ST. LOUIS – Rosie Holub has been sailing since she was seven, and the lessons the sport has taught her are things she continues to apply to her professional and personal life. Growing up in Delafield, Wis. on Lake Nagawicka, Holub's father made his living building inland racing boats, primarily shallow hulled, high performance sailboats called scows. Everyone in her family -Holub has one sibling, an older sister – had their own boat. Holub's was a "Class X" 16-foot boat she named The Green Hornet. "I never had a bicycle as a kid. In fact I didn't learn how to ride a bike until I was 28," the president/CEO of the Missouri Credit Union Association quips. Holub won her first sailboat race when she was a mere 13. "I usually didn't win every race every season although I did do that when I was 16. Mostly I was either a mile ahead or a mile behind," she recalls. Holub has competed with races that included as few as 10 other sailboats to up to 30-40 boats in a regatta with sailors from other lakes. "Sailing principles and strategies permeate every aspect of your life," says Holub. "Life's voyage has so many challenges along the way, sometimes we make right and wrong decisions and hopefully we make the right ones most of the time. We live in competition all the time against ourselves and agonize over our defeats. Even the best of sailors don't win all the races, but we're judged by how well we sail the race and not whether we win or lose. When you're sailing you're dealing with the predictable and unpredictable. Just as in life we try to make the most accurate predictions. "The most frustrating time for sailors is in calm waters, that's the greatest test of character. You get frustrated easily because you can't go anywhere. When you have no control there's a lesson in life in that too – you have to sometimes make life changing decisions, adjust and even change direction. You need to have patience and trust that fair winds will come again." Holub doesn't compete in sailing races these days. She says she's just starting to enjoy sailing for the pleasure of it. She owns a butterfly sailboat that's about 12-feet long which she takes out occasionally on the lake in the subdivision where she lives. She's also had the opportunity recently on a couple of occasions to take some credit union association and league leaders out on sailboats and share with them her wonderment of sailing. – [email protected]