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.
Kathleen Joan Heddle, was a Canadian Olympic rower. She and her long-time rowing partner Marnie McBean were the first Canadians to be awarded three Olympic gold medals at the Summer Games. They also won a silver in double sculls at the 1994 World Championships.
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 the eight at the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona.
Zsuzsanna "Susan" Francia is a Hungarian-American two-time Olympic gold medalist rower. Growing up in Abington, Pennsylvania as the daughter of Nobel laureate, Hungarian biochemist and mRNA researcher Katalin Karikó, she attended Abington Senior High School, followed by the University of Pennsylvania, graduating in 2004 with a bachelor's degree in sociology of law and deviance and a master's degree in criminology. She currently resides in Princeton, New Jersey, and is affiliated with the US Rowing Training Center.
Caryn Davies is an American rower. She is the winner of the 2023 Thomas Keller Medal, the most prestigious international award in the sport of rowing, and the only American to have ever won this award. She won gold medals as the stroke seat of the U.S. 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 and in 2022 into the Harvard University Athletics Hall of Fame.
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 also in the crew that in 1975 won the first national championship won by a University of Wisconsin varsity women's team.
Michael Francis Teti is an American Olympic rowing coach and former rower. Formerly the head coach of men's crew at the University of California, Berkeley, he is a twelve-time U.S. national team member, three-time Olympian, a member of the world champion men's eight in 1987, and is a member of the U.S. National Rowing Hall of Fame as both an athlete and coach. He has served as the US Men's head coach since June 2018.
Emma Kimberley Twigg is a New Zealand rower. A single sculler, she was the 2014 world champion and won gold in her fourth Olympics in Tokyo in July 2021. Previous Olympic appearances were in 2008, 2012, and 2016. She has retired from rowing twice, first for master-level studies in Europe in 2015 and then after the 2016 Olympics, disappointed at having narrowly missed an Olympic medal for the second time. After two years off the water, she started training again in 2018 and won silver at the 2019 World Rowing Championships. Since her marriage in 2020, she has become an outspoken advocate for LGBT athletes. At the 2020 Summer Olympics, Twigg won gold in the woman's single scull. At the 2024 Summer Olympics, Twigg won Silver in the same event.
Helen Glover is a British professional rower and a member of the Great Britain Rowing Team. Ranked the number 1 female rower in the world in 2015–16, she is a two-time Olympic champion, triple World champion, quintuple World Cup champion and quintuple European champion. She and her partner Heather Stanning were the World, Olympic, World Cup and European record holders, plus the Olympic, World and European champions in the women's coxless pairs. She has also been a British champion in both women's fours and quadruple sculls.
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. A two-time Olympian and world champion in rowing, Farooq later became a college coach at Stanford University where she helped the Cardinal win its first ever Pac-12 and NCAA titles in rowing. At the University of Washington, her team swept the NCAA Championship for the first-time in history, then repeated the feat in 2019 setting NCAA records in all three events. She has been named Pac-12 coach of the year six times and national coach of the year three times. She was inducted into the USRowing Hall of Fame in 2014 and awarded the Ernestine Bayer Woman of the Year award by USRowing in 2017. In 2021, Farooq was inducted into the Wisconsin Athletics Hall of Fame.
Kara Michelle Kohler is an American female crew rower. She won the bronze medal at the 2012 Summer Olympics in the quadruple sculls event. She also has a World Championship gold medal in the coxless four and a World Championship bronze in the single sculls.
Grace Elizabeth Prendergast is a former New Zealand sweep rower. She is a 15-time national champion in the premier category, an Olympic champion, a five-time world champion and the current (2022) world champion in the coxless pair. She grew up in Christchurch, where she started rowing for the Avon Rowing Club in 2007. She competed at the Tokyo Olympics in two boat classes and won gold in the coxless pair and a silver in the eight and set a new world's best time in the pair. Various parties, including the World Rowing Federation, expected her to win medals in Tokyo. She was the highest ranked female rower in the world twice in a row in 2019 and 2021. Since 2014, her rowing partner in the coxless pair has been Kerri Gowler. Prendergast is also a Boat Race winner, having competed as part of Cambridge University Boat Club's (CUBC) women's crew in 2022. She retired from professional rowing in October 2022.
Kerri Leigh Williams is a New Zealand rower. She is a national champion, an Olympic champion and double medallist, a three-time world champion and a current (2019) world champion in both the coxless pair and the women's eight. Williams was born in Raetihi in 1993. She is of Māori descent, affiliating with Rangitāne iwi. She received her education at Nga Tawa Diocesan School in Marton. The school first started to offer a rowing programme in 2008 and a year later, Williams took this up. At the time, she was also competing as an equestrian but soon started focussing on rowing so much that she had to choose one of the sports. Her trainer told her three weeks after she had started rowing that she would one day represent New Zealand. Jackie Gowler, her younger sister by three years, took up rowing in 2010 inspired by her success; they have both made it into the New Zealand national rowing team. Their elder sister, Jaimee Gowler, remains active with horse riding. After school, Williams became a member of the Aramoho Wanganui Rowing Club.
Olivia Coffey is an American rower. She is a three-time world champion and an Olympian. She won the gold medal in the quad sculls at the 2015 World Rowing Championships. Coffey was in the winning Cambridge crew of The Boat Race 2018.
Grace Luczak (Fattal) (born May 24, 1989 in Royal Oak, Michigan) is an American Olympic rower.
Kristine O'Brien is an American rower. In 2015 O'Brien, Adrienne Martelli, Grace Latz and Grace Luczak took the gold medal in the coxless four at the 2015 World Rowing Championships.
Jessica Morrison is an Australian representative rower and dual Olympian. She is an Australian national champion and won two silver medals at the 2019 World Rowing Championships. She competed in the Australian women's eight at the 2016 Summer Olympics and in two boats at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics doubling-up in the coxless pair and the coxless four. In the four at the Tokyo 2020 she won a gold medal and became an Olympic champion.
Lucy Stephan is an Australian rower. She is a multiple Australian champion, a 2016 and 2020 Olympian and a world champion who won a 2017 world title in the coxless four and regained that same world title in 2019. At the Tokyo 2020 Olympics she set the pace from the bow seat of the Australian coxless four to a gold medal victory. She won the Remenham Challenge Cup at the 2018 Henley Royal Regatta in the Australian women's eight.
Karolien Florijn is a Dutch rower. She was a member of the Dutch coxless four, along with Ellen Hogerwerf, Ymkje Clevering and Veronique Meester, that won an Olympic silver medal in Tokyo 2020. The same crew was a three-time European Champion and won a silver medal at the 2019 World Rowing Championships. Florijn returned to the single sculls in 2022, winning the overall World Rowing Cup trophy and winning the gold medal at the European Championships in Munich. She won the single sculls event at the 2024 Paris Summer Olympic Games.
Kendall "Kenny" Chase is an American rower who competes in international level events and has qualified to represent the United States at the 2020 Summer Olympics. She was a five-time World U23 champion and a World Junior silver medalist. She represented the United States at the 2020 Summer Olympics. She is openly a part of the LGBTQ+ community.
United States 
