Rowing Her Way To An NCAA Championship

We have a 2013 NCAA Division 1 champion living in our midst. Lauren Eckles, 21, is a member of the Ohio State women’s rowing team that won the national title in May.

“We weren’t the most talented group of kids this year but we were the strongest and we wanted it the most,” said Eckles recently.

Eckles, EGHS Class of 2010, was a lacrosse goalie in high school and admittedly not very "fit."

At Ohio State three years ago, she and two friends decided to give club rowing a try. At the meeting place for club rowing, the only person they found was a man wearing an Ohio State Rowing shirt. It wasn't until after they'd signed up that they realized the man they'd been talking to was a varsity rowing coach. 

“You guys would be great rowers. Just try it out. If you hate it, you can drop out,” he said, trying to convince them. So, they did. Eckles’s two friends didn’t stick with it, but Eckles did.

“I ended up liking it and being halfway decent at it. So I raced in the first Novice 8 in my freshman year,” she said. “We ended up winning Big Tens my freshman year.”

And she got fit.

“The thing about rowing is, it’s hard,” Eckles said. “By the end of a boat race, you can’t hear and you’re breathing so hard you want to pass out. That’s normal.”

Paraphrasing her coach, Eckles said, “If you don’t want to keel over and die during a boat race, you didn’t put hard enough.”

Yes, Eckles admits it was a little intimidating at first. “But once you know how that feels, it’s like, OK, I’m going to be fine,” she said.

Winning the championship was a very big deal at Ohio State.

“In 100 years of Ohio State athletics, no NCAA women’s team had ever won a title. We were the first,” said Eckles.

She has one more year at Ohio State, where she is studying strategic communications.

“Everything will be different” next year, she said, since some on the team graduated. “It’s all about boat chemistry.”