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 University of Toronto Rowing Club (UTRC) was founded on February 10, 1897 and represents the Varsity Blues at local and international regattas. It is the oldest university rowing club in Canada.
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.
Laurel V. Korholz was the Women's Assistant Coach for the United States Rowing Team. As a coach, Korholz coached the US Women's Double at the 2008 Summer Olympics. The Beijing Olympics was the fourth Olympics she attended; her first as a coach. As an athlete, she won a silver medal at the 2004 Summer Olympics in the women's eight. Now she is the Assistant Head Coach of Heavyweight Rowing at Columbia University as of 2022
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.
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).
Mary Rebecca Whipple is an American coxswain. She competed at the 2012 Summer Olympics and at the 2008 Summer Olympics. She won a gold medal in women's eight at both competitions. She also competed at the 2004 Summer Olympics where she won a silver medal. As a coxswain, Whipple stands 5 ft 3 in (1.60 m) and weighs in at 108 lb (49 kg).
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.
Caroline Lind is an American rower, and is a two-time Olympic gold medalist. At the end of 2014 she was ranked #1 female rower by International Rowing Federation.
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.
Brett Sickler is an American rower. Sickler is a three-time member of the US rowing senior national team and won gold medals with the women's eight at the 2006 and 2007 World Rowing Championships. She finished 12th in the women's double sculls at the 2006 world regatta and was a Team USA alternate for the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. Sickler graduated from the University of Michigan in 2005 and was the lead assistant coach from 2010 to 2012 where she helped coach the Wolverines to a second-place finish at the 2012 NCAA Championships and the 2012 Big Ten Championship title. She was named the assistant coach for the University of Virginia rowing team in August 2012.
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.
Women's rowing is the participation of women in the sport of rowing. Women row in all boat classes, from single scull to eights, across the same age ranges and standards as men, from junior amateur through university-level to elite athlete. Typically men and women compete in separate crews although mixed crews and mixed team events also take place. Coaching for women is similar to that for men.
Simon Carcagno is an American rower who competed in lightweight rowing. He won a gold medal in the eights at the 2008 World Rowing Championships and placed third in the coxless pairs in 2003. He also won a silver medal in the coxless fours at the 2007 Pan American Games. He represented the United States as an alternate at the 2004 Summer Olympics and the 2008 Summer 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.
Alice Jean White also known as Alice Jackson is a British-New Zealand female rower. She has represented both New Zealand and Great Britain in junior and senior level rowing competitions. White has competed in and twice won the annual UK Boat Race in 2017 and 2018, representing Cambridge, and helping to set the course record in the 2017 race. She has twice competed in the NCAA Championships in the United States. Originally from Yorkshire, England, she emigrated to first to New Zealand as a child, where she attended high school, before attending the University of California, Los Angeles to study psychobiology, and then Cambridge studying Clinical Neuroscience with a focus on Huntington’s disease.
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.
