‘Gritty’ UW women’s rowing team defies expectations again to finish second in NCAA championships
PENNSAUKEN, N.J. — Yaz Farooq’s lower lip quivered. The Washington women’s rowing coach fought off the emotional pangs well as her team filed by her Sunday morning after the final race wrapped up in the NCAA women’s rowing championships on the Cooper River in Pennsauken, New Jersey.
The Huskies, ranked around No. 7 throughout the season, finished second to Stanford in the national championship, taking second place in the Petite Final Four (7:23.187), second eights (6:26.177) and first eights (6:19.558).
Stanford won the national championship winning the first eights and finishing overall with 129 points, followed by the Huskies with 120.
It did not diminish how Farooq felt about her 2023 team that rowed with a passion, and collectively called themselves “The Disruptors.”
The Huskies graduated 17 from a team that finished fourth in the NCAAs last year, so for the Huskies to get second was an accomplishment.
“Everything we do is built towards this moment,” said Farooq, who in seven years, has guided the Huskies to national championships in 2017 and 2019 and made the program a perennial national power. “The results in the water today are really the results for our entire squad of 65 women. None of this happens without all those women back home. The work the first varsity eight and the second varsity eight did together all year is how we were able to fight when it’s literally four boats across dead level halfway through the race.”
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What was gratifying, Farooq stressed, was every workout was done to elevate each rower.
The first eight, comprised of coxswain Nina Castagna, stroke Ella Cossill, Elena Collier-Hezel, Angharad Broughton, Nikki Martincic, Mira Calder, Madi Frampton and Aisha Rocek, and bow McKenna Bryant battled Stanford until the end.
In the final race, Stanford led from start to finish, but was pushed frequently by the Huskies at the 500-yard mark. Each time it appeared Stanford would pull away, the Huskies would pull closer. By the second 500-yard mark, the Huskies pulled to within a few feet of the lead boat. As the boats closed to the finish line, Washington was just off Stanford’s stern.
“We didn’t look at the polls and use that to determine anything; we looked at this team and what we were cultivating together,” said Bryant, the Huskies’ team captain out of Kennedy Catholic. “It was all of us or none of us. The last race was full of belief and love, and control. I honestly didn’t know where Stanford was, and honestly, that was part of our race plan. I felt and I believed. I just pushed, focused on what we were doing and what we believed we could do.
“If that had to be the last time I stepped out of (a Washington boat), I’ll take it.”
Castagna, a fifth-year senior, admitted that this version of the Huskies was an underdog that began further behind than other previous Husky teams. They got a good bearing where they stood after the Pac-12 championships, and that translated into what occurred on Sunday.
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“The feeling of getting off the dock the last time, and maybe not having won, though executing our best race, seeing our second varsity eight on the dock ready to hug us, that’s the thing we were working for and what we were waiting for,” Castagna said. “That was a feeling I knew I was going to have at the end of the year, win or lose. I walked off with satisfaction. It was the cultivation of a lot of work that we’re very proud of.”
Cossill, who plans on returning home to New Zealand in two days, admitted she liked being doubted before the season.
“ This was a gritty team. This particularly group went to work every day and they knew they could contend with the best and they did.
“We knew we had to rebuild this year and I think the mentality we took into the race was execute the plan as well as we could have,” Cossill said. “Having the underdog mentality is exciting to chase and push the pace. Not having any expectations on our shoulders is something we really embodied this weekend. We were able to embrace that finally.
“A quote that I picked up the last few days from the UW softball team was ‘Don’t’ be a fan,’ from the coach, which basically was like fans buy into rankings and posts about certain teams, and they buy into who is getting attention. We weren’t getting that, which to me was great. We weren’t expected (to finish) the way we did, and we showed everyone what we wanted to do, and we did.”
Finally, Farooq had a tough time saying goodbye to a team that went beyond expectations.
“I think what I’ll miss most about this group is that you could lead with compassion,” she said. “The seniors and fifth-year seniors are proof you could lead with love and compassion. This was a gritty team. This particularly group went to work every day and they knew they could contend with the best and they did.”
When Farooq shoved her varsity eight off the dock the last time, she told them, “Disrupt with love.”
Source: The Seattle Times
