Blake's Sarah Roe rows right into D-1 Wisconsin

After battling injuries and being sidelined by ankle surgery, Blake senior Sarah Roe wasn't sure she had a future in hockey or soccer. When a friend urged her to try rowing, Roe reluctantly complied last year.

Just months after her introduction to the sport, she was rowing at the junior national camp.

"The first day I went to a practice I fell in love with it. It was a weird experience. It was kind of like I found what I had been looking for."

Roe competes with Twin Cities Youth Rowing, the largest youth club in the state of Minnesota. The sport has given Roe experiences outside of Blake, outside of Minnesota and now, a ticket to a Division I program. On Wednesday, Roe will sign a national letter of intent to row for the University of Wisconsin next year.

Q: What was it about that first practice that made you fall in love with rowing?

A: My coach had us do a 500-meter piece. I straight up thought I was going to die. It was one of the hardest things I have ever done. But after I got off the rowing machine, I felt so good because I knew I had worked as hard as I possibly could. I wanted to keep going back to practice so I could get faster. I loved the fact that how fast I was, and how successful I was, was really up to me and how hard I chose to work.

Q: So when is this rowing season?

Q: When did you first get onto the water? What was that like?

A: It was really weird. Being in a boat with eight other people with no other support, just trying to keep yourself from falling out, is a very weird experience. I was in a boat with a bunch of other people who had never [rowed] before, so we didn't really get very far. It was even weird to figure out how to hold the oar handle and which way I needed to turn the blade. But it was fun.

Q: What was it like to transition from playing your other sports?

A: It was interesting going from playing soccer and hockey to rowing because rowing is so small. So I was not expecting any looks from colleges.

Q: What made you want to continue rowing in college?

Q: Do you travel with your team?

A: We travel all over. My favorite trip is to Boston. We race at the Head of the Charles Regatta on the Charles River in Boston every year. It is the biggest, most prestigious fall regatta in the world, and there are about 90,000 rowers that go, at all ages. The first year I went, we got sixth place out of 86 teams and this year we were 16th.

Q: What was it like to be so involved with a sport outside of your school?

A: I have been going to the same school since kindergarten, so almost 13 full years. It was weird to go from knowing everyone on my team to really only knowing a few people on my team from school. But I liked it better because it gave me a chance to branch out of my small little world at Blake. I don't know if it was harder to motivate myself, but it definitely made myself motivate myself differently. Instead of doing it for my school, I was doing it for my new friends and teammates and for this club.