A rower during all four years of her Dartmouth career, Kate Davison '07 returned to Hanover as the second assistant coach of the women's crew team. Davison, who was hired in December, will assist with recruiting and play a part in coaching both the varsity and novice crews.
"It's really cool to be able to come back to Dartmouth," she said, "I love it."
Head crew coach Wendy Levash was enthusiastic about the addition of Davison to the coaching staff, pointing to Davison's perspective as a recent graduate as a particular asset.
"She's an alum and was an incredible athlete in her years as a student-athlete here," Levash said. "I think having someone come from within the team, instead of from an outside institution, is just a bit easier for the girls to connect to. She was here, she was a Dartmouth student. She took the classes and she excelled at the boathouse. She's a lot closer to their reality than someone coming from the outside might be."
The women's crew team improved greatly during Davison's career. The team was unranked her freshman year and finished No. 8 in the country her senior year. She described this as one of the best parts of her rowing career.
"The whole NCAA experience was amazing," she said. "It was really a highlight of my rowing career."
As a Dartmouth student, despite her focus on crew, Davison found time for other activities, including traveling on the Italian LSA, serving as an Italian drill instructor and participating in Outdoor Leadership Experience.
"I got to do [OLE] a few terms, which was the one benefit of having morning practice," Davison said.
Looking to the future, Davison said she hopes to stay at Dartmouth for the time being, although she also mentioned an interest in teaching elementary school.
"For the moment, I'm really enjoying coaching," she said. "Looking forward from here, that's something that I'd really like to continue with. Wendy and Rick, the current varsity coaches, are people that I really look up to. They started out as assistant coaches and now are really successful coaching at Dartmouth. So if my career turns out to be anything like theirs, that would be wonderful."
As for the crew's outlook for the season, both Levash and Davison suggest that the winter training will play a big role in the team's potential for the spring.
"Honestly, it's a big question mark right now," Levash said. "We've got some fairly talented individuals, and we've got a pretty motivated group in general. We've also got some serious weaknesses we need to attack."
Davison echoed many of Levash's sentiments, focusing both on the team's strength as well as their need to train hard this winter in order to be able to compete with the strong teams.
"It's anybody's game right now. There are some really fast crews out there," she said. "We're really going to have to watch out for them, but I think that we have a lot of depth on our team, so I think that across the board we're going to be pretty fast. What we do this winter will help us gain speed in the spring. I don't know what's going to happen, but I know that everyone is excited and determined and ready to put in the hard work for this winter to go fast in the spring."
