Megan Kalmoe
History
- Member for
- 3 years 33 weeks
- Blog
- view recent blog entries
experience
- University
- University of Washington
- Type
- Sculler
personal
- Real Name
- Megan Kalmoe
- City
- Princeton
- State/Province
- New Jersey
- Country
- United States
- Bio
I started rowing with my name taped to my back. Every day in the fall of 2002, I and about seventy-five other novice hopefuls wandered down to the Conibear Shellhouse and graciously helped one another slap long pieces of athletic tape across the backs of our t-shirts bearing our first and last names. This was so our coaches could easily identify and chastise the athletes who were screwing up the worst aboard our 16-man catamaran which we rowed very slowly and very poorly in short, crooked lines in Lake Washington's Union Bay. I switched regularly between port and starboard because I was equally bad on both sides (some people would argue that this is still the case, though I only row starboard now).
A few weeks later, after the name tape stage, I pulled my first 2k. Afterwards I remember thinking: "Wow, that wasn't so bad." Looking back on that experience I can understand why I might have felt that way--I think by my junior year at Washington I was 10king at my novice 2k pace.
My college rowing experience flew by. On the first day of my sophomore year, I found myself sitting at an informational meeting eating a meatball sandwich, and listening to Eleanor assure me that rowing would make me a champion and get me into the greatest shape of my life That was exactly what I wanted to hear, seeing as how I was about twenty pounds overweight at that point. Who wants to be a fat, non-champion? I sure didn't. So I started showing up at walk-on tryouts. Before I knew it, the weight was almost all gone and I was well on my way to... well, I didn't know exactly where rowing would take me. I do remember a very specific moment at the 2003 Pac-10 championships, standing at the gates to the parking lot at Lake Natoma, wearing a bronze medal around my neck, thinking "holy shit, how the hell did I get HERE? I'm from Wisconsin, for God's sake."I somehow made the top novice eight (probably a clerical error), rowing in the illustrious three seat for the entire season. The next year I was promoted to the JV three seat, and I finished out my career at Washington rowing two seasons in the varsity three and four seats. Some people would call that a trend. Additionally, as a senior I served as captain for the women's varsity team, and received some awards for my rowing (probably also clerical errors).
A brief stint on the 2005 U23 team earned me an invitation to 2006 senior camp, so the day following my graduation from UW I got on the red eye to Newark, and showed up at Princeton for afternoon practice. Now I'm training full time with the US women's squad... wishing I still had my name taped to my back.