Princeton University Athletics
A Celebration Of Princeton Rowing
January 25, 2022 | General
As part of the year-long celebration, goprincetontigers.com will be featuring monthly profiles on several of the men and women who have made Princeton Rowing the overwhelming successful program it has been. The first two features have now been released.
Amy Richlin '73 (excerpted from the book "I Can Do Anything")
The phone rings in California, and Amy Richlin '73, Distinguished Professor of Classics at UCLA, answers. If anyone would know about that supposed meeting between Mr. von Kienbusch and the first Princeton women's rowing captain, it would be Amy Richlin. She, after all, was the first women's rowing captain.
"I only remember having to talk one person into coming around on women athletes at Princeton," she laughs. "And it wasn't C. Otto von Kienbusch."
In fact, Amy Richlin was much more than the first women's rowing captain. She was the force that brought women to Lake Carnegie in the first place.
Women's rowing at Princeton has enjoyed incredible success through the decades. Princeton's open rowers are one of three programs to have qualified for every NCAA championship meet since the event began in 1997, and the Tigers have won two first varsity 8 NCAA titles. As a team, Princeton finished in the top eight twenty times in the first twenty-three years of NCAA championships and in the top five ten times.
Princeton won ten Eastern Sprints titles from 1972 through 2011, when that event was replaced by the Ivy League women's championship. From 2012 through 2019, Princeton won six Ivy titles.
The lightweight women won seven Eastern Sprints titles after that program debuted in 1998. Princeton also won six IRA national championships and added four more second-place finishes.
Beyond that, Princeton women's rowing made its Olympic debut in 1976, when Carol Brown '75 won a bronze medal in the women's 8 and Mimi Kellogg '76 led the women's 4 with coxswain to a sixth-place finish. Through the 2021 Games Princeton's women had made twenty-five Olympic appearances, winning a combined eight medals, including a pair of gold medals for Caroline Lind '06 in 2008 and 2012 and silvers for Ann Marden '81 in both 1984 and 1988. There were four Princeton women who rowed in the 2021 Olympic Games.
And that doesn't even take into account the number of times Princeton's coaches and staff worked at the Games. Today women's rowing at Princeton has nearly 100 athletes between the two programs, giving it by far the largest roster for any women's sport. This all started with Amy Richlin
For the complete feature on Amy Richlin '73, click HERE.Gordon Sikes '16
Linda Sikes is riding in the passenger seat of an old pickup truck on a January afternoon in western Maine. The temperature outside is around eight degrees; come nightfall it will drop well below zero. Her son, who is driving, works outdoors all winter.
Linda is 77 years old. The winter doesn't slow her down any more than it does her son. Toughness, it appears, is a Sikes trait, whether born or married into.
Her son is named Gordon. He's one of eight in the family who has been named "Gordon Sikes."
"If you say Gordon Sikes in western Maine, nobody knows me," he says. "If you say 'Tiger,' they all know me."
His nickname stems from what Linda said to him when he was two days old and she brought him home from the hospital.
"She picked me up and said 'okay Tiger, let's go face the world,'" he says. "It just sort of stuck from there."
It's easy to think that "Tiger" refers instead to the Princeton Tigers, given who one of the other seven Gordon Sikes was. This Gordon was Linda's father-in-law, Gordon Sikes, Princeton Class of 1916. If you've ever been to the Shea Rowing Center, the name might be familiar. There's a Gordon Sikes Room on the second floor.
It's named for one of the most foundational people who has ever been a part of Princeton rowing. The first lightweight rowing coach – unpaid at that – for the Tigers, he built a program that became a national and international power in the days before World War II. Of the first 20 races that he coached, Princeton lightweight men's rowing won 10 and finished second seven times.
His work as a rowing coach was secondary for him. In fact, he'd spend 45 years as a Princeton employee, mostly as the director of the Placement Bureau, which today is called Career Services. When he finally left Princeton, no other person had ever worked at the University longer, in any capacity.
For the complete feature on Gordon Sikes, click HERE.
