As Prep Rowing enters its third year, the young program hasn’t graduated any 4-year seniors yet. The team has grown well and performed excellently; sending three boats to Youth Nationals last spring. Despite all this, until now, there has been no alumni presence on the team.

Enter Kathryn Barth, a member of the new Alumni Service Corps and Prep Rowing’s newest coach. Barth didn’t start rowing until her freshman year at Wellesley College in Massachusetts as a novice. While there, Barth racked up some serious achievements, rowing in Wellesley’s Varsity 8 in 2016 on their way to a gold medal at NCAA’s, making her a national champion in the most competitive event in the country. She was a two-time NEWMAC Rower of the Year and NEWMAC First Team All-Conference selection. In 2016 she was named to the Seven Sisters All Regatta Team.

After graduating, Barth returned to Prep and is using her wealth of experience and lessons learned from her time rowing in college and the general lessons from her time playing sports at Prep to help coach a new class of Prep oarsmen and women. While a Prep student, Barth was an athlete year-round, playing soccer, basketball, and soccer all four years. Some of her more lasting memories include Mr. Hickey making the team hold a plank as long as they could while singing the Prep fight song or running “never-ending” 16s and sets of lines. These surely weren’t the most fun memories to recall, but Barth says “what sticks out the most are the times when we needed to complete something as a team.”

Barth carries this mindset to coaching Prep Rowing, arguably the most team-oriented sport in existence. Nothing happens without absolute unity between every member of the boat. If just one person is doing something that the others aren’t, then it’s all wrong and the boat will not reach its top speed. This certainly isn’t easy. Speaking of her own experience, Barth comments that rowing “brings a depth of character that can’t be found in the classroom.” Barth has the unique experience of being able to teach some of her rowers, and this is one of her favorite parts of coaching for Prep.

This depth of character was certainly revealed on one of Seattle’s smoky days a few weeks ago. Unable to work outside, the men’s team took to the stairs of 6-story Adelphia Memorial Hall and was told to run them for 90 minutes. Even in these less-than-ideal circumstances, the spirit of rowing and the lessons it teaches were clearly in view for Barth, who commented, “they really supported each other and pushed each other to finish the workout.” It was this same sense of teamwork that Barth recalled from her time as an athlete that enabled her rowers to finish the grueling workout.

As rowing is so new at Prep and given its nature as not a spectator-friendly sport, Prep Rowing has often felt like an outside program. No one really sees the work all of the participating students do daily. Many students and members know nothing about the sport in general. Given these facts, Prep Rowing sometime feels isolated from the rest of Prep’s athletic opportunities. With a new alumni presence and increasing levels of success at the regional and even the national levels, Prep Rowing is building a head of steam.