A Celebration Of Princeton Rowing
March 31, 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. This month's features are on Al Piranian '69, a lightweight rower and then the first coach of the women's team, and three Princeton women who won Olympic silver.
MARCH FEATURES
SILVER OARS
It is March of 2021. Lauren Wilkinson has had a busy week with the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority, as a lead in the Covid-19 Response Team for one of the largest health authorities in British Columbia. A microbiologist and educator, she often rows before work. Now, on a Zoom call, she is holding her finger up to the camera, revealing a blood blister, a nasty one at that. It looks painful. To her, and to those who have done what she has done, the blood blister is a badge of honor.
Meanwhile, nine time zones to the east, Andréanne Morin is impressed, and probably a bit envious. Morin is in Paris, where she is a lawyer, wife, and mother of two. A French-Canadian by birth, she fits in nicely there.
At the same time, Gevvie Stone is in a third different time zone. She's in a car driving north out of Florida, heading back to her home in Boston. Blood blisters are hardly going to freak her out. She's Dr. Gevvie Stone, an emergency medicine doctor, one who spends a great deal of time in the ER.
For the three of them, though, there will always be something about a boat on a river that will make them feel right at home, whichever time zone they're in. And blood blisters on their fingers? That will take them back to the hours and hours they spent with oars in their hands, in their home-away-from-home boats, trying to move them faster and faster down the river.
For the complete feature, click HERE.
Al PIRANIAN '69
Their voices, despite the loving words they say, share a common theme, and that is sadness. It's there with each positive thought. It's there every time a chuckle has to be replaced with a tear. It's there with each pause that breaks up their otherwise happy memories.
Sadness. Unmistakable sadness. It's impossible to miss. It's not just any sadness either. It's a sadness that comes with tragedy, a sadness that grows each moment with the realization that there is nothing that can be done to change what happened.
Al Piranian, a man about whom nobody can find the slightest hint of a bad word to say, is gone. And so all of the happiness he inspired, all of the beauty he brought to the world, all of the times that he reminded those around him what it was they loved about him – all of those things have to take a back seat to the sadness, for now at least.
For the complete feature, click HERE.
PREVIOUS FEATURES
FEBRUARY FEATURES
2021 Women's Lightweight Rowing National Championship
Charles Cobbs '85
JANUARY FEATURES
Amy Richlin '73
Gordon Sikes 1916