A Rapid Rise: The Story of Dartmouth Women’s Rowing

As the Dartmouth women’s rowing team gathered for the NCAA Championship selection show, there was excitement and nervousness all wrapped into one.
 
Then, the name Dartmouth popped up under at-large teams and every emotion rose to the surface.
 
“I had high ambitions for this team,” said second-year head coach John Graves, The Elizabeth C. McNabb Head Coach of Women’s Rowing. “I laid out a pretty conservative plan for the first few years, but never expected us to be here in year two.
 
“It was surreal to see our name pop up in the selection show.”

A Quick Rise
This fall, alumna Emily Dreissigacker ’11 spoke to the team, touching on the last time Dartmouth reached the NCAA Championship in 2011.
 
“I very vividly remember sitting in the boat bay and thinking this is going to be so awesome for the team,” said fifth-year Jenna Martin.
 
At the time, Martin thought it was going to be awesome in a few years when the Big Green would return to NCAAs.
 
“I was excited about pushing the goal post, but I never would have believed that we would have made this big of a jump so quickly,” she said.
 
How did it happen?
 
Ironically enough, by not thinking about it.
 
“John has instilled a very strong feeling of enjoying the process and not thinking about the goal,” said Martin. “It almost feels like we accidentally found ourselves in this position, which obviously isn’t an accident. We’ve worked very hard for it.
 
“By enjoying the process, we weren’t focused on the finish line, but by focusing on the process each day, we were able to get there.”
 
“We’re incredibly proud of our entire women’s rowing program for buying into and trusting the process that John and his staff have led,” said Mike Harrity, Haldeman Family Director of Athletics and Recreation. “It was an easy decision after the conversation with him to appoint him as the head coach.”
 
A Turning Point
A significant step forward for the Big Green came at last season’s Ivy League Championship where the belief within the Dartmouth women’s rowing program reached a new level.
 
“In the varsity eight, we performed better than we had in the past (beating Harvard and reaching the grand finals), but we were still learning so much throughout that one regatta,” said Martin. “I feel like we picked up a lot of momentum.
 
That momentum carried over into 2025 in a big way.
 
“Going into this season, we knew we couldn’t take any steps back in terms of what we wanted to accomplish,” said junior Áine Ley. “The Princeton Chase was a very big race for us [this fall].”
 
The Princeton Chase featured time trials in which crews don’t know how they did in relation to the field until the very end. It was a true internally-focused regatta with a focus on the process.
 
“We got to the dock and John asked how we thought we did,” said Ley, a member of the varsity eight.

They captured fourth.

 

“That was a pretty big affirmation that we could beat some of these historically pretty fast teams,” said Ley. “UVA was a team Dartmouth hadn’t beaten recently, and we beat them. That left us at the end of the fall in a really good spot.”

 

The Princeton Chase continued the belief within the Big Green that had been instilled at the previous year’s Ivy League Championship.

 

“I immediately broke out into tears [when hearing we finished fourth],” said Martin.

 

Spring, 2025 Season

The spring season began with the team’s camp in Florida.

 

“For the first time in my Dartmouth career, it didn’t feel like we had regressed after being off the water, whether that was over the winter or summer,” said Ley.

 

The momentum has continued all spring. The Big Green finished second at the Sarasota 2K, ahead of a number of highly-ranked teams, and went on to crack the top 20 in the national rankings for the first time since 2018. The varsity eight beat Columbia and hung tough with Harvard at Eastern Sprints before taking things to the next level at the Ivy League Championship.

 

Dartmouth finished second in its heat, which included beating perennial power Brown.

 

What worked?

 

A number of things, including fine tuning the lineup.

 

“Caroline Krantz joined the boat and was put into stroke seat, which is a very, very difficult position, especially for a first-year,” said Martin. “When I was a first-year, I stroked the varsity eight, was very nervous and felt overwhelmed.

 

“Caroline is an incredible rower. She has a very unquestionable rhythm,” Martin continued. “Her rowing is very robotic in the way that it’s very consistent, and she races with a very high level of maturity, which is very impressive.”

 

The Big Green carried the momentum forward from heats.

 

“It’s fun and exciting when you realize you’re up on Brown,” said Ley. “I think that fueled us a lot and gave us a lot more confidence going into the final that we could do this. We missed out on the medal (finishing fourth), but if you had told me a year ago, or even the beginning of the spring, that we’d be in contention for a medal, I probably wouldn’t have believed it.”

 

The Big Green finished fourth in team points as well, coming after finishing seventh the previous three seasons and sixth the two years before that.

Always Getting Faster
Due to the colder climate in Hanover, New Hampshire, Dartmouth gets on the water very late compared to other Division I rowing teams. But one positive aspect is that the team is continually improving deep into May and June.
 
“Dartmouth is off the water longer than any team in the country,” said Graves. “I talk a lot about the fact that our team should be making progress faster than any other team in the country. Week-to-week, every week, we’re making big strides. From Sprints to Ivies, that’s another manifestation of it.
 
“Now, we have the privilege to spend even more time on the water going into NCAAs, which is going to advantage Dartmouth again,” Graves continued. “All our crews pride themselves on getting faster at a steeper trajectory than anyone in the country.”
 
Getting faster is exactly what the Big Green have done… for a number of reasons.
 
“From day one, John gave us a really clear technical model of the stroke he wanted us doing, explaining why and the science behind it,” said Ley. “That helped a lot of people get on board.”
 
As they say, the rest is history.
 
Finding the Fun Every Day
A focus on not only the process, but also finding the fun in coming to the boathouse every day has also been critical.
 
“The most important thing to reestablish was the love of the process and love of the journey,” said Graves. “If that was there, the team would get better, and who knows how far we could take it. I couldn’t have ever predicted that the group would have taken it as far as they have as quickly as they’ve done it.
 
“They’ve had fun training, they’ve had fun racing and when that’s in place, the sky is the limit.”
 
It has been an especially special season considering it’s the 50th Anniversary of Dartmouth women’s rowing, which was celebrated in the fall.
 
“That was such a special weekend for all of us,” said Ley. “John has been a huge proponent of gratitude for the opportunity to row every day, and also acknowledging all these amazing women who came before us. Having that in the back of our minds makes this all even more special. There’s been so much awesome support from so many people.”
 
As Graves said, reaching NCAAs has been an affirmation of all the hard work, but it’s not why he does what he does.
 
“All the things he said he would do, he’s implementing, and at the core of everything he talked about was his care about the student-athletes, finding ways to maximize their growth and potential as individuals within this bigger construct of the team,” said Harrity.
 
“A national championship, NCAAs or winning certain races wasn’t what drew me to this job, or coaching in general,” said Graves. “I felt like this team really needed to re-establish the joy of the training and the racing, particularly the racing. If you’re not loving lining up and racing side-by-side, then you’re in the wrong sport.
 
“When you have that joy in your process, what you’re doing and how you’re bringing that to your racing, things tend to go pretty well and you tend to go pretty fast,” Graves continued. “As an athlete that was so essential to me growing to my potential.”
           
Martin sees the way Dartmouth women’s rowing has aided in her growth as a person.
 
“I am very proud of the team, and I’m also very proud of John for preparing us in the way he has,” she said. “Looking at workouts we did over the winter, I just had to trust that it was the right thing to do. And now, looking back on it, I can see how it prepared us.”
 
As Martin said, she has learned something through rowing that will carry into the rest of her life.
 
“It doesn’t take brute force to do incredible things,” she said. “It takes working as harmoniously as we can, working together and bringing the strengths out of each other to come together and do something that’s bigger than all of us.”