Seattle’s most successful sports franchise is not the Seahawks, the Sounders, the Storm, the Mariners, the long-gone Supersonics or the Husky footballers, it is the University of Washington men’s varsity rowing team.
For more than a century, UW crews have been major contenders in collegiate rowing, capturing 21 national championships. The most recent of those victories came last Sunday when the UW boat bested Harvard on the Cooper River in New Jersey.
As Daniel James Brown told us in “The Boys In the Boat,” his exceptional book about the UW crew that won gold in the 1936 Olympics, crew races were the city’s premier sporting events back in the 1920s and ’30s. Thousands of Seattleites would line the shore of Lake Washington to watch UW rowers take on the top teams from California and the Ivy League.
Between 1923 and 1950, the UW crew won nine national titles. In the subsequent 50-plus years, the program remained strong, but the Huskies were able to bring home just two more national first-place trophies. In the 21st century, however, the Huskies have achieved success that now has exceeded the record of those early decades. Between 2007 and 2025, the UW rowers have stroked their way to 10 national championships.
Rowing is not a sport that turns athletes into millionaires. It is no longer an entertainment that attracts a legion of fans. But it may be the ultimate team sport. There is no quarterback or pitcher or other position player who stands out from all the rest, there are just nine young athletes working in perfect unison with grueling effort to achieve victory.
Seattle should be proud to still have our boys in the boat cutting a path to glory through the Montlake Cut and on waters beyond.
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