From the smallest of tows to the largest megalopolis, American society is always compelled to give unconditional support to their Olympians. The sense of pride grows when is it one of their own that makes the quadrennial trip to represent their country. In Bristol this is not the exception as Bristol Central alum Michelle Guerette has her ticket punched to head to Beijing at the end of next month.
Michelle will be participating in the single scull event, but it is her path towards meeting up with her eventual passion that is a story all to itself. Michelle played tennis in high school and it was her thirst for activity that brought her to rowing when she enrolled at Harvard University. “ I wanted to play some type of fun team sport. I saw there was an Ultimate Frisbee team and I was familiar with that having played it at Page Park in the summers and under the lights. I also heard about rowing from a roommate of mine,” said Michelle. After seeing signs up and hearing it from various sources, she decided to go with rowing.
She started out in this sport and with the guidance of former Olympian she began to see the demands of the sport. With that demand came the commitment that was required. “First came getting up early, then the two-hour training, then the weight training, then after that the competitions, and after that the weekends away. I think it was pretty cool to be on the river. After that it just snowballed, ” she said. In this portion we find out how something that she started doing for 90 minutes, three times a week became her greatest passion.
Juan Arango: How was that transition from a small town like Bristol to Boston?
Michelle Guerette: It was quite tricky, but then you look at it perspective after you start traveling. Then it’s not so big after you to go New York a few times (laughs). I feel comfortable here now after moving back from Princeton, NJ in 2004 after living there two years.
JA: Where you doing like a Master’s degree there or something?
MG: Well, the US team- I actually trained with them and they are based out of Princeton.
JA: So when did it start becoming this “serious thing”? When did you start to say to yourself, “Hey, I’m pretty good at this”?
MG: I would say the spring of my freshman year. I started to do some training on the rowing machine and I posted the top time. That was a time when I was training very hard. Well, one year in I didn’t have that much of a base to be able to go very fast on my first shot. That kind of indicated that I had a lot of potential physiologically. I started getting the hang of the boat. Then I actually had the chance to be on the varsity rowing team and started competing with those guys. We then went to the Eastern Sprint Championships and then on to the NCAA Championships that summer in California. So there I was flying around the country for this race. It was really exciting. By the time I got home that summer I was super exhausted.
JA: You never dreamed about rowing when you were leaving Central.
MG: Oh, no! I mean I played tennis. I mean if we went to Newtown that was our “big trip”. I mean we went to the state tournament in New Haven and I thought that was pretty far. It was challenging and all, but I never though that I would be traveling to the other side of the country to race.
JA: At that time were you doing quad sculls?
MG: That was my freshman year, so at that point- in college- you race with eight. I was on an eight-person boat. I had one oar, that’s straight rowing. I started onto the national scene probably in the summer of my sophomore year. There was an identification camp for freshman and varsity athletes. I was at that camp and I thought I was going for a few weeks just to try out and kind of get some experience and work on technique and come home for the summer. I thought I might go out on the river on my own. But they were selecting a boat of four people- nobody’s steering- it’s a small boat. Then again I would have one of the top times. I was one of the four girls in that boat and we ended up competing in Denmark, in Copenhagen my sophomore year. At that point I was just sold. I was like “Wow. I’m going to fly around the world.”
JA: That was the first to you had gone abroad to compete?
MG: That was the first time I had gone abroad in general and competitively. It was great.
Check out Part Two next week.
To learn more about rowing, log on to usrowing.org
***Special Thanks to Brett Johnson at US Rowing Press***