The US Women's Eight races today at the end of the final session of the Racice Worlds. As they got set to race, we caught up with Charlotte Buck, one of the five Tokyo Olympians in this year's eight, about the team's successful, and quirky, Instagram account: @womenintheboat

Charlotte Buck We've had a lot of changes with the training center this year, and one of the things we wanted to lighten up was the social media. People hadn't posted much in the past and we decided that we wanted an active team account, to cheer for each other.

Buck holds down the 6 Seat of the 2022 W8

It was the idea of myself, Allyson [Baker], Kelsey [Reelick], Regina [Salmons}, and we've all taken turns being the person in charge of posting.

Today was a perfect day for that, using the account to cheer for each other, getting to have Maddie and Claire and Michelle and Molly do so well.

row2k: What are some things that kind of inspire the posts?

Charlotte Buck Reaching out to younger athletes. That's the big thing for us: we want to become better role models and have that as a big part of our ethos. We have had young women reach out to us through Instagram to talk about injury, talk about training. I think that's its very important for us to have a place where any college kid, any high school kid, can go, "Hey, I'd like to ask the National Training Center women, what do they do in this situation?"

row2k: What's the funniest interaction you have had or the strangest connection you made through social media?

Charlotte Buck Mainly, I think people get a kick out of us being kind of strange ourselves, like when Molly [Bruggeman] and Kelsey [Reelick] pretended to be 'Gritty' on media day, showing a little bit of our personality outside of the boat.

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A post shared by USRowing Training Center (@womenintheboat)

[Ed. note: for reference, if you are not a Philadelphia Flyers hockey fan: this is the real Gritty.]

row2k: What makes the running account work, with training and all the other pressure of working towards Paris 2024?

Charlotte Buck Just having us all together, because I feel like we have all gone through periods where we don't want to be the person posting on social media. Or on Sunday here, on race day: none of us are really going to be on our phones. So it's nice to have a communal place, and that means that on Sunday Brooke Mooney or someone else can be running it while we race.

The Women's Eight Final starts at 2:59pm Racice time--8:59 Eastern, 5:50 Pacific)

Follow on row2k or @womenintheboat