The Wesleyan women’s crew team entered the 2024–25 season with high expectations, and the team was ready to rise to the challenge after two consecutive national runner-up finishes at the NCAA Division III (D-III) Championships. The Cards had to prove that they belonged at the top of the pack and that they could beat any boat that entered the water.
“The pressure is on when you’re up there,” current captain Alex Kuo ’26 said. “But it’s really exciting because you’ve got boats to catch, you’ve got people ahead of you, but then you also have people behind you trying to get you. In the NESCAC, everyone’s so close together, so it’s really anyone’s game. It’s just, [you’ve] got to work really hard. You really don’t know what to expect.”
The Red and Black welcomed a large class of 12 first-years to the team and worked on becoming a cohesive unit during the fall season.
“Especially in crew, where you need to be completely in sync, every single piece of practice and on the water, making sure that the team gels together, is super important,” Kaitlin Browne ’28 said. “So I would say that the fall is a really important time for building team bonding.”
The fall season saw great results for the Cards, who started slowly but ended on a high note, coming in second among 34 boats at the Head of the Charles [Regatta] in Cambridge, Mass., and winning the Wormtown Chase Regatta in Worcester, Mass. outright against 17 other competing boats.
With early success to motivate them, the Cards entered their off season ready to spend the long, cold months training and getting faster for the moment when they could get back in the water and kick off the Spring season.
“The winter is such a physically demanding part of the year because you’re putting so much pressure on your body,” Sydney Romer ’28 said. “And even when it got really frustrating and stressful, we were just reminded, okay, here are our goals. We want to be competitive. Let’s put our best effort into this workout, because this workout might make us one second faster in the spring.”
Driven by the knowledge that the competition was only getting faster, the Cards spent January and February in the erg room building up to the opening match of the spring with No. 10 United States Coast Guard Academy (USCGA) on Saturday, March 29. On a beautiful day at the Thames River in New London, Conn., the Cardinals destroyed the Bears, with all four boats winning their respective races in a clean sweep. The 2V8 looked particularly dominant, beating their opponent by 26 seconds, and the V8 set the fastest time of the day at 6:27 over the 1,820-meter long course.
“It’s always super exciting to start off the season,” Kuo said. “It really boosts your spirit. Also the first race is where you figure out where you are compared to other teams. It’s, like, did you do enough overwinter training or did you not? And it’s definitely very validating for the first race to be like, okay, the work we put in over the winter, over the fall, everything we did on our own and as a team paid off.”
On Saturday, April 5, the no. 2 ranked Red and Black moved on to the Jennifer McLaughlin Cup, looking to defend their title against no. 7 Smith College, no. 9 Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI), and no. 15 Colby College. The top two boats put on a show, both placing first with 10-plus second leads en route to claim the title for the second year in a row. The victory against nationally ranked opponents confirmed that the Cards were not just a competitive team, but could keep up with any boat in the country.
“Smith was one of the teams that we were racing, and I remember our captain being like, ‘they hung on to us for a while,’” Romer said. “But she was like, ‘I have so much faith in this boat,’ [and] I knew that we just had to focus on the person in front of [us]. And we had a fantastic race.”
The following week, the Red and Black faced disappointment as a freak mid-April snowstorm stopped their bus on the way to Malden, Mass. The race was planned with no. 1 Tufts University, no. 5 Bates College, and no. 8 Wellesley College, but due to the weather, Wesleyan couldn’t take part. Instead of hanging their heads, the Cards continued to focus, knowing their moment would come and they would be ready to take down those highly ranked competitors.
“Nobody likes turning around,” Kuo said. “We were very excited for the race, but when we turned around, we were like, this is the moment where you could either go home sad, or you could go home, like, a little bit more amped up for the next time that we got to race all those teams.”
For their final tune-up before championship season, the Cardinals met Williams College in a dual race on Saturday, April 19. The results were mixed, but the 2V8 and varsity 4 boats took home decisive victories over the Ephs, although the V8 and 3V8 came up slightly short, giving the Ephs the overall edge.
“What really stuck out to me from our coxswain were the calls to stay internal, stay focused, because, in reality, these are just other athletes and we have to row our own race,” Browne said. “And it ended up working out for us. I was really happy to be able to hold the [2V8] trophy.”
Next for the Red and Black was the New England Rowing Championships (NERC) held in Worcester, Mass. on Saturday, May 3. Yet again, weather got in the way as the only boat allowed to race that day was the V8. After their race, all other races were called off. The Cards came in 5th of 16 boats in the abbreviated tournament without being able to fully show the depth of their team, but as always, they were focused on showing up when the opportunity presented itself next.
On a much-needed sunny day on Sunday, May 11, the Cardinals traveled again to Worcester for the National Invitational Rowing Championships (NIRC). Facing 20 other teams, Wesleyan put it all together, with all four boats finding success. The V8 completed a strong third-place finish, coming in less than a second behind both Tufts and Williams with a time of 6:37.757. The 2V8 fought off Williams for a closely contested second-place finish in their race, coming in at 6:48.237. And to round it off, the 3V8 completed a fourth-place finish in their race, and the open 4 boat took second, giving Wesleyan 172 points on the day. This mark was good for a second-place team finish, the highest in program history. After all of the uncertainties and cancellations of the season, the Cards finally were able to show what they were capable of, going toe-to-toe with the best competition possible.
“I get chills thinking about that,” Romer said. “This season had been so tumultuous in the sense of weather and races being all over the place that this felt like a culmination of all of our hard work. Everything we had done led up to being able to put out one of the best finishes in team history.”
Riding the high of the NIRC, the Cardinals pushed through final exams and watched the rest of campus leave. For another two weeks, they would remain on campus, training and getting ready for the DIII NCAA National Championships.
“Being at school and only focusing on rowing is something that you only get to experience at the end of the year,” Romer said. “And it was very peaceful, the campus was empty. The seniors were getting ready to leave, so a lot of it was hanging out with our seniors before we got to go. But those last few weeks were just focused within our boats [and] within the team, to really put out the best effort and the best finish that we can.”
On the weekend of May 30, the best crew teams in the country, from all divisions, congregated at Mercer Lake in West Windsor, N.J. to vie for a national championship. With Olympic rowers and the most talented that women’s crew has to offer hanging around, the excitement was palpable, but the Cards knew to stay with the program that had worked so far: stay focused, row the best race possible, and don’t worry about the competition. On day one, the Red and Black impressed in preliminaries, securing spots for both the V8 and the 2V8 in their respective grand finals the following day.
On Saturday, May 31, with the race start pushed early to 8:00 a.m., the Red and Black lined up with 2,000 meters to go before the end of the season.
“A lot of the time at NCAAs, the theme is just doing it for the seniors,” Kuo said. “We’re doing it for us, but knowing that it’s also like the seniors’ last race, we wanna go our hardest, this is literally it.”
The Cards had prepared all season and knew that no matter what, they would leave it all out on the water.
“It’s just the one race, and then the season’s over,” Browne said. “There’s no expectations, no thoughts, there’s a piece of it that’s mentality, but it’s execution. At that point, you’re relying on muscle memory and trust.”
The 2V8 started the day and sat in fourth place 1,000 meters into the race. Knowing they needed to push, they went into another gear, passing Bates in the third 500-meter section and just besting the Ephs by half a second to second place. The V8 followed, fighting through a tough race and finishing fourth with a time of 6:43.292, just behind Williams and Bates. Between the two boats, the Cards amassed enough points to take home a NCAA third-place finish. This marked the third consecutive top-three national finish, truly confirming that Wes is here to stay at the top of the women’s crew world.
Browne discussed the mentality of a championship race.
“Our coaches say when there’s moments of uncertainty, rely on fundamentals,” Browne said. “Because rowing is complicated, but it’s also simple. So [coxswain] Aria [Trotta ’27] just kept calling us back to the basics: being in time with everybody else, making sure that everything is in sync, and that would propel us forward. I was like, realistically, we have 30 seconds left of this race, what do I want to get out of it? We surged into second place, and the announcer didn’t even really register it. That race was so very satisfying, it was probably the most satisfied I felt at the end of a race. Because it’s proof of the importance of just staying neutral and being in perspective. Don’t let one moment dictate how you finish, you just have to trust that you can peak at the right time, and what better time is there [than] when there’s only 100 more meters left before the end of the season?”
The Cards put on an absolute display in 2024–25, securing their legacy as a dynasty, but this year they want to extend it. The Fall 2025 season will get underway with the Riverfront Regatta [Head of the Riverfront] in Hartford, Conn., on Sunday, Oct. 5, and it won’t be a race or season to miss.
Ethan Lee can be reached at ejlee@wesleyan.edu.
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