Here’s how rowing took a St. Joe’s grad from Hawk Hill to the world championships in Bulgaria

Aislinn O’Brien graduated from St. Joseph’s University this past May, but crossing the stage didn’t mean the end of her rowing career — in fact, it was a new beginning.

Fast forward to July, and O’Brien, a Phoenixville native who rowed three years for the Hawks, found herself in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, representing the United States at the World Rowing Under-23 Championships.

“The farthest I’ve ever traveled for rowing was Canada or Florida,” O’Brien said. “So Bulgaria was definitely a crazy experience, but it was super fun.”

In Bulgaria, O’Brien competed in the women’s lightweight double sculls, finishing 12th overall. O’Brien and her partner, Katrina Miehlbradt, began training together over the summer at the Conshohocken Rowing Center as part of its U-23 summer sculling program. More than 100 athletes applied to the CRC program, and approximately 20 were selected.

Sculling is different from “sweep rowing,” in which O’Brien competed on St. Joe’s crew. While scullers have two oars, sweep rowers have just one. Scullers also lack a coxswain, the member of the rowing team who steers and coaches the rowers on the water. Instead, steering duty falls to the scullers, on top of actually rowing the boat.

While O’Brien did have some sculling experience from previous summers, that was nothing compared to what she experienced at CRC.

“I didn’t think I had any chance of making it to their trials boat,” O’Brien said. “I was just going to do it for fun. And then they said, ‘Come on down and jump in the boat’, and then we kind of went right to work ... I thought they were going to kick me out eventually. I was never taught actual proper technique until this year. And they really worked miracles.”

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O’Brien and the other members of the U-23 program train at a 15,000-square-foot facility on the banks of the Schuylkill. They are overseen by Craig Hoffman, head coach of the program, and the rest of the staff, including Lyons Bradley, Aaron Preetam, James Konopka, Fergal Barry, and Christie Castorino. The program is free for the selected athletes.

“I felt there was a real need to help high-performing athletes be able to grow over the summer,” Hoffman said. “Kids go to college, and their parents are very supportive of tuition fees. And for a high-performing athlete to go back to the parents, to ask for five or $10,000 so that they can row over the summer, it’s just challenging. I wanted to provide this opportunity, myself and other stakeholders, to provide these boys and girls that are in their college years this opportunity to row at the highest level and achieve their dreams.”

O’Brien was one of 11 rowers from the CRC to row at U-23 Worlds this year. O’Brien and Miehlbradt qualified following time trials in Florida in June, winning the double sculls event by more than 40 seconds to meet the qualifying standard for Bulgaria.

The national team had long been a dream for O’Brien, who comes from an impressive rowing pedigree. Both her parents were college rowers: her mother, Kate, at the University of Scranton, and her father, Chris, at St. Joe’s as well as the national team. Aislinn followed Chris to Hawk Hill, where he’s been enshrined in the St. Joseph’s Athletics Hall of Fame.

“I’ve always just heard a lot of stories about how cool it was, like their travel opportunities — he got to go to all these cool countries,” O’Brien said. “It’s just been that dream that I’ve been chasing this whole time.”

Eight years after being “pretty much forced” — as O’Brien puts it — to try out rowing for the first time in ninth grade at Archbishop Carroll High, that dream finally became a reality.

“My parents have usually believed in me and pushed me more than I believed in myself,” O’Brien said. “So they’ve kind of known that this was a possibility. But for me, it kind of has just felt like a fever dream.”

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Last week, O’Brien parlayed her success at the U-23 level to compete at the senior national team trials in the lightweight quadruple sculls. While her boat missed the time cutoff to qualify for senior world championships, it served as another valuable experience for a rowing career she hopes to continue. And once her days on the water end, O’Brien plans to stay involved in the sport through coaching.

“U-23s, and just worlds in general, was a huge learning experience for me. ... I got to see, for the first time, that level of racing,” O’Brien said. “It was cool to see some of the fastest girls in the world right next to me and watching them race in the races before and after me.”

Three of the 11 national team members who represented the CRC in Bulgaria alongside O’Brien — Matthew Davis, Jason Kennedy, and Quinn Hall — attended Malvern Prep. The connection between the CRC and Malvern Prep runs deep, as Hoffman was the rowing coach at Malvern for 22 years.

Davis and Kennedy were selected to row the men’s quadruple sculls, while Hall was named an alternate. Their boat had an 11th-overall finish at Worlds.

“Our aspirations are to win medals at the world level,” Hoffman said. “And we’re just, as they say, we’re keeping our head down, working hard, and hopefully our athletes aspire for the same goals. And hopefully, we’ll get there.”

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The waves the CRC is continuing to make on the international stage is representative of the growth of the sport in the region, Hoffman said.

“It’s been an explosion,” Hoffman said. “So many great kids are developing into such great athletes in the sport of rowing. Some of it’s college-driven. There’s a lot of universities and colleges that are recruiting kids from junior rowing. ... I would say that it’s a result of so much outreach that the sport has grown.”

O’Brien, herself a personification of the Philadelphia-area rowing boom, credits the historic Boathouse Row with the local development of the sport.

“I think having Boathouse Row right there really helps to draw on people because there’s a lot of summer camps that pull in rowers from all over the country and from high school age to college age,” she said. “And that kind of feeds into the national team. So I feel like it is just a huge hotbed for all levels and all ages, which is awesome.”