There are no limits for Circle Pines rower

BY BRUCE STRAND SPORTS CONTRIBUTOR

Perseverance is Skylar Dahl’s favorite word. They could put her picture next to it in the dictionary. Born with two club feet, Dahl refused to accept limitations placed on her. She played soccer and basketball in grade school until the pain in her feet forced her out. Then she discovered rowing. This spring, the 2021 Centennial graduate helped the University of Virginia rowing team capture the Atlantic Coach Conference championship and place 10th in the NCAA meet as a sophomore.

Also eligible for Paralympic rowing, she’s in a group that won a meet in Paris in July and will compete in the World Rowing Championships in Serbia, Sept. 3-10, trying to qualify for the 2024 Paralympic Games.

“I was built to compete,” Dahl declared, in a film she put out last November called “The Power of Perseverance and Why it Matters” to share her story and perhaps inspire others. The film can be viewed at YouTube.com/watch?v=OVve86pKC58.

To make the film she teamed with Uncut, an organization that spotlights student/athletes’ lives outside their sport, especially those with a unique personal story. “I received an incredible amount of support and positive feedback,” she said.

Dahl was born with bilateral club feet (both in her case; in some babies it’s just one) meaning that the bones are out of the standard position. Typically, the front half of the affected foot turns inward and the heel points down.

Her early childhood was marked by surgeries, casts, braces, specialized footwear, physical therapy and trips to the Children’s Hospital. Her situation improved.

“By the age of three I was walking without casts or braces,” she said. “At that point I was wearing braces only at night.”

Dahl expressed great appreciation for all the help and encouragement she received from doctors, nurses, and therapists, but one thing rankled her a bit.

“Too much time was spent setting low expectations for me and my athletic future,” Dahl said in the Perseverance film. Such assessments “became fuel for me.”

Starting in second and third grade, she tried soccer, then basketball, but suffered broken bones in her feet competing in both sports.

X-rays showed her out-of-place bones rubbed together and eventually cracked. She played both sports for five years until “the pain came too great to enjoy those sports any longer.”

CONTRIBUTED

Centennial graduate Skylar Dahl will compete in the World Rowing Championships in Serbia, Sept. 3-10, trying to qualify for the 2024 Paralympic Games.

After reluctantly giving up the sports that “I had become pretty good at during my early years,” she found her true niche in the competitive world when she was a freshman — with an assist from her nextdoor neighbor in Circle Pines, Nancy Jannik.

“Nancy recommended I try a sport that doesn’t put so much pressure on my feet. She recommended rowing.”

Jannik grew up in South Carolina and her family was all involved in rowing, which is popular in the southeast. Dahl was intrigued.

With her parents Andy and Kari, she visited Jannik’s hometown in the summer of 2018 and checked out the rowing club, where she “hopped into a boat” and learned the basics. That was all it took. Back home, she joined Twin Cities Youth Rowing. Minnesota has a thriving rowing community, she said, despite the climate.

Rowing appears to be an upper body sport, but, the 5-foot-10 Dahl points out, most of the power is actually generated from the legs. Still, rowing took the strain off her vulnerable feet. The rowers’ feet, in both collegiate and para, are secured in built-in shoes on the angled footboard.

Dahl walks normally, which you can see in her film, but she had to give up running of any kind after her soccer and basketball ventures.