Texas Native Ready for Finals at XVI Pan American Games 2011

October 15, 2011

For much of the last year, Meg George hasn’t had time to consider what she was accomplishing.

This time last year, she was rowing a single in the Head of the Charles in Boston and hoping to eventually gain the attention of the U.S. National Team coaches. Somehow she wanted to land herself in at the USRowing Training Center in Princeton to join the mix of possible athletes for the 2012 Olympic Games in London.

Over the last 12 months, she continued training, dropped her erg score, made the final of the second National Selection Regatta in the women’s double sculls and then won Pan American Games Trials in the women’s pair.

Now, George is in Ciudad Guzman, Mexico as a member of the United States Pan American Games Team. And it took a hurricane that delayed training last week to slow her down enough to realize how far she has come.

“Having a little bit of downtime with (Hurricane Jova) the last couple of days has been really nice,” she said. “I got to sit back and realize where I am. I’m in the middle of nowhere in Mexico, yeah, but I’m also here with my teammates. And my teammates are the USA team and that’s just crazy to me. It’s really, really cool.”

Today, George, 23, from Houston, Texas, and teammate Megan Smith of Templeton, Calif., won their race for lanes. The crew will race in lane three as the top seed in the final, scheduled for 9 a.m. CST on Tuesday, October 17.

Both women hope to stand on the medal podium, and then head back home to train for the fall speed orders for a chance to be invited to the women’s selection camp in Princeton.

“I think medaling here would be a good indicator of my speed,” said George. “I’ve done really well this summer. I made it to the A final in the double (at the second national selection regatta). We were underdogs there and (the national team coaches) were like ‘Ok, we’re going to keep an eye on you.’ Any results I can get here will add to my rowing resume and be really viable to me with this upcoming year,” she said.

Just five years ago, none of this was part of George’s plan.

Growing up in Texas, the daughter of former NFL defensive tackle, Steven George, and Marti George, a former swimmer for the Netherland’s national team, she had the genes and the environment to be an athlete.

She swam right through high school and was recruited to continue in college. But George felt she had enough and wanted to be just a regular undergrad at The University of Texas.

“I was really burned out when I got to college. I got recruited to swim in college, but I really had no desire,” she said. “So I thought, I’m going to go to Texas and just have a normal college experience and not do sports.”

But one afternoon, when she got home from school during her senior year of high school, her father was reading Sports Illustrated, and called her over.

“He showed me an aerial shot of an eight. It was a Vespoli ad on the back of Sports Illustrated and he was like, ‘I think you would be really good at this. Look how tall they all look.’ I was like, ‘Yeah, that looks cool, whatever.’

“Then when I went to Texas he said, ‘You should really look into the possibility of rowing’.”
Being 6’3”, George was immediately spotted by campus recruiters from both the club and varsity rowing teams.

“They were trying to pick off anybody they could,” she said. “I was walking around and the assistant varsity coach asked me if I was on a team here and I said no, and she said, ‘I need to talk to you.’ So she got me into the novice meeting a week later. Two weeks after that, I was at tryouts for the varsity rowing team at Texas.”

George rowed all four years at Texas and was in the varsity eight that won consecutive Big 12 Championships in her final two years. After graduating, she was invited to train at the USRowing Training Center in Oklahoma City, where she has been since.

Now she is hoping for an invitation to come east.

“This is definitely going to be an indicator if you’re going to be involved in selection for London or not, pretty early on,” she said. “It will be much harder to make an impact and get yourself involved in the spring than it would be right now.

“I have no idea what could happen because I have developed really quickly in the last year. I dropped a minute off my 6k (erg score) and I learned how to scull and made it to the final at NSR this year. I keep surprising myself, so I try not to eliminate anything.

“Realistically, the best possible result for me would be to just even be involved in selection. Just to be present for seat racing, even if it’s not actually seat racing to be in a boat, but just there and involved. That’s been my goal for the last year or two. To just be in the mix.”

Ed Moran

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