Watkins Glen native competes overseas

ENGLAND--Olivia Coffey, a Watkins Glen student through ninth grade, competed with the Cambridge University Women's Boat Club against Oxford University Saturday, March 24.
The Cambridge team won all four races this year for the first time since 1997. The Cancer Research UK Boat Race, otherwise known as The Boat Race, draws crowds in the hundreds of thousands, with millions of viewers tuning in on television. The 2015 event drew 4.8 million viewers worldwide.
29-year-old Coffey finds herself rowing with the Cambridge team while pursuing a master of business degree. A world-class rower, she was on the gold-winning United States team at the 2015 World Rowing Championships in France and the 2013 World Rowing Championships in South Korea. She also helped the United States team win a bronze medal in the 2014 World Rowing Championships in the Netherlands, and was an alternate for Team USA in the 2016 Rio Olympics. This is her second major England race, as she won the Remenham Challenge Cup in 2016.
The rower said in an interview with Cambridge she is having a great time training for this event. While some of her teammates are feeling stressed, she is comfortable due to her extensive international competitive history. A longtime rower, Coffey confessed that her true love used to be ice hockey. She said if she was better at the sport, she would have pursued that instead of rowing.
As stated in the interview, "I rowed in high school, but I had been playing ice hockey a lot longer. I think there is an equal amount of intensity, but they ask for totally different physiologies."
Coffey has been rowing competitively since she was a teenager, as her family is involved in the sport. Her parents love the Finger Lakes and are happy to be living in the area once again after several years away.