Courtesy of Doug Welling

This past week, the rowing team concluded its fall season and is now looking towards its spring season in a new boathouse facility.

This season, the team traveled across New England to compete in the Head of the Riverfront regatta in Hartford, Conn., the Head of the Charles in Cambridge, Mass. and the Colby-Bates-Bowdoin Chase Regatta in Sidney.

Most notably, the team benefited from new talent at the Head of the Riverfront regatta, where Grace Tetreault ’28 finished in second place in the women’s single and the novice women’s eight boat brought home third overall.

Captain Annie Galbraith ’25 noted the incredible growth she has seen over her four years with the team and the promise of a bright future for the team with such motivated first years.

“We have so many first years this year. I think the most we’ve ever had. So, that’s been fun, just to meet everyone, get people excited about rowing on the water. Our roster was also the biggest it’s ever been this fall. [We] started with over 100, which is wild, especially [at] a 2000-person school, and now we’re hovering right around 90,” Galbraith said.

Tetreault, one of four first years on the varsity team, commented on her transition to Bowdoin’s rowing team after a successful first season.

“I was really nervous to come to Bowdoin, but I was pleasantly surprised, because everyone on the team just loves the sport. They love each other, and I think that the coaches …  have done a really good job of building that community where we’re not just going fast, but we’re also having fun in a very safe environment,” Tetreault said.

Before coming to Bowdoin, Tetreault had the unique opportunity to train with Bowdoin Rowing Head Coach Doug Welling as a member of Maine Coast Rowing Association Junior Team (MCRA). Welling and Nordic Skiing Assistant Coach Leslie Krichko began a rowing camp in collaboration with MCRA for high school students in the summer of 2020.

“Doug … was the guy that taught me how to row.… And then I ended up loving it,” Tetrault said. “I rowed the whole entire summer,… and I basically just never stopped rowing…. So it’s kind of been a part of my life since my freshman year of high school.”

Although regattas have wrapped up for the fall season, the team will continue to train throughout the winter months to get ready for its inaugural season in a new facility.

Previously, the rowing team’s home base since 2002 was Smith Boathouse on the New Meadows River, about four and a half miles from campus. However, as the sport has grown in popularity among the student body in recent years, the team needed a new boathouse to accommodate the larger number of students and elevate the program. The College announced the construction of a new boathouse on the New Meadows River with assistance from an anonymous donor on February 26.

Captain Annie Galbraith ’25, commented on the team’s initial reaction to the news last winter.

“We are so, so excited. The other boat house was wonderful, but it was built as a temporary structure, and it wasn’t supposed to last as long as it did. And then our program has transitioned more to eight [shells], and it couldn’t fit eights inside, so a lot of our very expensive boats were just outside,” Galbraith said. “It’s a huge deal … for the program, especially as our roster every year has kept growing and getting bigger.”

Welling also spoke to the excitement of the growth of the program that prompted the construction of the near-completed boathouse.

“This year, we had our biggest turnout we’ve ever had for ‘Learn To Row,’ which, in our mind, made it wildly successful,” Welling said. “In our last race, we raced nine eights on the water, which we’ve never seen before in terms of the team’s scope and size, and to watch that size of team supporting each other is just a phenomenal thing to watch.”

With the culmination of the fall season, the team is gearing up to train for championship races this coming spring and prepare for the team’s annual training trip to Camp Bob in South Carolina during spring break. Furthermore, the American Collegiate Rowing Association championships, which will be held from May 16–18 in Oak Ridge, Tenn., is one of the most anticipated races of the entire year, motivating the team through winter-month training.

Welling highlighted that building community as one of the most important aspects driving his coaching plan.

“Our team motto is have fun and go fast, and we try to really, truly embrace that,” Welling said. “For all of us, I think the most important thing is that we really enjoy the people involved with the sport and enjoy all the time outdoors with nature.”