of them was Colin.
"Every guy comes in with such little experience that even if he is behind, he's got time to catch up," the coach says. "And we really look at the trajectory of the athletes. It's not about being able to be at peak performance freshman year. It’s about developing an athlete over four years, so by the time they're a senior, they're able to compete at a highly, not an elite level necessarily for everybody, but we try to get everyone as close to that as possible. So we're looking at his trajectory, and his trajectory was always on the right path.
"One of our novice coaches and I talked about it and said, 'We know Colin can get there and we're excited for what he can do over the course of four years.'"
As he stuck with it, Colin began to realize something: "It's the only sport I'm remotely close to being good at," he says. "When things are going like horrible, I can push through it."
Youth Sports Survival Guide: Order Coach Steve's new book
By the spring, when DeMatha was back on the water, Colin had a rote routine. He would take the 10-minute bus ride to the Anacostia River, Monday through Friday, for after-school practice from 3:30 to 6 p.m.
Blorstad says Colin made it to more than 95% of practices from fall through spring. He kept coming, even after his boat flipped over near the dock into the chilling autumn water.
"He would get in the car and he'd be soaking wet some days from the rain or the sweat," his mother says. "He's seen himself get much stronger and knows that he's good at this. Like I've always told him: If you practice, (put) in the work, it really shows."
Some of his teammates picked up the rowing technique a little bit faster than he did, Blorstad says, but Colin’s newfound strength eventually drove him into the "engine room," or middle four that provides the power, of that novice eight. (An eight means a racing shell with eight rowers plus a coxswain, who sits in the front of the boat, steering it and directing the rowers.)
Colin and his teammates were caught off guard in March, their coach says, facing choppy conditions at a New Jersey lake that felt like the Atlantic Ocean. They were demoralized after finishing way back in the pack.
But after a pep talk from their coaches, they raced in fours (four rowers and a coxswain) the following weekend in Philadelphia. When you row in a small boat, you have to be more technically sound. When they went back into the eight, things clicked better and they started to take off.
The crescendo came at the Maryland state championships, where DeMatha raced two novice fours and an eight.
Colin was in a four, which finish second, and the eight, which finished first. The eight was so far ahead at the finish that when Blorstad sent one of the school’s media managers a picture of the finish line, the manager asked, "Are we out in front or are we in the back?"
The answer for Colin was decisively the former.
"We love to see kids get back to doing some active thing because it helps keep the muscles active and maintains their flexibility," says Oetgen, Colin’s orthopedist, who says Colin has no restrictions. "Even independent of all the success he's had, just being on the team and having something to do, I think it keeps your mind off of recovery and that you've had surgery and you sort of get back to a more normal way of life.
"I would say it's rare that we have a kid find his passion, calling, something he's really good at after surgery. We have lots of kids that are good at sports and they're doing things and then the recovery is all about getting back to where they want to be. I think it's rare that we have someone that discovers this afterwards and then excels."
Colin, who will begin his sophomore at DeMatha in the fall, is already starting to base his college interest on which ones have rowing programs. Right now, his parents live in the moment.
For out-out-town weekend races, they will travel, with Colin’s siblings and the dog, in a caravan with the team. The 2,000-meter races last around six minutes and, as a fan, you stand on the banks of the river and cheer for about 60 seconds as the boats pass you.
But as a parent, as your child is enjoying himself at sports, those 60 seconds can be magic.
"The very first regatta, me and my husband were watching him, and I just teared up," Kathleen says, "'cause it's crazy to watch from where he came from, and to see him using his back like that, and using the muscles. …. Everybody's there cheering, but I'm cheering on in a different way. We're really proud of him. …
"I just hope this will let other kids know that it does get better. It's hard when you're living through it, but there is something on the other side. Just keep pushing through."
Steve Borelli, aka Coach Steve, has been an editor and writer with USA TODAY since 1999. He spent 10 years coaching his two sons’ baseball and basketball teams. He and his wife, Colleen, are now sports parents to a college and high school baseball player. His Coach Steve column is posted weekly. For his past columns, click here.
Got a question for Coach Steve you want answered in a column? Email him at [email protected]
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 'It gets better': How a young rower's remarkable story can inspire you
Continue reading...
The words were spray-painted on the side of a levy, near the Anacostia River, and they spoke to her.
It gets better.
She turned to her son, who was then in seventh grade.
"Look, Colin," she said, "this is our lowest point, but from here on, it's going up. We're at the top of the roller coaster right now, and it's all about to get better."
Colin’s had been a life of setbacks, but ones he and his family had faced head on, especially as he began to believe in what he could do.
"I definitely felt like that was rough to get through, but look at where we are now," his mother says.
You must be registered for see images attach
When he was 10 weeks old, Kathleen says, Colin caught infant botulism, a rare neurological condition that can occur when infants under 1 consume a type of bacterial spore called Clostridium botulinum.
He was also diagnosed at five months with neurofibromatosis Type 1 (NF1) when he developed its distinguishing "café au lait spots." NF1 causes bone deformities, and Colin developed a Baker's cyst on his knee, which got him to Matthew Oetgen, an orthopedist at Children's National Hospital in Washington, D.C. It was a precursor to a scoliosis diagnosis.
By the time he got to high school, he faced a moment that has come to define him in the face of struggle. It was on the water, too, but this time after he joined the crew at DeMatha Catholic in Washington D.C.’s suburbs.
"I think what Colin’s done this past year, it's one of those things that can be transformative to his class," says Rich Blorstad, DeMatha’s head rowing coach. "He's had his trials and tribulations. He's gone through some things to get to where he is. And when the other guys see that, that's what inspires the rest of the team to come up with you.
"He's inspired those guys who are around him to elevate, not only to themselves, but everybody else on the team."
Rowing is a rigorous sport in itself. Here’s how Colin, who turns 15 this month, after a wave of setbacks, has thrown himself into it and what his story can teach parents and kid athletes about the power of a sport.
Always be yourself. It helps you to thrive and meet challenges head on.
During the COVID period, when Kathleen was around Colin all the time, she saw one of his shoulders was higher than the other. She wasn’t sure if it was just the way he had been sitting during virtual learning.
They saw Oetgen, who officially diagnosed him with scoliosis, which causes a side-to-side curve of the spine.
"That was a bummer," Colin’s mother says with a sigh. "We started going back every six months or a year for Dr. Oetgen, and X-rays and follow ups, and every time it would curve just a little bit more."
The orthopedist fitted Colin with a stomach brace, which he wore for 18 hours a day. Being Colin, who had learned to take whatever news comes in stride, he wore it on the outside of his shirt.
"He figured everybody's gonna ask questions anyway, so it was a good way to just rip the Band-Aid off," his mother says.
She remembers watching a 4-year-old boy who was also wearing a brace smile when he saw Colin.
"It was like, maybe some good can come out of this," she recalls.
It wouldn’t be easy. Oetgen says sometimes NF causes issues with the shape of bones. In Colin’s case, one of his ribs can become unstable and dislocate from where it sits on the vertebral body and push against the spinal cord.
In March 2024. Oetgen and a neurosurgeon opened up the spinal canal and get the rib out of it so Colin could safely straighten up his spine. Using screws, they inserted a rod to the vertebral bodies of the spine and a rod attached to the screws to straighten and maintain the alignment of the spine.
"The recovery was rough," Kathleen says. "The first three weeks were really bad. The first three months were hard."
By May, Colin was back in school part time. By summer, he asked his doctor if he could pursue one of his favorite pastimes: Riding a roller coaster. Oetgen approved.
"That was terrifying for me, but I let it go, 'cause the doctor said it was OK," his mother says. "So that was really a great day for him. It was kind of our turnaround."
FROM 2025: Cassie Sengul found golf to ease cerebral palsy, and became a star
'Be open and honest' with yourself, and with everyone else. You can find your sport.
When Colin entered high school in the fall of 2025, the principal urged incoming freshman to try something new, whether it be a team or a club. Colin saw an interest meeting for a crew camp.
He had played soccer but he lacked confidence, his mother says, playing alongside kids who had been in the sport for a long time. Rowing was an opportunity to prove himself at something in which everyone was learning from scratch.
"I think I can count on one hand in the 15 years I've been coaching the number of athletes who have come in with experience," says Rich Blorstad, DeMatha’s head rowing coach. "The vast majority, a lot of them have never played sports before, and try rowing because they found that it's a way to get outside and be active in the community with no experience necessary.
"We get a lot of guys who have done no sports before. But we also get guys who find that other sports are either too competitive for them or it's just not the culture they want to be in."
Blorstad says DeMatha draws boys from about 100 different middle schools. The sport made Colin an instant group of new friends, and threw him into a culture of togetherness. You are bound to your teammates by an instant bond of getting through its physically grueling training as a unit.
There were no cuts, but it’s a battle of attrition. During the course of the novice season, a rower’s first one with a school, those that remain on the team by the spring are the ones most willing to pay its physical price and endure inevitable setbacks.
Colin learned to row but also about his limitations, but then also how to power beyond them.
"He was very open with his teammates about sort of what his deficiencies were," Blorstad says. "He had a pretty weak core, given the procedure he had gone through and he struggled a little bit in the fall. As a rower, you have so much power in your legs, but if your core can't engage and transfer that power into the handle, you can't support that power in the boat and contribute a lot to the speed of that boat.
"He came with a little bit less of a cardio base (and) his core strength wasn't quite there, but all fall, he worked on rowing technique and learned how to move a boat effectively. And then in the winter, he really dedicated his time. The winter season (is) a drag. You're indoors staring at a screen (on the rowing machine) for an hour, hour and a half at a time, and there's no break. It's not fun. He committed to the grind. He worked his butt off and was able to develop that strength over the course of those three or four months that we were inside.
"He went as hard as he could. He was just limited by his own body."
Sports can make things familiar, and so much better
Knowing that crew was such a heavy team sport, Kathleen reached out to the coaches about her son sometime early in the fall season. She wanted to know if Colin couldn’t handle it.
"They said he's fine and that brought me a lot of relief," she says with a smile. "When they were talking about they have to bend over and touch their toes, I was like, 'Well, he can't do that. He's got a big old rod in his back so he literally can't.'
"He's doing good and gained an inch or two after the surgery. He went in shorter than me, and he came out taller than me. The surgery really straightened him up. It kind of coordinated him better, if that makes sense, because he was crooked before."
The simulating machines that most competitive rowers use are called ergometers. They are known to rowers, mostly with disdain, as "ergs." You pull on a chain, your force powering a wheel that spits out a reading on a screen in front of you with every stroke.
There is a tradition where rowers who finish with the faster times on erg tests stagger to the sides of other teammates to urge them through their final, punishing strokes. Blorstad says his top varsity rowers would unstrap their feet and cheer on the fastest freshman.
Often, one of them was Colin.
"Every guy comes in with such little experience that even if he is behind, he's got time to catch up," the coach says. "And we really look at the trajectory of the athletes. It's not about being able to be at peak performance freshman year. It’s about developing an athlete over four years, so by the time they're a senior, they're able to compete at a highly, not an elite level necessarily for everybody, but we try to get everyone as close to that as possible. So we're looking at his trajectory, and his trajectory was always on the right path.
"One of our novice coaches and I talked about it and said, 'We know Colin can get there and we're excited for what he can do over the course of four years.'"
As he stuck with it, Colin began to realize something: "It's the only sport I'm remotely close to being good at," he says. "When things are going like horrible, I can push through it."
Youth Sports Survival Guide: Order Coach Steve's new book
Winning at sports is fun, but experiencing it with teammates is even better.
By the spring, when DeMatha was back on the water, Colin had a rote routine. He would take the 10-minute bus ride to the Anacostia River, Monday through Friday, for after-school practice from 3:30 to 6 p.m.
Blorstad says Colin made it to more than 95% of practices from fall through spring. He kept coming, even after his boat flipped over near the dock into the chilling autumn water.
"He would get in the car and he'd be soaking wet some days from the rain or the sweat," his mother says. "He's seen himself get much stronger and knows that he's good at this. Like I've always told him: If you practice, (put) in the work, it really shows."
Some of his teammates picked up the rowing technique a little bit faster than he did, Blorstad says, but Colin’s newfound strength eventually drove him into the "engine room," or middle four that provides the power, of that novice eight. (An eight means a racing shell with eight rowers plus a coxswain, who sits in the front of the boat, steering it and directing the rowers.)
Colin and his teammates were caught off guard in March, their coach says, facing choppy conditions at a New Jersey lake that felt like the Atlantic Ocean. They were demoralized after finishing way back in the pack.
But after a pep talk from their coaches, they raced in fours (four rowers and a coxswain) the following weekend in Philadelphia. When you row in a small boat, you have to be more technically sound. When they went back into the eight, things clicked better and they started to take off.
Sports are experienced best when you live in the moment
The crescendo came at the Maryland state championships, where DeMatha raced two novice fours and an eight.
Colin was in a four, which finish second, and the eight, which finished first. The eight was so far ahead at the finish that when Blorstad sent one of the school’s media managers a picture of the finish line, the manager asked, "Are we out in front or are we in the back?"
The answer for Colin was decisively the former.
"We love to see kids get back to doing some active thing because it helps keep the muscles active and maintains their flexibility," says Oetgen, Colin’s orthopedist, who says Colin has no restrictions. "Even independent of all the success he's had, just being on the team and having something to do, I think it keeps your mind off of recovery and that you've had surgery and you sort of get back to a more normal way of life.
"I would say it's rare that we have a kid find his passion, calling, something he's really good at after surgery. We have lots of kids that are good at sports and they're doing things and then the recovery is all about getting back to where they want to be. I think it's rare that we have someone that discovers this afterwards and then excels."
You must be registered for see images attach
Colin, who will begin his sophomore at DeMatha in the fall, is already starting to base his college interest on which ones have rowing programs. Right now, his parents live in the moment.
For out-out-town weekend races, they will travel, with Colin’s siblings and the dog, in a caravan with the team. The 2,000-meter races last around six minutes and, as a fan, you stand on the banks of the river and cheer for about 60 seconds as the boats pass you.
But as a parent, as your child is enjoying himself at sports, those 60 seconds can be magic.
"The very first regatta, me and my husband were watching him, and I just teared up," Kathleen says, "'cause it's crazy to watch from where he came from, and to see him using his back like that, and using the muscles. …. Everybody's there cheering, but I'm cheering on in a different way. We're really proud of him. …
"I just hope this will let other kids know that it does get better. It's hard when you're living through it, but there is something on the other side. Just keep pushing through."
Steve Borelli, aka Coach Steve, has been an editor and writer with USA TODAY since 1999. He spent 10 years coaching his two sons’ baseball and basketball teams. He and his wife, Colleen, are now sports parents to a college and high school baseball player. His Coach Steve column is posted weekly. For his past columns, click here.
Got a question for Coach Steve you want answered in a column? Email him at [email protected]
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 'It gets better': How a young rower's remarkable story can inspire you
Continue reading...
