row2k Features
Interview
Stanford Lightweight Elle Rosenfeld
January 22, 2025
Erik Dresser, row2k.com

Stanford sophomore Elle Rosenfeld

Next up in our preview of the 2025 spring collegiate season is an interview with Stanford Lightweight, sophomore Elle Rosenfeld. We chat with Rosenfeld on learning the sport in Arizona, comparisons to synchronized swimming, and more.

row2k - How did you get your start in rowing?

Elle Rosenfeld - I began rowing during the summer after my freshman year of high school in June of 2020. To give some background, I was a competitive synchronized swimmer for 5 years. 18 hours of practice a week, missing school and family vacations, and traveling to national competitions—synchro was a huge part of my life. I told myself that moving into high school, I needed a sport with less time commitment, so I closed the synchro chapter and joined my school’s swim team and club swim. I struggled with the cold mornings and monotonous lap swim. Then in mid-March of 2020, like most, we were sent home from school due to the COVID pandemic. Swim practice was canceled indefinitely.

It was an extremely hard period for a multitude of reasons mentally and I was lacking an athletic outlet. As I finished my biology class on Zoom, feeling pretty hopeless about the summer ahead of me, my mom came to my brother and I with a proposal: do you want to try rowing? Rowing?, I thought, that’s odd. You see, I'm from in Arizona, which lives up to its water-less reputation. I had read Boys in the Boat for school and seen The Social Network, but I didn’t know the sport had any place here in the desert. Extremely bored and intrigued, we said yes. A few days later, my dad, brother, and I pulled into the “boathouse” parking lot for our learn-to-row with the head coach of Tempe Junior Crew, Peter Figgins.

We went out in singles the first day and a double with my brother the second, as Coach Peter taught us the fundamentals of the stroke. I was hooked, and felt in control and at peace on the water. When my mom asked me if I wanted to sign up for summer rowing, I immediately said yes. Every morning at 6:30, a small group of kids and I would show up and row a fleet of singles for an hour or so to beat the heat. Only singles were allowed because of COVID. I fell in love with that boat class. I relished feeling the immediate responsiveness of the hull with every small handle adjustment, the balance between rate and pressure in the legs, the quiet glide of the shell in the water when I slowed the recovery to the speed of the boat—all the while steering and trying not to flip. I rowed the single all summer and signed up for the fall season going into my sophomore year. Battling it out side-by-side on a Saturday morning and seeing improvement from week-to-week, I finally felt a sense of purpose and excitement in my life again.

The team was around 5-10 kids, and we rowed exclusively singles for most of my sophomore year until doubles were approved near the end of the season. I spent that whole year chasing down the older and more experienced rowers, namely two amazing seniors, Campbell and Tanner. They befriended me, and without their support, advice, and friendship, I don’t know if I would be rowing today. Campbell specifically took me under her wing and included me in her winter erging (we call it Campbell’s Boot Camp) and was so patient with me while I figured out the double. Without her, I am 100% certain I would not be where I am now.

After coming to Stanford, I’ve found it so interesting thinking back on my beginnings in the sport. No one knows what rowing is in Arizona, so it’s been pretty mind-blowing to hear from all my teammates, who row at clubs like Greenwich, Marin, Y-Quads, and for their prep schools, what rowing felt like to them in high school: a tight-knit community, highly-structured, intense, collaborative, and competitive. My experience could not have been more different.

I started rowing and stuck with it because I had nothing else to do. Until May of 2021 at my first regatta, Central Regionals, I had no idea what competitive rowing/the larger rowing world looked like. I rowed because I loved the sport and because it saved me during a really challenging time, not for any external reason or pressure. In Arizona, to go far, you have to love the sport completely because if you don’t push yourself, no one else will. The single held me accountable. It allowed me to see my time and effort spent on the erg, in the weight room, and on the water correlate directly to my performance. But it also felt like a lot of responsibility as I got older and more serious about college.

I’m so grateful that I started my journey rowing in the desert, not only because I think it made me more resilient, but also because I am exponentially more grateful for my team here at Stanford. Although sometimes I do miss the control and finesse required for the single, I wouldn’t go back to it for the world. I finally have a reason to show up and work hard for something outside of myself. It’s the most gratifying experience I’ve ever had. It is so much more fun to do difficult things with the people you love all around you, pushing you to be the best. Not alone but as a unit.

row2k - How did you decide to attend Stanford?

Elle Rosenfeld - When my other coach Lesleh Wright put it on my radar that rowing lightweight in college could be an option for me, I was ecstatic. A big team, doing the sport I loved, attending an amazing school—sign me up! I remember after I won the single competition at ODP (the Olympic Development Program) during the summer after my sophomore year, Lesleh posted a picture on her instagram of me with my boat and tagged the Stanford Lights account. Although looking back, that was a bold move for a random high schooler, I do think my ending up here feels a bit like fate. I always thought I would end up on the east coast because rowing is so popular, but Stanford was the first school I ever talked to or visited as a recruit.

Racing at HOCR in 2024
Racing at HOCR in 2024

My older brother Ethan actually attends Stanford, too. He earned his bachelor's degree last year and is now pursuing a PhD in applied physics. Stanford always felt like his place, and I initially took it off my radar when I started looking in spring of my junior year, and the moment I stepped foot in Main Quad, I was just amazed by the grandeur and natural beauty of the campus. Walking around now to get to class, I can still say that the feeling of awe never quite goes away. The thing that was most prominent to me from the moment I met the team was just how happy everyone was. I don’t know how else to say it other than the energy during practice was electric and infectious.

I wanted to hop on the erg and join in the steady state so badly, but that definitely would have broken some recruitment rules. It seemed to me that all of the girls were more than teammates, they were a family. The commitment they had to the sport was due to the devotion and responsibility they felt toward one another as people. They were having fun...and winning national championships, of course. The best duo in my opinion. Coming from a background where I oftentimes felt alone in my training, my successes, and my failures, the unity and camaraderie was what set Stanford apart.

Another thing that I appreciated was how balanced the team was. Yes, they were rowing at the highest level, but they were also so individually driven in school and such interesting people. The academic side was a huge priority for me, and I truly believe that Stanford is the place to be as a student-athlete. I don't think I realized it then as much as I do now how dominant Stanford is in collegiate athletics. I mean, the 36 varsity sports—20 of which are women’s sports—speaks for itself. However, it goes far beyond the athletic facilities and resources. The athlete-specific academic advisors and study spaces, nutritional and psychological support, accommodations during season, and more—it all makes it so much more attainable to find equal success in sports, the classroom, and generally in life as a young adult facing new challenges. I chose Stanford because I knew it would be the place that would foster my growth as an athlete and a student, all the while having the best time along the way. Everyone here calls it Camp Stanford, and that couldn’t be more true.

row2k - You were a synchronized swimmer prior to rowing, what are some of that sport’s similarities and differences compared to rowing?

Elle Rosenfeld - Synchronized swimming taught me what it means to train hard, push beyond mental barriers, and be a part of a team. I don’t think I would have been able to jump off the deep end in the way I did with rowing if not for my background in synchro. They are both endurance-based sports that require athletes to ride the red line several times a week in practice in order to improve. In rowing we do a mix of basic conditioning (SS), threshold, and max effort pieces. We train harder during practice and drill parts of a 2k or 5k in order to rehearse certain moves and make racing feel easier the day of a competition.

Similarly in Synchro you condition by swimming easy to difficult lap sets, practicing holding positions for long periods of time with a metronome, and running routines over and over again. This kind of training in both sports allows athletes to have such a strong foundation of fitness so that they are able to implement and maintain technical changes, even while at their physical limits during competition.

Synchro and rowing are also both highly technical. Synchro is like a dance, not only because of the music and artistic movements but also because of all of the planning and repetition that happens behind the scenes (how far apart the athletes are spaced, how fast they travel around the pool during the routine, certain facial expressions), which makes the synchronicity seem effortless to an audience. Especially in big boats, I also think of rowing in this way. To a spectator, it might just look like eight bodies in unison, but any rower knows that this level of flow takes practice. You can put the eight fastest ergs in a boat, and it very possibly could sink.

The dance of rowing is about finding the right rhythm with the women in front of and behind you, without being able to fully see the moment they extend their arms, the exact angle of their upper-body pivot, and the peak force of their power curve. Rowing is about meeting in the middle and making it feel as easy as it looks. To reach that point of complete synchronicity, I think both of these sports are reliant on trust in one’s teammates. In synchro, there is a move called a lift where several of the girls hoist one or two other girls into the air to perform an acrobatic trick.

This means that everyone has to coordinate underwater with no goggles, without touching the floor, and at a certain time with the music. Oftentimes one girl will bang a fist against her palm or blow bubbles to count in order to make sure everyone is on the same page for when to push those being lifted out of the water. I think it represents just how much these athletes have to rely on one another, even mid-routine when they are getting tired. Every single person is critical to make the lift successful.

This reminds me a lot of the sprint of a race where every person in the boat has to decide whether or not to make a move. We all know the feeling when you’re in the last 750, beyond exhausted and blurry-eyed, and it seems so easy to fall apart technically and stop applying pressure. But it’s up to the coxswain, much like the aforementioned bubble/palm-fist-counter, to say the right thing to get every rower on the same page. It is up to every rower to find it within them to push harder for their teammates. Without that trust and accountability, the race is already lost.

LW4+ IRA Champs
LW4+ IRA Champs

My teammates have asked me whether synchro or rowing is harder, and I think the jury is still out on that one. In synchro, a routine is only 3 minutes compared to the 6-8 minutes of a 2k. However, unlike rowing, synchronized swimming requires athletes to strike a delicate balance between executing precise choreography while also resisting the primal urge to breathe. Also, although synchro is based mostly on endurance, synchro also has a huge artistic element that rowing lacks. For example, you are judged on how well your facial expressions match and change with the music. I’m laughing just thinking about a world in which that was the case in rowing. It would be pretty funny. Honestly though, I think the two sports are far more similar than they are different.

row2k - What do you like most about the sport of rowing?

Elle Rosenfeld - My favorite thing about rowing is the fine balance between grit/strength/endurance and the technical nature of the sport. Being a smaller single sculler in high school, I knew that I would never be the strongest in any field, but I loved how technical proficiency could complement if not combat physical strength during a race. Anyone who knows me knows that I love doing video review, which might seem a bit odd. But I think the reason that I love it is because, for me, rowing is about improvement. I like to work on problems. I enjoy seeing if what I am trying to think about during a session is actually translating to what I am doing in the boat.

In college, we spend 1-2 hours every morning on the water doing the same motion over and over again. Unless we are being really intentional about the way we are moving our bodies, it can be really easy to fall into technical ruts and practice can become monotonous. I think being in control of my technical issues by being really intentional with each stroke makes it all so much more interesting. On paper, the rowing motion is so simple and I think that’s what makes it a particularly unique mind-body challenge.

I love the feeling of figuring out a problem that I’ve been making for weeks and finally making a boat go a tiny bit faster. My other favorite part of rowing is being on a team. I think part of being a good teammate is being coachable—malleable—and thinking about improving that one thing you know you do poorly every practice until it becomes a new habit.

row2k - What has been your most memorable race and why?

Elle Rosenfeld - My most memorable race was definitely my time trial in the single at 2022 Youth Nationals in Sarasota after my junior year of high school. I went into the race not knowing where I stood at that level. Before that, the biggest race I’d been to was Southwest regionals where I was 2nd by—I want to say—30 seconds. Maybe 40 honestly. I had pretty low expectations and was just happy to be there. I remember that I didn’t have a stroke coach or a particular race plan, but I felt like the race went well after I crossed the finish line. I arrived at the dock, and my coach Lesleh told me that I was in 3rd, and that is how the trial finished. I was in disbelief.

I’d always been an athlete, but before that moment, I never thought I could do well on a national level in a sport. I could have ended the competition there, as I felt like I already won. I ended up taking 4th in the finals, which was incredible. All the long and lonely days in the single and the 100+ degree Arizona practices were worth it. That race definitely opened a lot of doors for me, but more than that, for the first time, I understood why people like racing so much. I knew I loved training, but finally, rowing felt bigger than just something I did after school.

row2k - How has this season gone and what are your goals for the spring?

Elle Rosenfeld - The season has been great so far! We are looking forward to getting into Winter training and are excited to put out some fast boats to race in Spring.

row2k - What are you studying at Stanford and do you have any other plans for after graduation?

Elle Rosenfeld - I am studying Human Biology with an emphasis on health policy and human development on a pre-med track. I plan on attending medical school after graduation through a joint MD-MPH program. Although I don’t know what specialty I want to pursue yet, I hope to center my career on health equity, particularly for underserved women and children, by addressing disparities in access to healthcare and promoting preventive medicine by tailoring care to a diversity of needs and experiences.

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