Team History

Our Coaches

Rich Sundquist — 77-82 — Head Coach

Pete MacRostie — 78-79 — Assistant Coach

Midori Mason — 81-83 — Head Coach

Ray Thomas — 83-87 — Heavyweights

Scott Hirsch — 84-85, 86-87; 87-88 — Lightweights; Head Coach

Caroline Young — 84-85 — Land Training

John Stenzel — 86-87 — Novice Heavyweights

Art Ponce — 87-88 — Varsity Lightweights

Juan Anzaldo — 87-88 — Novice Heavyweight 8+

John Disney — 86-88 — Novice Heavyweights, Lightweight 4+

Karen Rensick — 87-88 — Novice Lightweight

Kerri Bradely — 87-88 — Land Training

Robin Lybolt — 88-89 — Novice Coach

Suzanne Lyons — 88-89 — Lightweights

George Jenkins — 90-91 — Varsity Coach

Kerin Kellner — 90-91 — Novice Land Training

Laura Bursee — 90-91 — Novice Land Training

Dawn Erikson — 90-91 — Novice Land Training

Rachel Pond — 94-96 — Novice Coach

Kate Strum — 03-05 — Novice Coach

Lesley Ross — 96-97 — Novice Coach

Ann Dubinsky — 97-01 — Novice Coach

Emily (Plesser) Catlett — 90-92; 93-06 — Novice Coach; Head Coach

Our Equipment

UC Davis Women’s Rowing has a history of naming boats after strong and influential women. Below are a list of past and present boats that have come through our boathouse and a little more information on who/what they were named after.

4+: Wilma Rudolph

(June 23, 1940 - November 12, 1994)

• Temporarily paralyzed due to childhood pneumonia and polio

• 1956 Olympics: Bronze in the 400m relay at age 16

• 1960 Olympics: Gold in the 100-meter, the 200-meter, and 400-meter relay 

• First American woman to win three gold medals in a single Olympic Game

• Required that the parade and ceremony held to celebrate her accomplishments in Clarksville, Tennessee was to be unsegregated

8+: Emily Catlett

(Nee Plesser)

• 1990-1992: Novice coach of the UC Davis Women’s Rowing

• 1993-2006: Head coach of the UC Davis Women’s Rowing team

• Four-time winner of the Division II National Coach of the Year by the Collegiate Rowing Coaches Association

• Led UC Davis Women’s Rowing to NCAA Division II Championships in 2002 and 2003

• Pacific Coast Rowing Championships (PCRCs) team points winner for seven consecutive seasons (1993-1999)

8+: Teegy Weegy (2017)

Teegan Gatta Medcalf

(May 6, 1993 - present)

• Rowed for UC Davis for four years (2011-2015)

• Coached for UC Davis Women’s Rowing from 2015-2017 and 2022-2023

• Led Novice 8+ to gold at ACRA in 2016

• Active member of UC Davis Women’s Rowing Alumni Board

When Teegan joined the rowing team her parents couldn’t believe she was waking up at 4:30 in the morning to go workout; they thought she wouldn’t make it through the first season. By the time her senior year came around, her dad (half jokingly) said that if her boat won at ACRA that year he would buy a boat and name it “Teegy Weegy” (Teegan’s childhood nickname). She didn’t end up going to ACRA her senior year, but the dream to have Teegy Weegy come into existence lived on. Some time passed, and when the team bought a new boat in 2017, the Gatta family thought it would be the perfect opportunity to make the “Teegy Weegy” happen!

4+: Ann Bancroft

(September 29, 1955 - present )

• 1986: First woman to reach the North Pole

• 1992: First woman to reach both poles

• 1992-1993: Leader of the first all-female expedition to the South Pole

• 1995: Inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame

• 2001: Bancroft and Norwegian adventurer, Liv Arnesen, became the first women to ski across Antarctica

• Advocated for clean water by leading an expedition on the Ganges River. This expedition took 60 days and covered 1,500 miles

8+: Pam Gill-Fisher

(June 1949 - present)

• A student-athlete (BA 1971, Credential 1972, MA 1975 - field hockey, basketball, softball, tennis, and volleyball), coach (volleyball, basketball, and tennis), teacher, and administrator at UC Davis

• 1984: Inducted into the Cal Aggie Athletic Hall of Fame

• 1990: Coached the Tennis team who won the NCAA Division II National Championship

• A champion of equity in athletics and a national leader in Title IX compliance

• Helped initiate UC Davis’ move to Division I athletics

8+: Mary McBride

(1982 - January 20, 2015)

• Rowed for UC Davis in 1990

• Belonged to the Ophir-Milan Women’s Cycling Club - biked through Italy in 1996

• Battled breast cancer for four years, passed at the age of 33

2-/x: The Mac (2021)

Erin (MacDonald) Hammond

• Rowed at River City Rowing Club from 2011-2014

• Coached at RCRC 2015-2017

Scotlyn MacDonald

• Rowed at River City Rowing Club from 2013-2017

The sisters rowed together for 2 years at RCRC, often rowing what they called the “MacDouble” due to the sisters’ shared love for sculling Erin met her husband David when they coached together at RCRC, further cementing the Port into the MacDonald family history and inspiring the family to purchase the Mac 2-/2x and donate it to UC Davis as a “thank you” to the place that changed Erin and Scotlyn’s lives

8+: Tori Murden-McClure

(March 6, 1963 - present )

• 1988: First woman to climb the Lewis Nunatak in the Antarctic (1988)

• 1989: First woman and first American to ski to the South Pole

• 1999: First woman and first American to row solo across the Atlantic Ocean. The row took 81 days and covered 4,767 kilometers from the Canary Islands to Guadeloupe.  First attempted in 1998 but had to stop due to a hurricane

8+: Colleen Marie (2021)

Colleen Marie Chelini

• Rowed for UC Davis for four years (1990-1994)

• Led the push for funding $50,000 for the UC Davis Women’s Rowing team’s endowment (2022)

• Has a sports medicine background as a certified athletic trainer and works with Stanford’s rugby teams

• Active member of the Alumni Board

8+: Charybdis

A sea monster in Greek mythology, located in the Strait of Messina off the coast of Sicily. Three times a day, Charybdis swallowed a huge amount of water, before belching it back out again, creating large whirlpools capable of dragging a ship underwater. In some variations of the story, Charybdis was simply a large whirlpool instead of a sea monster.

Charybdis aided her father Poseidon in his feud with her paternal uncle Zeus and, as such, helped him engulf lands and islands in water. Zeus, angry over the land she stole from him, captured and chained her to the sea-bed. Charybdis was then cursed by the god and transformed into a hideous bladder of a monster, with flippers for arms and legs, and an uncontrollable thirst for the sea. As such, she drank the water from the sea thrice a day to quench it, which created whirlpools. In some myths, Charybdis was a voracious woman who stole oxen from Heracles, and was hurled by the thunderbolt of Zeus into the sea, where she retained her voracious nature.

Additional Boats:

(year acquired); *No longer in use/at the boathouse