When it comes to picking a college during a recruit's final year of school, one can safely assume that they have chosen based on the degree they will get, the atmosphere on campus, the coaching staff, and very likely a vision of what winning a championship in that school’s colors might look like.

For Daisy Mazzio-Manson, that last bit of visualization involved an NCAA title in dark blue when she joined Yale Women’s Crew in the Class of 2020. Yet, when she finally did cross the line to help a team win NCAAs, it was 2021 and she was wearing the burnt orange of Texas—her victory coming in a 5th year of college she had never planned on, at a place she would not have found herself without the global pandemic.

COVID-19 and the “blip” it imposed on undergraduate athletes—who have a limited window of eligibility in the U.S. to compete for their schools—led to more than a few athletes taking less conventional and hardly expected paths through what is typically a staid, and limited four-year career at a single school.

Now that US colleges are back to racing a far more normal season, row2k caught up with three collegiate athletes who put the past two years of this "Blip" to use for themselves with remarkable results: Mazzio-Manson, who won that NCAA title with Texas; Brown’s Will Legenzowski, who raced both US Olympic trials and U23 Worlds in the single with his interim time; and Yale’s Dan Williamson, who earned a seat and a Olympic Gold Medal in the New Zealand Men’s Eight, all "thanks" to COVID.

These three are among the many current and recently-graduated college athletes who have rowed and coxed beyond their initial four year plan due to the hard stop imposed on spring sports in March of 2020. In fact, NCAA rule changes, leaves-of-absence, and COVID-19 exemptions have led to many rosters in collegiate rowing this spring featuring student-athletes five and six years removed from high school, racing this year with their remaining eligibility and reclaiming, in some part, the season(s) lost to COVID.

While these three athletes are not alone, the things Mazzio-Manson, Legenzowski, and Williamson accomplished in the “meantime” of that unprecedented shut-down were rather unique, and a bit unprecedented themselves.

Mazzio-Manson at 4, celebrating with her Texas crew in the post-race rain shower

From Yale Blue to Burnt Orange

Before March of 2020—when Mazzio-Manson did a spring preview article with row2k for a season that never happened (and, yes, she is that Daisy, as she discusses therein)—she was focused on a final campaign towards the NCAAs with her Yale teammates, then earning a chance to return to a 2020 U23 Worlds to improve on her 2019 bronze in the W8+, and was not all that sure, four months out from graduation, what she planned to do with her Global Affairs major.

COVID, transferring to a new school, and a graduate degree did not come up in that interview--one of our last before the pandemic upended that season--though Mazzio-Manson did tell us she was “sure that I will want to row for as long as I can.”

After the season was cancelled, and then the 2020 U23 camps and Championships, Mazzio-Manson's plans to keep rowing took her in an unexpected direction: to Texas and a program that was—as we now know—on the cusp of its first NCAA title.

At the line for the 2021 NCAA D1 Heats

“I was very lucky to have the opportunity to talk with many extraordinary coaches at different collegiate programs,” she remembers, “but I was drawn to Texas for a few different reasons. Firstly, there was an undeniable energy on the Texas rowing team. Up to that point, they had been climbing through the ranks in the NCAA, and in the previous season were inches short of a national championship. Along with that, academically, the McCombs Business School offered a marketing program that was exactly what I was looking for, to lead to a career in business. Along with that, I knew that I could not pass up on the opportunity to row for Dave O’Neill and learn from one of the best coaches in the league.” 

The cancellation of the 2020 season meant that Mazzio-Manson would have another year of eligibility, but in the first semester of COVID, it was not yet clear how that could work for her at Yale, as she was about to finish her degree and the Ivy League at the time did not permit “5th year” students to race nor could athletes with remaining eligibility stay on to compete while doing post-graduate work—both of which are common in other conferences, like Texas’ Big 12.

Stroking Yale at the 2018 Henley Royal Regatta

“I had thought about going to grad school but never expected to do so right after graduating from Yale. Even right when the 2020 season was canceled, I knew I wanted to keep rowing, but I was unsure if I was going to use my last year of NCAA eligibility. After having my senior season ended so abruptly, I couldn’t imagine racing with anyone other than my Yale teammates or rowing for anyone other than Will Porter. However, once I started to put some thought into it, I realized that I had an opportunity to row on another great college team and earn a graduate degree in the process.”

“Looking back, it is stunning that COVID, which completely upended my senior racing season at Yale, gave me the opportunity to race with the amazing women at the University of Texas, and win a National Championship.”

In an additional bit of symmetry, some two years-delayed, Mazzio-Manson and her new Longhorn teammates won the NCAA title on the same stretch of water in Sarasota where she had raced her last A-Final 2k, at the 2019 U23 Worlds.

Looking back now, Mazzio-Manson says she was lucky in how these COVID-turned events played out: “Across both programs, I have so many people who took chances on me and so much to be thankful for. I will forever cherish crossing the Henley finish line with a Y on my back, just as I will never forget crossing the finish line at the 2021 National Championship wearing burnt orange.”

Legenzowski racing for the USA in Racice, 2021 U23 Worlds

From Sweeping in 2 Seat to Sculling the 1x

In March 2020, Will Legenzowski had his second spring season at Brown all lined up, having already made the Varsity Eight as a freshman in the Class of 2022 the year before. After COVID closed campus, he found himself at home, taking classes virtually, and—like so many folks—took to training on his own and rowing the most socially-distanced boat of them all: the single.

Having rowed throughout high school with the sculling-focused program at Maritime Rowing Club in Connecticut, the single was nothing new for Legenzowski. In fact, before switching to college sweep rowing at Brown, he had won the U19 single at Canadian Henley—and being a sculler again gave him the idea to focus on the single until school-life at Brown returned to normal.

“I knew that because of the remote nature of school, I would be training on my own in the single,” he remembers, “and that led me to joining the sculling group in Craftsbury.”

“I immediately had a great connection with head coach Steve Whelpley, and the idea of having a dedicated and serious training group and environment around sculling appealed to me since I hadn't done any sculling above the high school level before.”

With the Craftsbury’ Green Racing Project group, Legenzowski would was able to the fall of his junior year remotely, before taking a leave of absence in the spring of 2021 to focus completely on his training in the run-up to National Team Trials.

Lining up at U23 Trials

That is how Legenzowski found himself lining up in February of 2021 for the 202one Olympic Trials, instead of getting ready for the abbreviated season his Brown teammates would race that spring. Though still an undergrad, he just missed making the Trials final--behind GRP teammates John Graves and Lucas Bellows--and went on to win the B Final handily. That set him up to return to Sarasota in June, where he locked up the M1x berth on his first U23 team, eventually taking 8th at the 2021 U23 Worlds.

“The year off was absolutely instrumental in winning U23 trials,” Legenzowski believes. In addition, that Trials win came in a boat class he would not have predicted pre-pandemic: “If COVID hadn't happened, I would've tried to make the U23 squad in a sweep boat instead of a sculling boat.

“Racing at Olympic and U23 trials in the single was really fun and super intense,” he admits. “I hadn't raced since November 2019 prior to Olympic trials, so I felt like I had a ton of pent up competitive energy that needed to be released. [Then] racing in the single at U23 Worlds felt like the final chapter in a really bad and stressful book, since I started rowing the single again in March when we were sent into lockdown. It was a poetic ending and I look back on it fondly, but I'm really grateful to be back on track with my collegiate career.”

Between training with Olympic hopefuls and then racing the single internationally, Legenzowski took a great deal away from his unexpected opportunity:

Back to business with Bruno in 2022, vs BU & Navy

“I think I really matured as an athlete and person and learned that you just have to do the work in order to achieve the things you're striving for. This applies to life in general, but particularly rowing and entering into that upper echelon and going from a good collegiate athlete to a great collegiate athlete. It also made me realize I need to do more fun, random, or unusual things when the opportunity presents itself, and I've done so frequently since I've been back at school.”

“Having this experience made me realize that my time to be a collegiate rower is very finite, and that I needed to make the most of it so I don't have regrets when I graduate. It also gave me an opportunity to grow and mature in a way separately from the team at Brown, and then I now get to take those lessons with me back to the team here at school.”

Legenzowski, thanks to his one semester of leave, will now get two spring seasons back at Brown, graduating at the end of his ninth semester with the Class of 2023.

Williamson, lining up for the M8 Heat in Tokyo

From 2024 Goals to 202one Gold

Like Legenzowski, Yale’s Dan Williamson also found himself considering a leave of absence so he could preserve his remaining years of eligibility after COVID sent him home—and home, for Williamson, meant getting stuck in a a New Zealand that largely sealed itself off from the rest of the world during 2020.

“Once it became clear that this pandemic would be around for some time,” he recalls, “my entire class at Yale decided together that we were going to take the next academic year off. Firstly so that we could enjoy the rest of our time there in person, not over zoom, and secondly, so that we could all graduate together since we are an incredibly tight group of friends.”

These leaves-of-absence wound up being a popular option for many Ivy league rowers, especially at the outset of the Pandemic when it was far from clear how best to reconcile league rules on eligibility for student-athletes who might complete a fair portion of their degrees before in-person competition could resume.

For Williamson, who had done well in the NZ junior team system and then stroked Yale to the 2019 IRA Championship in his first year, the Olympics where always an ambition, but he had specifically rejected going for the Tokyo Games during his undergraduate days.

Stroking Yale's 1V at the 2019 IRA

“Set to graduate in 2022, I had no intention of taking any time off to pursue an Olympic campaign when I started Yale,” he says. “My thinking was that after graduation I would return to NZ and fight my way back onto the team and if all went well then I would have enough time to put myself in a position to earn a seat in a boat heading to Paris 2024. Towards the end of 2019, I had some informal communication with people at Rowing NZ, who were floating the idea of me taking a year off and seeing what I could add to the squad that would eventually compete in 2020. After some back and forth, I decided that I was deeply enjoying what I was doing at Yale and was committed to seeing my four years there through consecutively.”

COVID, and Williamson’s return to New Zealand changed that thinking, setting him on an accelerated path to his Olympic debut, particularly once he determined that he would be staying on for that full year away from Yale. That decision just happened to coincide with the IOC’s announcement that the Tokyo Games would be pushed to 2021.

At that moment, Williams remembers, “I immediately began discussions with Rowing NZ about re-joining the squad down at Karapiro with the intention of working my way into the Olympic team now that I knew I would be available.”

"In July, as soon as the lockdown lifted enough for on water training to resume, I packed up my things and headed down to the training centre at Lake Karapiro. As my body adjusted to the intensity and volume of elite training, I transitioned to from the ‘Elite Development Squad’ to working with the senior national team guys day in-day out. After the trial in March, I was selected into the NZ men’s eight that would go on to race at the FOQR in Switzerland. Because we qualified through the last chance regatta, the crew could not be changed between then and the Games, solidifying my seat in the eight that would go on to race at the Olympics.”

That New Zealand eight, of course, would go on to win the final in Tokyo, sending Williamson back to New Haven with an Olympic gold medal.

In the 5 Seat of the Kiwi Eight

“I gave an interview in which I said something along the lines of, ‘18months ago the Olympics were not even on my mind . . .’ This was true in the sense that I was happy doing what I was doing at Yale and planned to stay there. It was only because of COVID that I was able to return home, take the year off, and earn a place in the eight. I had always dreamed of racing at the Olympics someday. I just didn’t think that would be happening for many for years to come.”

Looking back, Williamson admits the whole experience was surreal:

“The process of breaking down and then rebuilding the eight into an internationally competitive boat was an incredibly rewarding one, and it was a true testament to the character of the guys we had in the squad and the support of the people around us. It couldn’t have been any more of a team effort and that is what made it so rewarding.”   “Over the year I learnt a lot about myself and what I was capable of physically and mentally but the biggest learning wasn’t necessarily a new one, rather the reinforcement of an existing idea/philosophy that I had learned at Yale: that you have to always enjoy what you are doing and none of the process has to be as complicated or serious as you think it should. Of course there has to be some thoroughness and seriousness to what you are doing but that doesn’t mean you can’t keep it light and have fun while doing it. It is really easy to get bogged down in the technicalities of high performance rowing; or when you are exhausted half way through a week or completely empty only half way through a 30km row, it is easy to drop your chin and question what you are doing, but if you can at least crack a smile or make a joke with the guys around you in those moments, it becomes enjoyable – as it should be. This culture breeds speed.”

Williamson, back at Yale as a junior now, opened his season against Legenzowski and Brown on April 2nd--with a win--and will now get two more chances at capturing another IRA title with the Bulldogs before he graduates in 2023—just in time to get back home for a Paris 2024 campaign.

Atop the Tokyo podium with Hamish Bond? NBD...