GRACE AIGNER: Hi everyone! I’m Grace Aigner from the Minnesota Daily. Welcome back to another episode of In The Know, a podcast dedicated to the University of Minnesota.
On a typical Monday afternoon, I leave my English class at 2:15 and usually head to the gym or to do homework. Members of the Gopher Women’s Rowing Team head down to the Mississippi River. And this past Monday, I joined them.
PRACTICE CLIP: Ready y’all, go. Good legs.
AIGNER: The team is preparing to host a home race on St. Paul’s Lake Phalen on Saturday—their first in about 10 years. They practice six days a week, and they stop for almost nothing—only ice or extremely harsh winds—and Monday’s downpour didn’t seem to phase anyone.
PRACTICE CLIP: So a lot going on. Uh, today we are gonna, we are gonna row. A lot of moving parts, so we’re good? Okay. So we’ll dynamic warm up, um, and then we’ll split into groups, varsity will start.
AIGNER: Varsity team co-captain and fourth-year student Manon Field said rowing in Minnesota can be especially taxing because of the harsh weather conditions, but no practice can be taken for granted.
MANON FIELD: We’re rowing and there’s like icicles coming off like the oars, like, the wind’s just like whipping down the river. I think even in those conditions, like every stroke is building to something and it might not be on that day or not in that practice. But I think if we let ourselves believe that rows were a waste of time, or that practice was a waste of time, then I think we just lose sight of what we’re building.
AIGNER: Gopher women’s rowing is a Division 1 or D1 sport. The program is divided up into two teams: novice and varsity. But the rowing team has a slightly different tactic for assembling their teams each year. Some rowers are recruited before starting at the university, but unlike most other D1 sports, many members walk-on to the team with little to no knowledge or experience with rowing.
Kimi Klassen, a third-year student and varsity rower, said she didn’t plan on joining the rowing team when she got to college, but found herself continuing to show up for it, until she was committed.
KIMI KLASSEN: I did not know that rowing was a D1 sport. I feel like the only place I’d really saw was like the Olympics, like watching it on TV, ’cause I grew up in like, small town, rural Minnesota. There was no, no rowing teams.
Freshman year you’re getting a ton of emails in your inbox. Like, “Oh, join this club, fill out this Google form,” like do all these different things and I would do just like whatever caught my eye. And so one of them was like, oh, a women’s rowing team. I didn’t realize it was NCAA.
But I filled it out and then slowly, I like was getting emails back and was like, oh, you have to go to this physical and you have like all these things. I was like, oh, this sounds serious. And then I found out that, oh, this is actually a division one sport. I didn’t think that it would stick and it stuck, and it did!
AIGNER: Klassen’s varsity teammate Jaden Deutscher, another third-year student, also walked-on the team her freshman year. She said she was a track and field runner in high school, but was completely unfamiliar with rowing.
JADEN DEUTSCHER: I do remember looking at the email and I was like, wait, I think I’m not done yet. I feel like I can give more to a team. So, I was really interested and wanted to be in a team dynamic again. I found out the same way and I was like, you know what, let’s, let’s try it out. Like, the worst that can happen is, you know, I get cut or like, I just find out I don’t like it.
AIGNER: Their head coach, Alicea Strodel, shared their experience when she started rowing. She walked-on to the women’s rowing team at Syracuse University during her freshman year of college. Strodel remembers the challenges of learning a new sport and the demands of being a college athlete.
She said the rowing team’s unique method of assembling their teams allows them to make the sport accessible to great athletes who haven’t gotten the chance to try it.
ALICEA STRODEL: Some of our best athletes come through that walk-on process, and I think that it’s celebrated here and in the Big Ten, like we still have a large walk-on presence at most of our universities, where we know that some of the best athletes on campus have just never been exposed to the sport.
There’s not a lot of junior rowing. There’s not a lot of high school rowing or club rowing in the state or in our bordering states. So a lot of athletes have never had the opportunity to try it or know what it is even. So we know that there’s this niche population or opportunity for us to teach it and get a lot out of people.
AIGNER: Despite having a more accessible recruitment process than other D1 sports, rowing is not an easy sport to practice day in and day out. Gopher women’s rowing practices six days a week, or for about 20 hours, at least. Deutscher said the nature of rowing is extremely hard work.
DEUTSCHER: What people don’t realize too is how like mentally challenging the sport is. It’s kind of cool to be put in a situation to see how, how you handle hard and how like when you’re in the middle of a workout, being like, “OK, I’m really hurting now. Like I have an opportunity to make a choice here.”
Am I gonna give up or am I just gonna like, lean into what our coach likes to call, like the “pain cave.” Like, am I gonna go there? ‘Cause during these hard workouts, if you allow yourself to go there, you can see how far you can truly just max out your body like a hundred percent and just completely reach exhaustion. I feel like not many people are able to actually experience like how far can my body go? How far can I push myself?
AIGNER: Rowing is an endurance sport focused on cardiovascular, aerobic and leg strength. Gopher women’s rowing practices year-round, competing in longer length races in the fall and short distance ones in the spring. Rowers are split into boats of four and eight people—all of whom work to make sure they get across the finish line in the smartest and fastest way possible.
And the practice regimen to succeed at the sport is extremely intense. Klassen said it taxes their physical bodies and minds.
KLASSEN: It’s so difficult to find the actual physical limit of your body, like nine times out of 10 you’ll think that you found your limit, but it was actually just your mental limit.
And so in order to find that, it takes a lot of time and practice of being in that “pain cave” and figuring out, “OK, when I think that that’s all that I have left to give, like how do I find a little bit more?” And just keep doing that over and over and do it like every single stroke.
And so, I don’t think I found that point for me until like this year. I mean, of course it always hurt, like it always hurt, it’s not like I wasn’t trying, but like getting to the point where you feel like physically sick and you like actually throw up, and finding that and then showing up the next day and being willing to put yourself in that position again.
AIGNER: Emilie Rish, third-year student and varsity rower, said that doing the hard work to find your physical limit is when you learn the most about yourself as an athlete and as a person.
EMILIE RISH: You don’t realize how much you sacrifice for the people that you care about, and that those people are like your teammates. It’s not a very like cocky sport, it will humble you and it will show you like, when times are tough, how are you gonna respond?
And being able to kind of understand yourself better, like how you deal with hard and also being encouraged by the other people around you and like seeing them pushing forwards. ‘Cause if they can do it, then shit, I can do it too.
AIGNER: Deutscher said the moments when a row or a workout pushes her beyond her limit is when she finds herself feeling most connected with her teammates.
DEUTSCHER: Obviously we have really tough workouts and I think I found it sort of beautiful in a way that like you’re hurting, like every single girl in there is hurting and you can see everyone is in so much pain and like working so hard. And so I found something really cool in that we’re all doing really hard things together and like pushing for each other.
Like when things kind of get tough, when you feel like you can’t go anymore, like there’s a girl in front of you to your left, to your right behind you, like still going, you know? So it’s like you can’t, you can’t give up on them so easily.
AIGNER: Strodel said the humbling physical and mental demands of rowing are not only what pushes the team, but it’s what keeps them committed.
STRODEL: To be in an endurance sport, you have to be able to endure, and endure hardship and endure like the lows as well as celebrate the highs. But I think the reason everybody stays is for the people. The athletes and the women who choose to continue to endure, obviously have a special characteristic that allows them to believe in themselves, be okay with failing, learn how to bounce back.
And the, the women who stay, I think are people who we all wanna be around, right? It’s inspiring to see people continue to push. It’s inspiring for the athletes on the team to look next to them and say, “Oh, if she can do it, I can do it.”
AIGNER: And Nuala MacFarlane, a fourth-year student and varsity co-captain, said there’s nowhere else she’d rather be. She grew up about 40 minutes outside of London where she rowed from middle to high school. She was recruited to row at the university and after four years, she said there is no team who puts in as much work, without applause, as Gopher women’s rowing.
NUALA MACFARLANE: Rowing in Minnesota doesn’t necessarily get as much credit as I think it’s maybe worth, like we’re not always necessarily winning Big Tens or going to NCAAs or having these like big moments, but like every single person on this team like puts their like heart and soul into training.
And a lot of people sit there and think, like why am I doing this? Like, what is it for? But it builds so much resilience and you see that in pretty much every single person on that, on our team and I personally look around the room and like I wouldn’t wanna be here with anybody else ’cause I know how much everyone wants and how much hard work they put in it.
It’s nice to know that we’re putting in as much work and doing all of our stuff, even though we’re not necessarily getting like the recognition or necessarily have like thousands of fans coming to watch our races or anything like that. But knowing that no matter what, like every single person loves the sport so much that they’ll still show up.
AIGNER: As much as the hard work keeps the team committed, the commitment can be the hardest part. The rowing team competes only a few times a year relative to the hours of work they put in to prepare for it.
Rish, who played volleyball through high school, said one of the biggest adjustments she’s had to make in rowing was learning how to stay motivated in a sport that doesn’t offer instant gratification.
RISH: Sometimes if you don’t PR on something, like if you don’t make a time faster than like what you normally do, sometimes that can be kind of like a, “Oh, like I didn’t make it.” And so it’s kind of like a you against yourself sometimes. You can’t always PR and you can’t always be faster than when you were yesterday ’cause that’s just not like how training works.
But like, being able to work towards that goal and having that PR and being able to be that fast, that takes time and like that gratification takes time because of how much training really goes into this sport.
AIGNER: During Deutscher, Rish and Klassen’s novice year, their eight-person boat finished in third place at the Big Ten national championship in 2024. It was the first time a Minnesota boat had medaled at the Big Ten Championships since 2017.
They started the race behind the other boats, and soon found themselves neck and neck with a boat from Rutgers University. Deutscher and Rish said it was a moment when she and her team wanted to make their hard work pay off.
DEUTSCHER: I just remember thinking like, well, seeing all the boats just shoot by us at the start. And I was like, “Oh my God.” And then I just remember in the middle of the race.
Thinking about all of like the morning stairs we did at Mariucci and thinking about all of the hard workouts we had done together in the early mornings and the walking in the snow from 17th to the boathouse and back and like just, just everything that I had accomplished with these girls and everything that we had done.
And then I remember hearing one of the girls in our boat just like, let out this like guttural yell and I was just like, we like this cannot be all for nought.
RISH: Our coach willed a lot of belief in us, and so our mindset was we are going in and we are gonna be that one Minnesota boat that medals. And so that first half of the race, like I was thinking to myself, “Oh my gosh, I don’t know, I don’t think we’re gonna do it. Everyone is ahead of us. I don’t know what’s going on.”
And I remember our coxswain, like bless her soul, she like pulls down her mic almost halfway through and I remember she just pulled down her mic and she was like, “If you want to medal, now’s the time.”
AIGNER: From throwing up or blacking out during a ruthless workout, to the hours spent rowing down the Mississippi River, rowing continues to demand more from its athletes, pushing them to succeed.
MacFarlane and Field said they’ve had moments where they questioned whether the sport was right for them, but those thoughts didn’t last.
MACFARLANE: At first it was, I kinda felt like, what am I doing? Like, is this worth it? Like I’ve got school and rowing, and I’m in a whole new country and there was so much going on. I struggled a lot the first two semesters and like, I would call my parents crying and be like, “I don’t wanna be here anymore. Like, I want to come home.” But they always told me it’ll work out. It’ll come through. Just stick with it.
And I’m so glad I did because the, the growth in seeing the team develop and change as much as it has in the four years and being like a part of the change and like a leader in that change, it’s like you look back and we might not be winning every race, but as a team, we’re making huge step forwards, like with scores and numbers and like beating teams that like we’ve never beat before. And I think when I look back on it now, it’s like those smaller wins and the realization that I’m a part of something bigger.
FIELD: If you weren’t recruited and even if you were recruited, you’re trying to figure out those really hard moments like, is what I’m doing worth it? Like, just even being out there in the rain, it’s kind of fun, but there are moments too where you’re like, “Wow, this, this is really tough.” And I think it’s hard to remember your why.
When I started I didn’t know how long I would, I want to row until it’s not fun and it’s not exciting and it’s not rewarding. And it has never stopped being fun and exciting and rewarding.
AIGNER: Rish said rowing has been a transformative experience for herself as an athlete and a person. It’s taught her to appreciate difficult moments because they make successful ones that much better, and it’s taught her how to fail.
RISH: If you were to ask me in high school, if I was mentally tough, I’d be like, “Oh yeah, like I’ve done hard lifts, I’ve done like stairs.” Like that’s really hard. And then if you ask me now I think comparatively from myself, before I knew rowing, I thought I was mentally tough until I joined rowing.
And then I realized kind of how hard it was and how mentally changing it can really be. And I’m not trying to scare anybody away from it. Yes, rowing is very hard, but there’s also a lot of beauty in the hard. I would say that I used to be kind of a perfectionist when it came to my sports and when it comes to rowing, like you cannot be perfect every single day. That is just not physically or mentally possible.
AIGNER: Strodel views her role as a coach as the facilitator for the team’s voices to be heard. She’s proud of their resilience and the team culture they’ve created and the people that they are.
She said she wants people to know that even if they don’t know what rowing is or what it takes to be good at it, Gopher women’s rowing will still be down at the boathouse on the banks of the Mississippi working hard to be their best.
STRODEL: There’s so many people who are always like, “Oh, I coach the women’s rowing team.” They’re like, “Oh, the U has rowing?” And this is in the greater community too. I was like, “Yeah, we do.”
And they’re always like, “Oh, how many athletes do you coach?” And I was like, “Oh, we have like 65 women on our team.” And they’re like, “What?” And so there’s just this surprise that it even exists.
And I think that also just lends to like the humility of the sport and the athletes in it that we’re out here in the morning and usually, you know, before the sun rises doing our work, getting it done, they go to school, they come back in the afternoon and they do it again. And it’s with this quiet confidence and just willingness to grind and do the hard thing when nobody’s watching.
AIGNER: Klassen, Deutscher and Rish found their people and their passion through rowing, and they encourage you to try finding yours too.
KLASSEN: You are greater than your limits and that if you are 5’ 10” or above, you should join the Women’s Rowing Team.
DEUTSCHER: Or not, or not I’m sitting pretty.
KLASSEN: Height helps.
RISH: Or if you are inspired by our words of wisdom you should totally join the rowing team because it’s a really fun community, and it would be super fun.
DEUTSCHER: And you do not need to be 5’ 10” and over.
RISH: That’s just what the flyer says. That’s just what the flyer says.
DEUTSCHER: Disregard that because so did I.
AIGNER: In my short time hanging around Gopher women’s rowing, I saw a community of strong athletes and even stronger people. And I learned that rowing is completely singular. First, because many of its athletes didn’t know the sport existed until they showed up to the tryouts. And second, because it’s one of few places where D1 athletes are showing up to practice each day with the sole purpose of working hard for themselves and for each other.
If you would like to support Gopher women’s rowing, they’ll be racing at and hosting a home race this Saturday, May 2, at Lake Phalen in St. Paul.
That’s all I’ve got for you today folks! This episode was written by Grace Aigner and produced by Ceci Heinen. Thanks for listening and if you have any questions, comments or concerns, don’t be afraid to send us an email at [email protected]. I’d love to hear from you.
My name is Grace Aigner, be safe, be well, and I’ll talk to you next time on In The Know.
