A World-Class Rower

Michelle attended the University of Massachusetts Amherst. The school had Division 1 athletics, but Michelle hadn’t been quite fast enough over the course of her high school track and cross-country seasons to be recruited. Her first semester of college, however, she found herself missing a competitive outlet.

So, Michelle talked to the track coach before winter break. “I went home to Rochester, New York and started training,” Michelle says. “There was a blizzard, and I ran 10 miles a day for three days in a row. I thought, ‘This is crazy. I love running, but I don’t like having to train through this.’”

When someone suggested Michelle take up rowing, she was intrigued. She loved swimming as a child, but her high school didn’t have a swim team. She was also familiar with boats and had fond family memories of spending weekends at the sailing club on Lake Ontario.

When Michelle showed up after the break and participated in a rowing strength test against girls who had been training since the fall, she crushed it, finishing eighth out of 25. “Once I got in a boat, I totally fell in love,” Michelle says.

After graduating college, she decided to try her hand as a rowing coach. Michelle took a job at Colgate University coaching freshmen women. While there, a few women came through who were members of the United States national rowing team, training for the World Championships. She thought, “I could do that.” She tried out and made the national team the next summer. In fact, out of the nine people in her former college boat, six were invited to the training camp and four made the team of 40 women.

“It was pretty impressive that my college boat was 1/10 of the national team that year,” Michelle says.

She made it to the World Championships rowing in a two-person boat with a woman who had already won the world championships previously. The pair beat the world record in practice, but came up short during the race, finishing in second.

“It was the most exciting but helpless feeling. It was the best and worst thing that could have happened because now I was hooked,” Michelle says.

She spent a total of seven years on the US national rowing team, competing in five World Championships and bringing home four medals.

Supporting Her Family

As much as Michelle loved that chapter of her life, she and her husband decided it was time to start a family. Michelle had her first son, then a second as her husband finished his PhD. They moved to Massachusetts and Michelle started to stay home with the kids.

“For me, it was rewarding but challenging,” Michelle says. “I’m used to having a project and something to work really hard at. You can’t mom any harder. You can’t rush time.”

Michelle is now the proud mom of three teenage boys. Her oldest just graduated high school. She always knew she wanted to go back to school at some point, so Michelle kept examining different graduate programs at her alma mater, UMass Amherst, where her husband works as a professor. She settled on accounting.

“Ultimately, numbers and math are my jam. There’s something about it that just makes sense to me,” Michelle says.

Normally, the master’s degree is a 30-credit add-on because you need 150 total credits to get your CPA license. Michelle joined a transitions program designed for students without a business or accounting background. The program adds an additional four classes to get participants up to a graduate level of understanding.