The athletes of the Michigan women’s rowing team spend countless hours driving their legs, tearing open the skin of their palms and powering through to the watery finish. In order to handle such intense training, most varsity athletes have generally put in years, if not a decade, of dedication to succeed in their chosen sport as a Wolverine.
Remarkably, though, the Michigan rowing team is home to three athletes that didn’t.
Senior Grace Hammis was a member of the 2023 Big Ten Championship team and beat Ohio State as a sophomore. Junior Megan Higley owns a Big Ten Boat of the Week and carries nine top-three race finishes. And skilled graduate Halle Loveday beat Michigan State in just her second race as a Wolverine and is a 2024 Big Ten Champion.
Above are the achievements of three well-rounded athletes at Michigan who all take part in the competitive, and nationally ranked, women’s rowing team. But not one of these women set foot in a rowing boat before coming to Ann Arbor.
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Grace Hammis spent her time in Saginaw, Mich. at Heritage High School as a powerful forward, and midfielder, for the girls soccer team. Outside of high school, she found herself playing for the Nationals Soccer team, which was a part of the US Soccer Girls Academy League and won tournaments nationally.
Unfortunately, that success came with the burden of multiple injuries, which left Hammis unable to play soccer at the level she desired. However, with the recruitment profile she created, a former Michigan rowing coach reached out, and soon Hammis was scheduled for an unofficial visit.
“Right off the bat, I really didn’t know what I was getting myself into,” Hammis told The Michigan Daily. “I didn’t know rowing was a thing at all, it was just kind of a gamble.”
Taking the gamble, she did a little research and met the team, falling in love with the idea of learning something new.
Used to the terminology of being goalside or to switch fields, and the chirping of ‘yep yep’ or ‘man on,’ Hammis turned her soccer lingo into 1V8 (first varsity eight), learning the difference between port and starboard. Now she listens to the coxswain commanding and keeping the crew at a steady rate.
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Halle Loveday joined the Wolverines in 2023 as a transfer from Michigan State. After transferring to Michigan her junior year, Loveday, like many other new students, received an email stating that the women’s rowing team was looking to add to its roster. After surveying the questions on the questionnaire, Loveday learned that she fit the criteria to become a Division I rower.
Remembering her time in high school as an athlete playing basketball and coming from Bayfield, Co., an area not long-established as a rowing state, Loveday didn’t know what the tryout process would entail.
“It was definitely a little overwhelming,” Loveday told The Daily. “I wasn’t expecting it to be such a rigorous tryout process, but I did end up having a lot of fun.”
Overwhelming is understandable, but to emerge from tryouts learning the new mechanics included with rowing while still having fun, is enthusing.
After joining the team, the early mornings were difficult to get used to, yet being on a team that had an organized schedule helped her structure her daily life and ease into the new role of being a student-athlete more gently.
“Hanging out in the teamroom before practices, especially hard practices, everybody is trying to figure out their goal split,” Loveday said. “We’re all chatting together and taking a difficult thing and making it our own.”
Loveday, with the help of her other teammates, quickly acclimated into her new environment, understanding that everyone else is competing and wanting to perform at their best — just as much as she was.
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Inspired by gymnastics teammate and former Michigan rower Anna Muench, Megan Higley was riveted by rowing. Higley followed in Muench’s footsteps and reached out to Michigan directly for recruitment. After signing her letter of intent in November 2023, Higley was soon ready for her first day of practice.
Higley’s first day of practice was tryouts, as all the new recruits are required to go through the process of learning what rowing really is. It also gives the new athletes a chance to see if they like it.
“The hardest part was transitioning to an aerobic endurance sport,” Higley told The Daily. “Going from a 90 second floor routine to 20 minutes of being on the rowing machine was a big transition.”
Gymnastics is strictly an anaerobic sport based on strength, which demands high intensity and short bursts of power while jumping, twisting in the air and sticking the landing. Rowing on the other hand is repetitive and rhythmic, but the two share something major: technique.
In her first year, Higley applied her technique from airborne flips to mastering her stroke. That same year, she won a gold medal helping the team win the Big Ten Championship in May 2024, going on to make the varsity squad in 2025 for her sophomore year.
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A rowing stroke consists of four phases, including catch, drive, finish and recovery. The catch is the start of the stroke, where the oar is placed in the water and is followed by a power phase, or drive, that sets the oars in the water and the boat moves forward sequencing the rowers legs, body and arms. Then, the end of the drive is finished and the oars are removed from the water. For recovery, it’s when the rower applies the sequence of arms, body and legs to prepare for the next stroke.
Redefining their bodies to adjust to a different physical demand, each new athlete was tasked with mastering skills they’d not yet heard. Beyond that they must comprehend unfamiliar terminology, and learn how to rig, carry and launch the most important part of the sport: the boat. It takes technique and camaraderie to glide through a repetitive race.
These athletes soon learned that they don’t just play with a team, they move as one.
“Going into my senior year, I am excited to challenge ourselves to place better than we did last year at Big Tens and NCAAs,” Hammis said. “I’m really focused on growing and developing as an athlete, and looking back to see how far I’ve come.”
Despite being completely foreign to the sport of rowing, these three athletes all have a clear championship mentality. Each took only one year to become a varsity athlete on a competitive varsity program. The entire process is a challenge, but with the prior attributes of a strong work ethic, discipline and resilience, the women know how to keep themselves buoyant.
The Michigan rowing team possesses nine Big Ten Conference Championships, where it has secured top-three finishes for the past 20 years. It has strived to produce 11 top-five NCAA finishes, with two individual boat titles in 2001 and 2012.
Success comes with growth, and whether or not athletes want to contribute to the success in their life, the possibility is always there. Hammis, Loveday and Higley have all pitched in to their own growth with early mornings and weeks packed with training, to prove that even with no prior knowledge, victories are in closer reach than they thought.
“Last year at the Big Ten/ACC Challenger Dual our group did really well,” Higley said. “It was really fun and I feel like that was the first race I was able to come out of my shell and feel comfortable with the team.”
These three athletes all embraced the dedication towards an unfamiliar sport and still found the same pump of adrenaline as they finished each race. It didn’t take years for these athletes to find success. Instead all they needed was a little drive and some belief in themselves to become champions.
The post For Michigan rowing, it doesn’t take experience to become a champion, it’s about embracing the transition appeared first on The Michigan Daily.
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