Team Slideshow
Team Info
Crew - Girls' Varsity
Overview
Overview
Taft’s girls’ crew program was founded in 2001 on Bantam Lake and it has grown to become one of the largest spring teams at Taft, enjoying notable recent successes. During the 2024 season, Taft girls crews won the Founders Day Regatta, the du Pont Cup, and the Alumni Cup. Taft girls placed two crews in the Grand Finals at New Englands and earned a spot at USRowing’s Youth National regatta.
Many of our most successful varsity rowers start out in our novice program, which emphasizes the good technique, physical strength, and self-discipline that the sport demands. Taft offers an intramural fall rowing program, providing experienced rowers an opportunity to hone their skills while also giving new rowers a chance to learn the sport. Our annual spring-training trip to Florida, in March, offers another ideal opportunity for novices to learn to row, and an ideal opportunity for experienced rowers to prepare for the season ahead.
Taft maintains a rigorous schedule with weekly races against some of the strongest fours programs in New England. The racing season begins in mid-April and concludes with the New England Interscholastic Rowing Championship Regatta (NEIRA) at the end of May.
Many graduates of Taft crew have gone on to row in college at both the Division I and Division III levels. Taft rowers have joined crews at schools such as Dartmouth, UPenn, Clemson, Cornell, Bates, Williams, George Washington, Georgetown, Holy Cross, Amherst, Stanford, Boston College, and Brown.
Alumni Athletes
2024 - Esmee Clew-Bachrach (Boston College); Sabrina Moffa (University of Pennsylvania)
2022 - Annabelle Williams (Notre Dame)
2021 - Posey Durling (Brown)
2020 - Logan Clew-Bachrach (Oxford University); Erin Farrell (Georgetown); Elly McKay (Stanford)
2019 - Hayley Jubitz (Georgetown); Maggie O’Leary (Holy Cross); Lauren Pelosi (Amherst)
2018 - Emma LaRose (George Washington)
2017 - Sophie Kamhi (Dartmouth College and Oxford University)
2015 - Becky Frank (Cornell)
2014 - Rita Catherine O'Shea (Clemson University); Amelia Wilhelm (Bates College)
2012 - Anne Tewksbury (Williams); Alanna Fogarty (University of Ottowa); Hanna Dethlefs (UPenn)
Schedule
Roster
Coaches
Coaches
About Head Coach Will Shotwell
After graduating Phi Beta Kappa with an English degree from Wesleyan University, Will worked for the Educational Testing Service as an assistant examiner, writing and editing SAT Verbal and AP English exams. From there, he entered a Ph.D. program in comparative literature at Brown University. After completing his first year of course work at Brown, Will spent four years in Paris, France; he worked for two years as an assistant d’Anglais in two lycées while also teaching English and intercultural communication for a private language company. Returning to Providence, Rhode Island, in 1991, Will earned a Master of Arts and Ph.D. in comparative literature from Brown University, specializing in English and French literatures of the 18th century. In 1996, while still completing his doctorate, he began a 15-year tenure at Lincoln School in Providence, where he served as a humanities teacher in both English and history, crew coach and director of the crew program, squash coach, and cross country coach. During his time at Lincoln, Will helped found and served as the director of the school’s Center for Peace, Equity, and Justice through Service. In his final year at Lincoln, he served as technology integration specialist, a position that supported faculty in their efforts to integrate technology into their curricula. At Taft, Will heads the Global Studies and Service Department, teaches English, coaches rowing, times for basketball games, and does school duty.
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Head Coach
