Lauren Wilson Hiking in Competitive ILCA Fleet.png

What If You Tried Anyway?

The Second Wind Challenge

Hey, Village Elementary families!

I recently had the chance to share a little of my story with your fifth graders. It's a story about sailing, falling down (sometimes literally), getting back up, and discovering that you might be capable of more than you think.

But the most important part of the story isn't about me… It's about what happens when we're willing to try something before we know whether we'll be good at it.

One Race. One Yes.
A Very Unexpected Adventure.

Two years ago, I entered a women's sailing regatta with two other moms who didn't really know how to sail.

This was not, traditionally speaking, a brilliant competitive strategy. But we won.

And apparently that was all the encouragement my ego needed.

A few weeks later, I'd bought a racing dinghy and was back doing something I hadn't competed seriously in for nearly 20 years.

I was rusty. I was slow. My brain remembered how to race. My body had other ideas.

But I kept showing up.

One race became another. Then national championships. Then international competition.

And eventually, I found myself at the Women's World Championship in Ireland, racing against some of the best sailors on Earth. And now I’m the #4 ranked woman in the United States and at 42, I'm chasing a spot at the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles.

And here's the thing.