One Step at a Time

September 02, 2011

If Sarah Trowbridge wasn’t committed to rowing on the United States national team, there is no telling what she would be doing – or where.

She might be a cattle rancher in the northwest, coaching rowing in Africa or the Middle East, helping to diversify her sport somewhere in the south, coaching in college in the southwest or making independent films with her brother, Alexander, in the northeast. These are all things and places she said she is interested in trying.

And then again, she might end up riding a unicycle in a circus.

It wouldn’t be the first time.

“I did a lot of circus stuff when I was little,” Trowbridge said. “I did things like perform on the unicycle and train on the trapeze. I went to camp and stuff when I was in my early teens.”

For now, though, and through next year, her goal is to row in the 2012 Olympic Games in London.

This weekend, Trowbridge, of Guilford, Conn., will be rowing the women’s double sculls with teammate Kate Bertko, of Oakland, Calif. The pair won the second USRowing National Selection Regatta and earned the right to race in the Samsung World Cup series and attempt to qualify for a spot on the 2011 national team that is racing at the 2011 World Rowing Championships in Bled, Slovenia.

They did that in the very first of the three world cup regattas, taking silver in the event in Munich.

On Saturday at the world championships, Trowbridge and Bertko will race the B final against Finland, Serbia, Germany, China and Ireland. If they place in the top two, it qualifies the boat for the 2012 Olympic Games.

“I’m really excited,” Trowbridge said before racing began in Bled. “(Munich) was a good race to check our speed since we had not been in a double together very long and I think we were pretty happy with the potential we have coming out of the first round of racing.”

Both women are veteran scullers on the national team. Bertko finished fifth in the double at the 2010 World Rowing Championships, while Trowbridge finished fifth in the quadruple sculls. Together, they won silver medals in the quad at the 2009 World Rowing Championships.

But for 28-year-old Trowbridge, this will be her first experience rowing the double at the world championships.

That Trowbridge is now on her fifth national team is testament to her determination. Her rowing story began when her mother, Lynn Haney, who Trowbridge said, “dragged me kicking and screaming” to the Connecticut-based Blood Street Sculls rowing club.

“I did a lot of sports in high school. I had been diving and pole vaulting and even sailing and skiing. I wanted to try something a little bit more team-based and at my own school, something quote-unquote normal, like lacrosse, and I think she saw an opportunity in rowing in terms of helping me pay my way through college.”

It was the right choice.

“I loved it,” she said. “It was just before I graduated high school, so I only got to do a little bit and I loved it.”

With high school behind her, but no set decision on where she wanted to go to school – she was considering The University of Sydney in Australia – Trowbridge did not go directly to college.

She eventually settled on the University of Michigan and decided she wanted to row there.

“I liked rowing and I just went down the list of schools that did well in rowing. I really didn’t know anything about the recruiting process, so I went down the list of the teams that did well in the NCAA and then went to the Head of the Charles and just talked to the best programs there,” she said.

“The University of Michigan had done really well and I went to the Michigan trailer and talked to them. I applied for the next semester and got in and joined the team.”

By her senior year, Trowbridge was on scholarship.

Getting to the national team was not as easy. By her own estimation, Trowbridge was not always good at communicating her desire to her coaches.

“I think I’ve surprised some of my coaches. I didn’t learn early on how to communicate to them how driven I was, how competitive I was. I always knew I was those things, I just didn’t show it well.”

She made her first national team as a member of the 2007 Pan American Games team and won gold in the double and silver in the quad. She was invited to quad camp in 2008, but was cut and then joined a group training for the non-Olympic four and won a silver medal in that event at the world championships.

In the 2009 quad camp, she was told she was not being sent home, but that she was not being considered for selection for the boat. When the team went to race at the Lucerne world cup in Switzerland, Trowbridge was left behind.

“I didn’t care about getting sent home. I cared about making the boat for worlds. I decided, I’m making that boat or I’m done. When things are at their worst, I perform the best, and that was pretty much a low point – not going to Lucerne, with the world championships not far off.

“So then I just took the one inch I was given, which was some pieces in the single.”

The group that was left behind was put in singles and supervised by Dave O’Neill, head women’s coach at the University of California. O’Neill put the women in singles and ran a series of races.

“I won every piece and I think that got me a small chance at other race pieces in a double, which I won, which got me one more, which I won, which got me a seat race in the quad, which I won, and another seat race in the quad, which I won, and then finally I made the boat.”

After the 2009 silver medal, Trowbridge again made the quad for 2010. She left New Zealand angry, but motivated after finishing fifth.

“I think it was the first time internationally where I have not come close to the boat’s potential in a race, especially in a final. It was really upsetting,” she said. “It wasn’t that we didn’t medal or the placement we got, it was that we didn’t row to the level we could have or to the speed we could have.

“It was really hard to watch that New Zealand race because you look at those boats in the lead, and the water was rough, but you don’t really notice it.  And then you look at our boat, and you notice this awful water because we were rowing the conditions; we weren’t racing.

“We just didn’t get into the race because there were these other things inhibiting us. And I think that made me pretty angry. The boat, as a whole, was angry to not just let it all out. It was the first time I haven’t medaled internationally and that really helped me find some motivation this year.”

And that’s where Trowbridge’s focus is today, going fast in the double, getting better through the rest of the year and then – hopefully – racing in the Olympics. After that, who knows?
 
Coaching. Ranching. Filmmaking. The circus.

“Honestly, since I decided to keep going after ‘08, I decided to go for each year at a time. If I didn’t make a team, then I wouldn’t continue. And I’m still in that mindset and I’m really not looking past 2012,” she said.

“I think I am still getting faster and that was the rule, if I was still getting faster and loved what I was doing, I would keep going each year.”

Ed Moran

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