Rowing is the oldest intercollegiate sport in the United States. The first intercollegiate race was a contest between Yale and Harvard in 1852. In the 2018–19 school year, there were 2,340 male and 7,294 female collegiate rowers in Divisions I, II and III, according to the NCAA. The sport has grown since the first NCAA statistics were compiled for the 1981–82 school year, which reflected 2,053 male and 1,187 female collegiate rowers in the three divisions. Some concern has been raised that some recent female numbers are inflated by non-competing novices.
Harry Parker was the head coach of the Harvard varsity rowing program (1963–2013). He also represented the United States in the single scull at the 1960 Summer Olympics.
The Columbia University Lions are the collective athletic teams and their members from Columbia University, an Ivy League institution in New York City, United States. The current director of athletics is Peter Pilling.
Todd Kennett is a coach of the Division I Collegiate heavyweight rowing program at Cornell University. In 2006 and 2008, his lightweight varsity boat program captured both the Eastern Sprints Regatta and the Intercollegiate Rowing Association Championships ("IRA").
Anna Cummins is an American rower who won a gold medal at the 2008 Summer Olympics and a silver medal at the 2004 Summer Olympics in the women's eight. At the FISA World Rowing Championships in 2006, Mickelson won the gold medal in the women's eight with a new world's best time of 5:55.50, and with partner Megan Cooke, she placed 4th in the women's pair. At the FISA World Rowing Championships in 2007, Mickelson won the gold medal again in the women's eight and won the "B" final in the women's pair.
Lesley Allison Thompson-Willie is a Canadian rowing coxswain and Olympic champion. Between 1984 and 2016, she has competed at eight Olympic Games, a record for a rower, winning medals in five of them including gold in coxed eight at the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona.
Erin Jane Cafaro is an American rower. She competed at the 2008 Summer Olympics, where she won a gold medal in the women's eight. At the 2012 London Olympics she won her second consecutive gold medal in the women's eight.
Lindsay Shoop is an American rower. She competed at the 2008 Summer Olympics, where she won a gold medal in women's eight. She rowed at the University of Virginia (UVA).
Caryn Davies is an American rower. She won gold medals as the stroke seat in women's eight at the 2012 Summer Olympics and the 2008 Summer Olympics. In April 2015 Davies stroked Oxford University to victory in the first ever women's Oxford/Cambridge boat race held on the same stretch of the river Thames in London where the men's Oxford/Cambridge race has been held since 1829. She was the most highly decorated Olympian to take part in either [men's or women's] race. In 2012 Davies was ranked number 4 in the world by the International Rowing Federation. At the 2004 Olympic Games she won a silver medal in the women's eight. Davies has won more Olympic medals than any other U.S. oarswoman. The 2008 U.S. women's eight, of which she was a part, was named FISA crew of the year. Davies is from Ithaca, New York, where she graduated from Ithaca High School, and rowed with the Cascadilla Boat Club. Davies was on the Radcliffe College (Harvard) Crew Team and was a member on Radcliffe's 2003 NCAA champion Varsity 8, and overall team champion. In 2013, she was a visiting student at Pembroke College, Oxford, where she stroked the college men's eight to a victory in both Torpids and the Oxford University Summer Eights races. In 2013–14 Davies took up Polynesian outrigger canoeing in Hawaii, winning the State novice championship and placing 4th in the long-distance race na-wahine-o-ke-kai with her team from the Outrigger Canoe Club. In 2013, she was inducted into the New York Athletic Club Hall of Fame. She has served as a Vice President of the U.S. Olympians Association and as athletes' representative to the Board of USRowing.
Megan Cooke Carcagno is an American rower. She was a gold medalist at the 2006 World Rowing Cup and a gold medalist at the 2006 FISA World Rowing Championships, assisting in setting a world best time for the U.S. National Team. She was also a 2006 champion at the Henley Royal Regatta and the Head of the Charles Regatta.
Carie Brand Graves was an American rower and collegiate rowing coach. Competing in the women's eights, she won a gold medal at the 1984 Olympics and a bronze in 1976. She was part of the boat that in 1975 won the first national championship won by a University of Wisconsin varsity women’s team.
College Boat Club of the University of Pennsylvania is the rowing program for University of Pennsylvania Rowing, located in the Madeira Shell House at #11 Boathouse Row on the historic Boathouse Row of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Its membership consists entirely of past and present rowers of the University of Pennsylvania. It hosts both heavyweight and lightweight varsity men's teams and an openweight varsity women's team. The Wharton Crew Team, however, rows out of Bachelors Barge Club at #6 Boathouse Row. College Boat Club was founded in 1872 by the school's students, shortly after the school's campus was relocated from Center City to West Philadelphia. College Boat Club was admitted to the Schuylkill Navy in 1875.
Michael Richardson Bach is an American former competitive rower and Olympic silver medalist.
Yasmin Farooq is an American rowing cox and the head coach of the University of Washington women's rowing team. She graduated from Waupun High School in 1984 at Waupun, Wisconsin. She attended the University of Wisconsin where she joined the rowing team in 1984 as a coxswain. She was a member of the 1986 national champion JV eight and served as captain and MVP of the team her senior year. In 2021, Farooq was inducted into the Wisconsin Athletics Hall of Fame.
Esther Ruth Lofgren is an American rower and an Olympic gold medalist. She won the gold medal in the women's eight at the 2012 Summer Games in London. Lofgren is a graduate of Harvard College, where she rowed for Radcliffe Crew and was a two-time All-American. She is an eight-time member of the U.S. National Rowing Team and a seven-time World Championship medalist.
The NCAA Division I Rowing Championship is a rowing championship held by the NCAA for Division I women's heavyweight collegiate crews. The inaugural National Championship was held in 1997 for the top 16 crews in the country, located at Lake Natoma, Sacramento, California. In 2002, the NCAA added championships for Division II and Division III. All races are 2,000 metres (6,562 ft) long. The NCAA does not sponsor men's rowing and women's lightweight rowing championships.
John Albert "Monster" Mathews is an American former competitive rower, U.S. Olympian and Pan American. He was a member of the 1975 World Championship Team to Nottingham, England, where he placed fifth in the coxed pair. Mathews was also a member of the U.S. Olympic Team competing in the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal in the men's coxed pair event.
James Rook is an Australian national representative rowing coxswain. He is an Olympian and a medallist at the 2017, 2018 and 2019 World Rowing Championships and a winner of the Remenham Challenge Cup at the 2018 Henley Royal Regatta. He is notable for becoming in 2018 the first Australian male coxswain to steer a representative Australian female crew under the FISA gender-neutral coxswain selection policy change of 2017. He coxed the Australian women's eight at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics.
Rosemary Popa is an Australian national champion rower, Olympic gold medalist, and former rower for the University of California, Berkeley. A dual citizen of Australia and the United States, she has represented both countries at World Rowing Championships, twice winning medals for Australia. She won the Remenham Challenge Cup at the 2018 Henley Royal Regatta in the Australian women's eight. In 2021, she was selected to represent Australia in the coxless four event at the delayed 2020 Summer Olympics, where she won the gold medal.
Stuart Sim is an Australian representative rowing coxswain. He is an Olympian and a national champion, has represented at world championships and was a world junior champion in 2011. He rowed in the Australian men's eight at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics.
