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.
The Los Gatos Rowing Club was started in 1979 to provide what was then mostly an eastern U.S. sport, to the kids in the Santa Clara Valley. In the past 20 years, more than 2,000 kids from 15 different high schools have passed through the program. Many have gone onto colleges and universities to row competitively, several have received rowing scholarships, and a few have been selected for Junior National Camps and are trying for the Olympics.
The Intercollegiate Rowing Association (IRA) governs intercollegiate rowing between varsity men's heavyweight, men's lightweight, and women's lightweight rowing programs across the United States, while the NCAA fulfills this role for women's open weight rowing. It is the direct successor to the Rowing Association of American Colleges, the first collegiate athletic organization in the United States, which operated from 1870–1894.
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.
Bryan Volpenhein, is an American rower. He is a three-time Olympian, having participated in the 2000, 2004 and 2008 Summer Olympics.
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.
Eleanor Logan is an American rower. She is the first American rower to win a gold medal in three consecutive Olympics, a three-time Olympic champion and three-time world champion.
Anna P. Goodale is an American rower. She has rowed on four world championship U.S. women’s eight crews and competed at the 2008 Summer Olympics, where she won a gold medal in women's eight.
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.
Kathryn Elliott "Kathy" Keeler is an American former competitive rower and Olympic gold medalist. She was a member of the American women's eights team that won the gold medal at the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, California, "the only women's crew in U.S. history to win an Olympic gold medal" until 2008.
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.
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.
Polly Swann is a British rower and a member of the Great Britain Rowing Team. She is a former World and European champion in the women's coxless pairs, having won the 2013 World Rowing Championships at Chungju in Korea, and the 2014 European Rowing Championships at Belgrade, Serbia with her partner Helen Glover. At the 2016 Summer Olympics she won a silver medal in the women's eight.
Katelin Guregian is an American national rowing team coxswain. She is a five-time world champion and an Olympic gold medallist.
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.
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.
Regina Salmons is an American rower. She competed in the women's eight event at the 2020 Summer Olympics. She graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 2018, where she earned honors for her thesis in creative writing and served as editor-in-chief of a feminist literary magazine on campus.
Colette Lucas-Conwell is an American coxswain. At the 2023 Pan American Games, Lucas-Conwell won gold as the coxswain for the United States mixed eight and silver for the women's eight. She is the first female athlete invited to a men's Olympic rowing selection camp in U.S. rowing history.
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