Hello all!
In case you haven’t heard, I have recently qualified for the 2022 World Rowing Championships in Racice, Czech Republic from September 18-25 in the Lightweight Women’s Quad! It has been a long journey for me to get here and I’d like to update you on some of my recent highlights.
Winning LW1x at the Head of the Charles
In the fall of 2021, I won the Lightweight Women’s single at the Head of the Charles in addition to several other fall races including the Head of the Schuylkill in Philadelphia, PA and the annual Head of the Kevin series hosted by Riverside Boat Club on the Charles. Coming off of a very successful fall season, I set my sights on doing well in USRowing selection regattas in the spring of 2022 to make it to the World Championships in 2022.
I came in 4th in the Lightweight single at USRowing’s first selection regatta in March of 2022. First place went to a Tokyo 2020 Olympian in the Lightweight Women’s double, but I teamed up with the second and third place finishers, Sophia Luwis and Audrey Boersen, along with Cara Stawicki, a 2019 World Champion in the Lightweight Women's pair, to start building a successful quad.
Travel
We first trained in Florida starting in April and then moved to Conshohocken, PA. I’ve dearly missed my home base of Riverside Boat Club on the Charles River, but rowers often have to relocate for long periods of time to train at this level.
US Trials for the Lightweight Women’s quad were scheduled for July 6-9 but since Sophia, Audrey, and I lacked international racing experience, we made plans to take a European racing trip before Trials to get some international experience so our first international start wouldn’t be the World Championships. We went overseas from June 13-26th and raced at the Women's Henley Regatta in Henley-on-Thames, England, and at the Holland Beker Regatta in Amsterdam. We learned so much over the course of this trip and it was an invaluable experience to have in the lead up to the World Championships!
We raced the Women’s open weight quad at Women’s Henley and made it to the second round of racing. At Women’s Henley, we faced a racecourse unlike any in the US and some unfortunate equipment issues derailed our performance more than we would have liked. At Holland Beker, we had a more traditional 6-lane, 2000-meter racecourse and raced in two events: the open weight and lightweight quads. We had a great race in the open weight quad, coming in 2nd in the event! We faced the Dutch National Team’s lightweights in the lightweight event, coming away with a 4th place finish and lots to improve upon in our race strategy and inter-boat communication. Given the way the US qualification system is structured, we spend most of our time training in singles or doubles. Rowing with three other people in a quad presents new challenges and we are grateful that we were able to give ourselves the opportunity to get into a high-pressure situation early on to figure out how to overcome some of the unique challenges involved in rowing a quad.
Back in the US
We came back to the US with about a week until US Trials and we saw that we were uncontested in the Women’s Lightweight quad Trials event (everyone was scared of us!). As we are not the kind of athletes who are content with a single boat race, we entered the Women’s open weight quad event to test ourselves against some of the top US open weight women, and we entered the open doubles and the open singles as well to get even more trips down the course. It was a fast and fun week of racing and we were able to put together the lessons we’d learned in Europe to come away with a win in the open weight women’s quad before securing our berth on the 2022 National Team in the Lightweight Women’s quad in our uncontested race the next morning.
We are now back to training in Conshohocken, PA at Whitemarsh Boat Club and are looking forward to getting in some training in Princeton, NJ, with the rest of the US National Team as it is selected next week. We will be heading to Europe again on September 1st for a training trip in Linz, Austria before going to Racice to race from September 18-25th! I am so excited to finally be living out my dream of racing and training at the highest level and getting the opportunities to row overseas! I could not have done this without the incredible people and organizations that have supported me throughout my rowing career: from juniors racing in fours at BB&N School, to my first foray into lightweight rowing at MIT, and of course, Riverside Boat Club, where I have pursued my elite rowing dreams for 4 years now!
Donate and support the team!
Unfortunately, USRowing does not financially support our international training and racing. Please support all of Riverside’s Worlds Athletes by donating to RBC’s Worlds Fund here. Riverside has pledged to support our athlete’s travels and equipment rentals.
