NEW GLARUS — After three weeks of tryouts, 2024 New Glarus graduate Melanie Fink was selected as one of nine athletes to walk on to the Div. I UW-Madison Women’s Lightweight Rowing Team.  For this fall, she will be training with the novice roster until they combine with the Varsity Lightweight Squad for winter training. Although there are a few fall races and training trips south over the winter months, the main season runs from March to May with 2,000-meter races in eight-rower boats with one coxswain.

“I decided to try out for rowing just by walking into an open house that they hosted on a random Friday,” Fink said. “Watching the Olympics this summer and hearing that many of them were Badgers, I think put it on my radar.”

Approximately 50% of the UW team has no rowing experience before attending college, but come to the team from a wide range of high school athletic experiences especially in the endurance sports.

“I had no rowing experience before this, so it’s been a totally new experience,” Fink said. “I know they take a lot of cross country runners though, so running cross country for all four years of high school definitely was an advantage.”

Women’s rowing at UW-Madison began in 1895, but became an official intercollegiate sport in 1974. The openweight division is one of Wisconsin’s most successful women’s sports, having earned 22 national championships and numerous runner-up titles. The Badger Lightweight program became a varsity sport in 1995 and owns five IRA national championships.

— Natalie Dillon