USRowing Coach Highlight: Sarah Tinsley Gehrke

After her four years of high school club rowing (2002-2006) & letter-winning career as a recruited collegiate athlete at Indiana University in Bloomington tinsley(2006-2010), Sarah began her coaching career in 2010 as the Assistant Novice Coach for the Women's Varsity Rowing program at Indiana University.

Following her time as an athlete and coach at Indiana University, she moved to San Francisco, CA where she coached a small, start-up rowing program called Artemis Rowing in Oakland, CA. During her three years at Artemis, Sarah was involved in coaching sweep and sculling styles to novice girls, varsity boys, varsity girls, masters, and also took on administrative duties. In addition, Sarah led frequent outreach programs to create rowing opportunities for underserved, urban Oakland youth. By the end of her Bay Area coaching stint, she qualified two Artemis crews for Youth Nationals for the first time in its team's history.

After her time on the West Coast (2011-2014), Sarah moved back home to St. Louis, MO and spent a short time as Head Coach of novice women separately at both Washington University and St. Louis Rowing Club. In the fall of 2014, Sarah was offered the opportunity to return exclusively to collegiate coaching as the Head Coach of North Park University in Chicago, a Division III team and the only NCAA Varsity rowing program in all of Illinois.

Sarah remained at North Park for nearly three years before returning to the West Coast for one year as the Assistant Coach and Director of Operations for the Women's Rowing Team at the University of Southern California. Following her work at USC, Sarah returned to coaching juniors as the Head Varsity Boys Coach at Saratoga Rowing Association (2018-2020), a highly competitive scholastic club in Saratoga Springs, New York. During her time with SRA, Sarah coached crews to 4 medals at 2019 SRAAs, 10 medals at 2019 New York State Championships, and two Youth Nationals medals.

During her career, Sarah has been involved in the success of many varied crews, including the Nicaraguan National Team in the 2017 Central American Games, Junior Men's Lightweight 8+ bronze medal at 2019 USRowing Youth Nationals and qualified the Under-19 Junior Men's 2x for their race in Tokyo, Japan for the 2019 World Rowing Junior Championships. In addition to coaching at Saratoga and NCS, Sarah has been coaching the US Junior National Team through Virtual Training sessions and has been a presenter at rowing conferences.

Sarah is currently the Head Coach of National Cathedral School's rowing team in Washington, D.C.