USRowing Announces 2021 Board-Selected Annual Award Winners

PRINCETON, N.J. – USRowing is pleased to announce the winners of its eight Board of Directors-selected annual awards for 2021. The following individuals will be honored for their outstanding contributions to the sport of rowing:

USRowing Medal of Honor – Larry Gluckman

Jack Kelly Award – Kate Johnson

John J. Carlin Service Award – Katalin Kariko

Anita DeFrantz Award – St. Benedict's Prep

Isabel Bohn Award – Paralympic Games PR3 Mixed 4+

Clayton Chapman Award – Brice Crossley

Ernestine Bayer Award (Woman of the Year) – Olympic Games LW2x

Man of the Year – Arshay Cooper

The award winners will be honored at the 2021 USRowing Annual Convention, scheduled to take place virtually from December 6-11. The exact time and date of each award presentation will be announced closer to the convention.

USRowing previously announced the Referee Award winners, as well as the Beach Sprint, Under 19, Under 23, and Senior National Team Athletes of the Year.

About the 2021 Board of Directors-Selected Award Winners

USRowing Medal of Honor – Larry Gluckman

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.

Legendary coach Larry Gluckman, who passed away earlier this year, is the 2021 recipient of the USRowing Medal of Honor.

A member of the U.S. National Team coaching staff for both the 1980 and 1984 Olympic Games, as well as numerous world championships, Gluckman began his coaching career at Columbia University, coached the heavyweight crews at Princeton University from 1981-89 and then Dartmouth College from 1989-91, amongst others, before taking a job with Concept2.

Gluckman, who earned his bachelor's degree from Northeastern University and his master's degree in special education from Columbia University in 1971, returned to collegiate coaching at Trinity College in 2002, where he coached through 2009. A long-time coach at Craftsbury Outdoor Center, he started their Small Boat Training Center in 2009, which developed into the Green Racing Project. During that time, he took numerous athletes to U.S. National Team Trials and placed several crews on the under 23 and senior national teams.

Before his passing at the end of March, Gluckman was working with John Graves at the U.S. Olympic Team Trials and in his preparations for the Final Olympic Qualification Regatta.

Gluckman began rowing at Northeastern University in 1964, winning most improved oarsman as a sophomore and most valuable oarsman as a junior. As senior captain, his crew finished fourth at both the Eastern Sprints and IRA regattas.

As a national team rower, he won a gold medal in the four at the 1967 Pan American Games and a bronze medal in the four at the 1967 European Championships. He competed in the men's eight at the 1973 European Championships, men's four with coxswain at the 1975 World Championships and was an alternate on the 1976 Olympic Team in Montreal.

Jack Kelly Award – Kate Johnson

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.

Kate Johnson epitomizes everything that the Jack Kelly Award is about – success in rowing and in her profession. A 2004 Olympic silver medalist, Johnson currently serves as the Director and Head of Global Marketing Partnerships, Content, Sports Media at Google. The first role of its kind for Google, Johnson has been tasked with building the company's strategic approach to sports and entertainment partnerships across the company's many business verticals.

Formerly Vice President of Global Sponsorship Marketing at Visa, Johnson oversaw the company's global portfolio of sponsorships during her seven-year tenure including the company's 30-year partnership with the IOC, FIFA and the NFL. Prior to joining Visa, she worked in New York, Toronto, and London building and executing sponsorship marketing platforms for a variety of clients as part of IMG's Global Consulting Group.

In 2017, Johnson was named by Adweek as one of the "35 Most Powerful Women in Sport." She won the 2017 Sports Business Journal 40 Under 40 Award and the 2017 Leaders Under 40 Award.

A nine-time national team member, Johnson capped off her international rowing career by setting a world record in the heat and then winning a silver medal in the women's eight at the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens, Greece. Johnson represented the U.S. at two World Rowing Junior Championships, three Nation's Cup Regattas (under 23 championships), and three World Rowing Championships, in addition to the 2004 Olympics. She won gold in the women's eight at the 2002 World Rowing Championships and two medals at the Nation's Cup.

A graduate of the University of Michigan, Johnson was a three-time, first-team All-American for the Wolverines and was inducted into the University of Michigan Hall of Honor in 2016.

John J. Carlin Service Award – Katalin Kariko

Awarded to honor an individual who has made significant and outstanding commitments in support of rowing.

As The New York Times put it, Dr. Katalin Kariko has "emerged as one of the heroes of COVID-19 vaccine development."

Dr. Kariko's decades-long research on messenger RNA led to the development of the two most effective vaccines for COVID-19, the BioNTech/Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. She also happens to be a rowing mom, as her daughter, Susan Francia, is a two-time Olympic gold medalist and five-time world champion.

Dr. Kariko grew up in Hungary, earned a Ph.D. at the University of Szeged and worked as a postdoctoral fellow at its Biological Research Center. In 1985, she immigrated to the U.S. with her husband and two-year-old daughter for a job as a postdoctoral student at Temple University before taking a job at the University of Pennsylvania in 1989.

At Penn, she investigated RNA-mediated immune activation and co-discovered, with colleague Dr. Drew Weissman, that nucleoside modifications suppress the immunogenicity of RNA, which widened the therapeutic potential of mRNA in treating diseases.

Dr. Kariko joined BioNTech in 2014, and when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, she and her company began to work on a vaccine.

Her work has made an enormous impact on the world and helped rowers across the country get back on the water.

Anita DeFrantz Award – St. Benedict's Prep

Awarded to an individual or organization achieving measurable success in expanding diversity opportunities in rowing.

Under the leadership of Head Coach Craig White, the rowing program at St. Benedict's Prep in the heart of Newark, N.J., launched in 2011 with just nine students. With the help of dedicated parents and an enduring vision, the program has grown to more than 60 student athletes in the Boys' Prep Division.

A Newark native and a 2004 graduate of St. Benedict's, White is introducing and providing access to the sport to young people of color along the Passaic River in Northern New Jersey. In addition to coaching, White teaches math at St. Benedict's and is the Dean of the Freshman Level.

This past summer, several of White's rowers earned spots in USRowing's Olympic Development Program held in Jacksonville, Fla.

White has plans to add a girls' program in the near future and hopes to eventually build a boathouse in Newark. In September, St. Benedict's was selected as one of five programs to receive a grant from the A Most Beautiful Thing Inclusion Fund.

Founded in 1868, St. Benedict's Prep is devoted to educating young men and women from Newark, its surrounding area and beyond. While explicitly dedicated to serving minority youngsters and those from low-income backgrounds, St. Benedict's welcome students from all racial, religious, and socioeconomic groups to create real diversity.

Isabel Bohn Award – Paralympic Silver-Medal PR3 Mixed Four with Coxswain

Awarded to an individual or organization achieving measurable success in expanding rowing opportunities for those with physical and intellectual disabilities.

The PR3 mixed four with coxswain crew of Karen Petrik, John Tanguay, Charley Nordin, Dani Hansen, and Allie Reilly was the only U.S. Paralympic or Olympic crew to reach the medal stand in 2021, winning a silver medal at the Sea Forest Waterway in Tokyo

Coached by 1992 Olympian Shelagh Donohoe, the crew, which remained intact from the 2019 World Rowing Championships, gave the U.S. its seventh consecutive silver medal in the event – a streak that has spanned two Paralympic Games, two race distances and two names. For their efforts, the Board selected the crew as this year's Isabel Bohn Award winners.

A seven-time national team member and two-time Paralympian, Hansen has been part of all seven of those boats including the silver medal-winning legs, trunk and arms crew from the Rio 2016 Paralympic Games. Racing in their first Paralympics, Nordin and Reilly have been part of three of those crews, while Tanguay and Petrik have been part of the last two.

Clayton Chapman Award – Brice Crossley

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.

Brice Crossley has served as the Florida Scholastic Rowing Association's regatta director for more than 20 years. He has been the common thread as the association has grown from a scholastic-only, sweep-centered group holding a one-day championship at the Tampa Bypass Canal to an organization that's inclusive of all youth rowing, putting on separate sculling and sweep state championships at Nathan Benderson Park each Spring.

Crossley's institutional knowledge of the FSRA and his experience as a USRowing referee, combined with his organizational skills and diligence, have allowed the association to increase the quality of their regattas even as their membership has grown and has demanded expansion into sculling. Crossley's leadership has empowered the FSRA regattas to grow with the venue at Nathan Benderson Park and maximize the offerings to facilitate better regattas for the FSRA membership.

As the first organization to regularly use NBP, Crossley's ability to consistently put on great regattas demonstrated to the local powers-that-be that the site was worth investing in. It now stands as the premier rowing venue in the United States and one of the best in the world.

Ernestine Bayer Award (Woman of the Year) – Olympic Lightweight Women's Double Sculls

Awarded in recognition of outstanding contributions to women's rowing and/or to an outstanding woman in rowing.

From their first race at the 2020 U.S. Olympic Team Trials – Rowing in February, the women's lightweight double sculls tandem of Michelle Sechser and Molly Reckford showed they were the U.S. crew to watch during the delayed Olympic year. Sechser and Reckford would go on to be the first U.S. lightweight women's double to reach the Olympic final since 2000, setting an America record in the process, and earning this year's Ernestine Bayer Award (formerly Woman of the Year).

With COVID-19 forcing a one-year postponement of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games, Sechser, a University of Tulsa graduate and nine-time national team member, and Reckford, a Dartmouth College graduate and two-time national team member, made a statement that they were the U.S. crew to beat from the outset of the Olympic Trials. A dominant performance in Sarasota gave them the opportunity to race in Lucerne at the Final Olympic Qualification Regatta in mid-May. Sechser and Reckford were again up to the task, winning the FOQR in comfortable fashion and establishing themselves as a medal contender in Tokyo.

After finishing third in their heat in Tokyo, the Olympic rookies came back to dominate their repechage and then set an American record in the event during the semifinals, finishing just 0.18 seconds behind Italy and the new Worlds' Best Time. In the final, less than two seconds separated the entire field, with the U.S. taking fifth and missing a medal by a deck-length. However, it was still the best U.S. finish since Sarah Garner and Christine Collins won bronze in 2000.

Man of the Year – Arshay Cooper

Awarded in recognition of outstanding contributions to men's rowing and/or to an outstanding man in rowing.

Arshay Cooper is a rower, award-winning author, motivational speaker, and activist, particularly around the issues of accessibility for low-income families. USRowing's 2017 Anita DeFrantz Award winner, Cooper is this year's recipient of USRowing's Man of the Year Award.

Cooper grew up on the West Side of Chicago and in 1997 joined the country's first all-Black high school rowing team at Manley High School. His award-winning memoir, A Most Beautiful Thing, chronicling his high school rowing career was adapted into a film narrated by the Academy and Grammy Award-winning artist Common, produced by NBA stars Grant Hill and Dwyane Wade and Grammy Award-winning 9th Wonder, and directed by award-winning filmmaker and Olympic rower Mary Mazzio.

Over the past 18 months, the documentary has introduced the sport of rowing to thousands of people. The film won a Gracie Award and was named one of the best films of 2020 by Esquire. It also was nominated for a NAACP Image Award, the International Press Academy Best Documentary, and the Critics' Choice Association Best Sports Documentary.

Cooper also leads the A Most Beautiful Thing Inclusion Fund, which was founded in September of 2020, to bring rowing, academic support, and college access to under-resourced communities. He has been called upon to build bridges across the country through his story and has inspired the founding of new diversity-focused rowing programs across the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, and New Zealand.