Apr 09, 2025
General
USRowing Announces 2024 Board-Selected Annual Award Winners
USRowing is pleased to announce the winners of its eight Board of Directors-selected annual awards for 2024. The following individuals are being honored for their outstanding contributions to the sport of rowing:
Medal of Honor: Holly Metcalf
Jack Kelly Award: Ed Hewitt
Anita DeFrantz Award for Advancing Diversity in Rowing: Tracy Falkenthal
Isabel Bohn Award for Achievement in Adaptive Rowing: Debbie Arenberg
John J. Carlin Award: Paul Fuchs
Clayton W. Chapman Award: Lisa Osborne
Man of the Year: Nick Mead
Ernestine Bayer Award: Caitlin McClain
Learn more about past award winners here.
Medal of Honor: Holly Metcalf
Awarded to a member of the rowing community in the U.S. who has rendered conspicuous service to or accomplished extraordinary feats in rowing. It is the highest honor USRowing can bestow.
Holly Metcalf is an Olympic gold medalist, a lifelong coach, and a founder of multiple rowing non-profit organizations. She is in her 18th season as head coach for the MIT openweight women’s rowing team. Every year under Metcalf, the team has earned Public Recognition Awards from the NCAA for its exceptional academic performance. She won the 2017 Patriot League Coach of the Year.
Metcalf was a six-time member of the U.S. National Team and won four World Championship medals. She was a member of the 1984 women’s eight that won the first-ever Olympic gold medal for the U.S. women’s national team. She coached the U.S. women’s national team to a silver medal at the 1990 World Rowing Championships.
Metcalf has founded multiple non-profit programs to provide access to rowing to communities in need. In 1994, she founded the Row As One Institute, which offers masters women top-level coaching. She extended this concept to girls from under-resourced communities in Boston in 1996 with her G-ROW program. G-ROW was one of the first programs of its kind and helped lay the foundation for similar programs across the country. The program has incredibly high college acceptance rates for their rowers. It is now called RowBoston at Community Rowing, Inc. Metcalf created WeCanRow in 2002, a wellness and rehabilitation organization for female cancer survivors, which recently evolved into WeCanRow National. At the 2024 Head of the Charles, cancer survivors honored Metcalf for her work and raced in the Survivor’s Row exhibition race with two entries from WeCanRow.
A graduate of Mount Holyoke College, she was selected as a member of that school’s inaugural Athletics Hall of Fame in 2013 and is a member of the National Rowing Hall of Fame, the Maine Hall of Fame, and the New England Women's Sports Hall of Fame. Metcalf was previously awarded the 2008 USRowing Woman of the Year with her Olympic teammates and the 1999 USRowing Woman of the Year with Ernestine Bayer. She has also won the 1999 New England Women's Leadership Award, 1998 New England Hero Award, 1998 Girl Scouts of America Leading Woman. She was also named one of Boston Magazine's Top 50 Most Intriguing Women.
Jack Kelly Award: Ed Hewitt
Awarded to an outstanding individual who represents the ideals that Jack Kelly exemplified: superior achievements in rowing, service to amateur athletics, and success in their chosen profession, thereby serving as an inspiration to American rowers.
Ed Hewitt is the founder of row2k, and along with the row2k crew has been instrumental in providing the rowing community around the world with news, features, photography, and results for over 28 years. He is a seven-time national team member and won silver in 1988 and bronze in 1987 in the lightweight men’s eight at the World Rowing Championships. He was the head coach of the women’s rowing team at Columbia University from 1984 to 1991. The Hewitt and Dauphiny Cup is named after Ed Hewitt and Lori Dauphiny, the current head coach of Princeton's team, and was established in tribute to the ties between the Columbia and Princeton coaching staffs and athletes. The Edward Hewitt Award for Dedication, Tenacity, and Inspirational Leadership is also given annually by the Columbia-Barnard Women's rowing team.
He founded row2k in 1997, and its staff and numerous additional writers and photographers can be found at nearly every major regatta in the world.
Anita DeFrantz Award for Advancing Diversity in Rowing: Tracy Falkenthal
Awarded to an individual or organization achieving measurable success in expanding rowing opportunities to people from diverse backgrounds.
Tracy Falkenthal is a coach and advocate for diversity, equity, and inclusion in rowing. Tracy began rowing at Berkeley High and continued her rowing career at Boston University. She enlisted in the Army National Guard while at BU. In 1998, she became a firefighter paramedic for the Dallas Fire Department and later with the Alameda County Fire Department, where she served 19 years and retired without injury. She is also a personal trainer. She won her IFBB Procard as a physique bodybuilder in 2016.
She has coached rowers for 17 years and the biggest changes she’s made in diversity were at the Texas Rowing Center. She and Matt Knifton worked to create a more diverse and inclusive program. She coached all levels of athletes and specialized in High Performance and U19 age groups. Her U17 men’s double sculls won gold at the 2022 at USRowing’s Youth National Championships, and her U19 men’s quadruple sculls won bronze at the Championships in 2023.
Falkenthal currently coaches rowing at San Diego State University where she is also a personal trainer. She continues to race with Endeavor Racing Alliance and San Diego Rowing Club. As a masters athlete, Tracy has taken gold at the Henley Masters Regatta and Canadian Henley, FISA World Masters, and on four occasions at Head of the Charles. She is a Level 3 Certified USRowing coach and a great example of the work coaches can do to open boathouse doors to all. Through tireless recruiting, she has helped build a nationwide network of black rowing coaches, including Eric Dilworth and Stacey Malone. She also partners with Arshay Cooper at Craftsbury Rowing Camps to provide the best opportunity for all athletes to thrive.
She is growing the sport by opening eyes to change. She believes all athletes should be offered the same opportunities to compete fairly at every level.
Isabel Bohn Award for Achievement in Adaptive Rowing: Debbie Arenberg
Awarded to an individual or organization achieving measurable success in expanding rowing opportunities for those with physical and intellectual disabilities.
Debbie Arenberg is a key figure in the promotion of and long-term development of adaptive rowing across the United States. She worked as the coordinator for Freedom Rows, a national program dedicated to changing lives for veterans with disabilities and members of the armed forces. It funded over 33 programs serving an average of 1,000 veterans each year. She worked as the adaptive program associate and wrote the Adaptive Coach Certification program. She consistently provided opportunities and support for people and programs that invested in adaptive rowing. She is an expert and an incredible resource for adaptive rowing and classification.
Arenberg previously worked with Alden Rowing Shells and WinTech Racing. She is a competitive rower at the local and national levels in sculling, sweep, and open-water rowing events. She continues to advocate for adaptive rowing and continues to work as the U.S. Classification Coordinator and Adaptive Programs Development Specialist at USRowing.
John J. Carlin Service Award: Paul Fuchs
Awarded to honor an individual who has made significant and outstanding commitments supporting rowing.
Paul Fuchs’ commitment to rowing has been exemplary. He was the head of World Rowing’s Materials Commission, now called the Equipment and Technology Commission, for nearly 30 years. He retired in 2023. Fuchs joined the commission in 1992.
Through this commission, Fuchs has been instrumental in shaping the sport of rowing. He helped design Para boats and helped shape the rules of the sport. His work in designing coastal rowing shells has helped the sport grow, which helped it be included in the 2028 LA Olympics.
Fuchs has attended eight out of the past nine Olympic Games as an official or coach, beginning with 1988, when he was the Vice President of USRowing. He was a member of the Materials Commission from 1993 to 2000 and then Chair of the Materials Commission from 2001 to 2023. Fuchs was a member of the USRowing Board of Directors for six years and served as vice president for four years. After stepping down from the board, he joined the High Performance Committee.
Fuchs was a seven-time national team member who won five medals in the lightweight single and double. He proudly holds the Head of the Charles record in the lightweight men’s single sculls that has not been broken since 1984. He sailed in the America's Cup to victory in 1977 and sailed the trials in 1980. He has coached crews to several national championships. He also actively coached at an international level; he coached a single sculls at the 1992 Olympics, a single sculls for the Pan American Games, and a double sculls and quadruple sculls at the World Championships. Presently, he is a rowing coach at Blood Street Sculls, Old Lyme High School and a Level 3 Certified USRowing Coach.
The Clayton W. Chapman Award: Lisa Osborne
Awarded to an outstanding individual who emulates Clayton Chapman's 30-year stewardship of the Eastern Sprints and IRA Championships. This person will have consistently served behind the scenes in unrecognized but important roles in staging a regatta. The individual may be an athlete, coach, referee, administrator, volunteer or regatta organizer.
Lisa Osborne has been instrumental in staging the Midwest Scholastic Championships as its Regatta Director. The first regatta at Dillon Lake was the Dillon Lake Halloween Regatta held in 2012 followed by the Dillon Lake Invitational/Sprints and Midwest Scholastic Rowing Championships in 2013. They were held yearly until moving to the Kathryn Bennett Race Course in Milford, Michigan, in 2022. She was also the Executive Director of the Dillon Lake LOC. MSRA and the LOC hosted SRAA’s in 2016 and 2019. The MSRA Championships is now one of the largest high school sprint events in the country, hosting over 50 teams, 2100 athletes, and 500 entries consistently each second weekend in May.
Osborne leads the regatta with grace, class, and compassion that has garnered a tight-knit community of coaches, athletes, and parents who want to see great racing but at the forefront ensure high school students have a phenomenal experience. She has taken this community spirit and expertise and applied it to the Blake Haxton Fall regatta, one of the largest Fall high school races, a highlight for many crews from around the Midwest and now the country at the end of October. Her incredible, consistent work behind the scenes of the Midwest Scholastic regattas has allowed the sport to flourish in the area.
Man of the Year: Nick Mead
Awarded in recognition of outstanding contributions to men's rowing and/or to an outstanding man in rowing.
Nick Mead had a historic year, winning gold in the men’s four and being selected as the first-ever rower to be a flag bearer for the Olympic closing ceremonies. His gold medal in the men’s four was the first gold in that event since 1960. He was chosen with Katie Ledecky to be the closing ceremonies flag bearer by a vote of fellow Team USA athletes. He is a two-time Olympian and a nine-time national team member, and he won silver at the 2023 World Rowing Championships. Mead raced in the men’s eight at the 2020 Olympics and finished fourth.
Mead is a Princeton University graduate and the captain of the men’s rowing team. He is a great example of the long-term development of talent in the U.S., having previously raced on the U19 and U23 national teams. He transitioned to the senior team in 2017, winning silver in the men's eight at the World Rowing Championships. He previously won USRowing's Male Athlete of the Year in 2021 and 2023.
Ernestine Bayer Award (Formerly Woman of the Year): Caitlin McClain
Awarded in recognition of outstanding contributions to women's rowing and/or to an outstanding woman in rowing.
Caitlin McClain’s leadership and coaching with the U19 women’s national team has helped lay the foundations for the long-term development of talent in the United States. This past year, her U19 women’s eight won by over five seconds at the 2024 World Rowing Championships. She has been coaching in the USRowing U19 system since 2014. After five years as an assistant working with sweep and sculling boats, she coached the 2019 U19 women's quadruple sculls in Tokyo. In 2021, she became the women's head coach and led her crews to A final finishes in 2021, 2022, and 2023.
Beyond USRowing, McClain is the Head Coach at Seattle Pacific University, a Division II program that has competed at NCAAs three of her four years and won the Varsity four with coxswain in 2024. Prior to SPU, Caitlin was at Holy Names Academy in Seattle, Wash., for 15 years and built the program into a perennial powerhouse, most recently placing third at Youth Nationals in the youth eight in 2019.
