Q: Talk about your first encounter with sports...

A: I was not a particularly athletic child, rather, I liked to run around a lot but wasn't particularly interested in organization. Outside of grade school gym class, my first encounter with being on an organized sports team was when I joined my middle school softball team in 8th grade. We were altogether horrendous and only won our first game of the season (to a team that beat us a few weeks later). Nevertheless, I learned about being on a team and how difficult it can be to win at times, and it provided a vent for my hugely competitive nature.

Q: What led or motivated you to play?

A: Many of the girls on the team were in the orchestra and band with me. They seemed to love to play, and I was interested in seeing what the big deal with playing sports was. The basketball coaches were always trying to convince me to try basketball because I was so tall, but I wasn't particularly interested in anything indoors. I wanted to try something new and challenging, and I loved being part of a team.

Q: In your hometown, what was the sports culture like for girls?

A: My hometown high school, the Norwich Free Academy, had an excellent women's basketball team, so there was a good deal of excitement and local support for that. In grade school, boys were always more aggressive and were encouraged to play better games in gym class, i.e. climbing the rope as opposed to jumping rope. All athletic girls were strongly encouraged by the school's coaches to try out team sports in middle school. But in middle and high school, the girls who were very strongly involved in sports generally received a lot of support and encouragement from the parents, teachers, and coaches, and tended to be the more popular girls in school.

Q: How did you get to where you are today and what would you attribute that to?

A: I would have to say I got to where I am today by some sort of fate or luck, combined with hard work and a fantastic support system. I had no idea I would row in college. The novice coach saw me walking around at freshman orientation, and thought I looked like a rower. If she hadn't jumped up from the table to sign me up for a crew intro meeting, who knows what I'd be doing right now. My parents have always been incredibly supportive in everything I've ever wanted to do, so they encouraged me all the way to pursue rowing. Barb Kirch, the varsity women's coach at Penn, seemed to have great confidence in me from the get-go, and I figured she knew what she was doing, so I better trust her judgment. I don't believe in doing things halfway. Once I started rowing, I was hooked for good! Dedication, teamwork, challenging coaches, determination, desire -- that's how I got to the level I am today.

Q: What has playing sports done for you?

A: Playing sports has made me more aware of myself as an individual and my ability to work in a team dynamic. I positively love being part of a team, and rowing has taught me how to trust and depend on others and how to be dependable myself. I've become more confident in my all around abilities as a result of playing sports. I can look at challenges with greater mental strength and can bounce back from set backs with more resilience now that I'm involved with sports. I don't see walls as dead ends any more, I see them as obstacles that can be worked around or jumped over.

Q: At what point did you realize you wanted to go to an Ivy League school?

A: I was in the top two students in my grade all through high school. I've always been an over-achiever. I wanted to go to a school that would challenge me. Cornell and Penn were my top two choices because they had exceptional biology programs. I liked the idea of being surrounded by people who were smarter than I was and would force me to work hard.

Q: Is there a certain athlete you admire and why?

A: Lance Armstrong comes to my mind first and foremost as an athlete I admire. Every once in a while, I get to a point in rowing where I don't know how much more I can take, then I think to myself, "Lance won the Tour de France, after having brain cancer. You can do this." Talk about amazing resilience! And the fact that Lance Armstrong has a lactic acid threshold about 7 times that of your average rower - that blows my mind!

Q: What is the significance of Title IX to you?

A: When my coach describes the conditions that they dealt with as women collegiate rowers, it completely knocks my socks off to see how different it is today. Our men and women share the same lifting facilities, we have comparable equipment, and there is nothing keeping us from performing to our utmost ability simply because we are women. That wasn't the case twenty years ago. Women should have every opportunity to be great that men have. Title IX makes that much more a possibility in the sports world.

Q: In your opinion, what has been a shining moment in women's sports?

A:
I think it was a pretty spectacular moment, when the members of the Yale women's crew walked into the administrator's office in 1972 and stripped off their shirts to bare their exploited bodies in order to open someone's eyes. I know the pain their bodies were going through in training alone, not to mention training under incredibly unequal and unfair conditions. The strength and pride it took for them to march in and take a stand changed women's sports forever, and that is something that demands appreciation and respect.

Q: What would you tell young girls who are interested in getting to where you are now?

A: My advice would be to do what you love. Try things out; allow yourself to be challenged; challenge yourself. Have confidence in yourself and your ability to achieve your own goals. Determination and dedication are two of the qualities that I think are vital to success in anything, especially sports -- it's important to find these early and hold on to them.