SHAPING ROWING EXCELLENCE: THE COACHING JOURNEY OF WENDY DAVIS

The Rowing Association Catches up with Wendy Davis

"I knew I wanted to be a coach since I was in the third grade."

Wendy Davis’ coaching life began in earnest coaching the Stanford novice women’s crew in 1983. An accomplished sculler and recent UCLA graduate, Wendy was an integral part of establishing Stanford women's crew during the early Title IX days.

"The first two years at UCLA, when we would race Stanford, we would beat them and then my last two years when we would race Stanford, they would crush us. I wanted to find out what was going on up there.

I coached at UCLA in the year following graduation and got to know the Stanford coaches– Bob Whitford and John."

John is John Davis, who started coaching the Stanford Women in 1980. Wendy and John would marry in 1985.

"When Stanford had a position open up, I wanted the job. At the time, my parents were farmers who ran an ag aviation business near Coachella. We had a plane. My oldest sister was a pilot in the business. I asked her to fly me up there to meet with John. Once we got up to San Francisco, I called John and told we were in town for the day.

We went to lunch in Redwood City. John offered me the job which paid $2,000 a year at the time. I do remember John was totally impressed with my sister.

Stanford was a step up from UCLA in those days– at least in how the men and the women trained together. Bob Whitford, the men's coach at the time, and J.D. got on pretty well. I was fortunate to land there.

No one really had more than anybody else in those days and we were all just doing what we could do. We had a few eights worth of folks, almost all of them learning to row from day one.

In my first year, we had a handful of recruits from Exeter and Andover. Fresh out of UCLA, I was scared to death. They went with it and let me coach. After all these years, I remember that about Stanford– people really knew how to focus."

Through the 1980s, the novice team excelled, placing in the top three at the Pac–10 Championship every year except for one season. Wendy took over as head coach in 1991. The Varsity Eight achieved a second–place finish at the Pacific Coast Rowing Championships in 1992.

"I love the saying– Some years you're fast and everyone else is faster and some years are slow and everybody else is slower. You just don't know at the start of the season–– even if you are moving along nicely.

It was pretty barebones. You loved it or you quit. My entire time there– we were fundraising most of our operating budget each year–– We were lucky Stanford attracted people who knew how to get the job done.

Our first son was born in 1989. We were up at 5am every morning. One morning the babysitter just didn't answer the door. That was the first morning he joined me in the launch. I stuck a bottle in his mouth every time he cried. I think I coached most of the 1990 season with a baby on board.

It did get rough there in the late eighties, into the nineties, as more athletic departments started funding rowing. A core set of the men’s crew alumni recognized the value of women's rowing and kept things moving. And, in a stroke of luck, by the time Amy Baker took over, the athletic director's daughter had started rowing at Kansas.”

In 1993, Davis moved to the East Coast, becoming the head coach at Yale University, where she remained until 1997. In 1997, the Yale team placed fifth at the first NCAA Rowing Championships.

"When I interviewed at Yale, I asked Dave Vogel, the men's coach, how much does Yale spend on rowing? He ball–parked it at $900,000 a year. A lot of money in those days. I thought– if I don't get this Yale gig, I'm doomed.

By 1997, around the time of the first NCAAs, I remembered recruiting against Michigan because they had scholarships and thinking––This is a football school. Why would you pick a football school? Things changed overnight. It was pretty remarkable. It was wonderful for the sport. "‘

In 2000, Davis began a long coaching stint at the University of Minnesota, where she served as head coach until 2019. During her 19–year tenure, she led the Gophers to a Big Ten Championship title in 2007, following a runner–up finish in 2006. The team also placed sixth in the 2007 NCAA Championship. After her time at Minnesota, Davis joined the University of Tennessee as an assistant coach in 2019.

"There are more rules since the early days–– practice times and days offs. You can only do up to this many hours a day and you have to have this many days off. Every rule seems odd at first but you get used to it. Everything is really centered on the athletes and preventing anyone from being taken advantage of– which is great.

In the early days at Stanford, I thought, 'I wish they cared enough about rowing that I could get fired for my performance.' The sport's grown a lot since those days."

Wendy Davis’ coaching life continues. Last spring, Davis was named an assistant coach at Duke University.

"What's timeless is the caliber of person that makes a good rower and the camaraderie. That is still just as strong as ever.

I love our sport and I love that you still cannot be a prima donna. You can't. You still have to grind."