Nation & World

‘We have the most motivated people, the best athletes. How far can we take this?’

Videos by Maureen Coyle and James Byard/Harvard Staff

Alvin Powell

Harvard Staff Writer

August 20, 2024

6 min read

Seven members of Team USA train at Newell Boat House for 2024 Paralympics in Paris

It is the sound, of all things, that keeps Gemma Wollenschlaeger going. The whisper of the boat slipping through the water means speed to her; it means power. Four rowers pulling as one.

“When the boat gets going, there’s a sound that puts you in another dimension. It doesn’t feel like anything else in real life,” Wollenschlaeger said. “It’s a ‘swiiish,’ and it takes a lot to get to that point. It’s an adrenaline rush, a satisfaction rush, and then it disappears and you’re like, ‘Wait, I need to do that again.’”

It’s a good thing Wollenschlaeger wants to do that again because she’s going to have to. The rising senior at Temple University is headed to the 2024 Paralympics in Paris after spending the last seven months rowing on the Charles River out of Harvard’s Newell Boat House. She trained, with four other members of the U.S. Paralympic Rowing Team, under the tutelage of Tom Siddall, assistant coach for Harvard’s men’s heavyweight crew and one of two coaches for the U.S. Paralympic rowing team.

Siddall is coaching the four-person sweep team, made up of Wollenschlaeger; Skylar Dahl, a rising senior at the University of Virginia; Alex Flynn, who’ll be a junior at Tufts University in the fall; Ben Washburne, a 2023 Williams College graduate; and coxswain Emelie Eldracher, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology graduate student.

The Paralympic double scull, featuring Todd Vogt of Rochester, New York, and Saige Harper of Easthampton, Massachusetts, also trained at Newell, coached by two-time Olympic rower Andrea Thies.

“I’m just interested in seeing how fast we can go,” said Siddall, who rowed at Fairfield University and came to Harvard after coaching at Tufts. “We have the most motivated people, the best athletes. How far can we take this?”

The top disabled athletes from around the world compete every four years in the Paralympic Games, which typically follow the Olympics. This year’s run is Aug. 28-Sept. 8 in Paris.

For the seven members of Team USA training at Harvard this summer, that has meant long days of multiple workouts, building strength and endurance even as they focus on the technique critical in keeping the boats moving forward through the synchronized movements of the crew.

It is the need to maintain technique even when they’re exhausted that makes rowing, to Dahl, both the hardest and most rewarding thing she’s done.

“You are searching for that point where your muscles are screaming, but the race isn’t over, and you have to keep going,” said Dahl, who hails from Minnesota. “It hurts the whole time. There’s a wall, and you just have to go through it. Then there’s this whole other element. You have to work together and match up your form. It’s a constant give-and-take about what is best for the boat, what’s going to move it over the water.”

“It hurts the whole time. There’s a wall, and you just have to go through it. Then there’s this whole other element. You have to work together and match up your form. It’s a constant give-and-take about what is best for the boat, what’s going to move it over the water.”Skylar Dahl

The two boats qualified for the Paralympics at last summer’s world championships, where each came in second. Crews were finalized in January during a selection week in Florida, after which the rowers began to make their way to Harvard.

Washburne lives in Cambridge, works nearby, and already rowed regularly on the Charles. Wollenschlaeger arrived in January, taking the semester off from Temple and moving to Boston to train with Siddall through the winter. Flynn was also local, rowing for Tufts’ crew in the spring, and managed to squeeze in workouts with Siddall around team obligations.

The full crews came together after the academic year ended in May. Training for the Games began in earnest, Siddall said, after a race in Poland at the beginning of June.

During their weeks at Harvard, the rowers’ days began early, arriving at Newell at 6:30 a.m. and getting on the water by 7. They worked until 9 a.m., then, a couple of days each week, headed to weightlifting sessions. They had time off during the middle of the day and then a second session from late afternoon until early evening.

During that time, Siddall mixed it up, throwing in different training sets, called “pieces,” which included work on technique, hard intervals, short intervals, long hard intervals, and pieces focused on the race’s start and finish.

Paralympic boats are co-ed, adding another variable in getting the crew to mesh as a team. The boats practicing at Harvard this summer are classified as PR3, the Paralympics’ least-disabled category. Each member of Siddall’s crew has clubfoot, a condition where the ankle has no flexibility.

“I went 19 years without meeting someone with clubfoot, and then here I am in a whole boat with clubfoot,” Dahl said. “It’s crazy that we all found this sport, and we all found each other, and we’re all doing this in the same place.”

Rowers received significant support while at Harvard, Siddall said. U.S. rowing provided stipends, which allowed the crew to train full-time. There was a dietitian, catered meals when sessions ran long, and a physical therapist for any training-related injuries.

It was also significant, crew members said, just being welcome at the Newell Boat House, home of Harvard’s storied crew program.

“I am a student at MIT, and we call Harvard the ‘other Cambridge school,’ but it’s such a privilege to be here, to be a part of this historic venue and a culture that you can sense when you enter the boat house,” Eldracher said. “There’s just an energy of excitement as you attack your pieces. There’s an energy of champions here.”

The two teams headed to Italy on Aug. 15, for pre-Games training. Among their goals before heading to France on Thursday is to get accustomed to a new boat, provided by the Italian manufacturer of the one in which they trained at Harvard. The switch eliminates logistical hurdles involved in shipping their fragile, 44-foot training craft across the Atlantic.

When racing starts, the first hurdle is the heats, Siddall said. The top boats advance to the final while those that don’t make it compete in a second race whose top finishers also go to the final. With a second-place showing at the world championships last year, the team is cautiously optimistic about these Paralympics.

But regardless of who comes home with the hardware, they said, the whole experience has already been an unforgettable ride.

“I feel like I’m just grabbing onto the days we have left because I don’t want this summer to end,” Wollenschlaeger said. “It’s just been an awesome experience.”