Sarah Dougherty

About Me:

Hi! I'm a former USRowing National Team athlete and currently a rowing coach, fitness instructor, and I run my own food blog. I grew up in the greater Seattle area, but currently live in Austin, Texas.

I started rowing as a freshman at the University of Washington in 2012. Prior to that, I was a swimmer for eight years throughout high school. During college, I competed at the DI NCAA Championships all four years, and raced as a varsity athlete all four of those years.

After college, I decided to chase after the dream of going to the Olympics and moved to Princeton, New Jersey to train full-time with USRowing. My professional rowing career had many ups and downs. I competed at two U23 World Championships, broke a world record, and competed at the 2017 World Championships in the US Women's 8+.

While I'm incredibly proud of my accomplishments, I had a very difficult time dealing with multiple injuries. After my sixth injury in two and a half years, I made the decision to retire from rowing in February 2019 without being able to achieve my goal of racing in Tokyo 2020.

I moved to Austin, Texas, to try something new, get involved with coaching, and dive into the health and wellness industry. As a Mpowher Athlete team member I am extremely excited, and can't wait to get started working with athletes and helping them achieving their goals!

My Transition From Swimming to Rowing

I started swimming at my summer swim club in 2006. I first joined swim lessons, then saw my neighbor going fast on the swim team and decided I wanted to be fast like her. So I joined the competitive swim team. I quickly realized I still wasn't fast. As a result, the following year I joined a club swimming team that was competitive year-round. This was a big jump for me, as I then had swim practices every day after school and on the weekends. For the most part, I enjoyed swimming. I was making amazing life long friends, our team was fast, and I enjoyed the challenge to get faster.

My main goal each year when I started out was to be faster by the time the next summer swim league season came around. Once I got to high school, I joined my high school swim team. This meant I was a part of three teams, sometimes all at once. My life consisted of, "sorry I can't, I have practice.” Even now, thinking back to high school, all I remember is funny memories in the pool, incredible record breaking relays at swim meets, and putting mascara on in my car driving to Friday night football games after practice with my hair soaking wet. 

In my senior year of high school, I had a life changing moment. At my high school state swim meet, it was my goal to swim certain times in order to be recruited to the University of San Diego. Unfortunately, I had a terrible swim meet, didn't go any best times, and knew that I would have to look at other options for school. However, those other options very clearly worked themselves out.

 As I was in tears in the pool lobby, begging my mom to leave, an older man with very large glasses and wide shoulders walked up to me. He told me he was the Head Women's Rowing Coach at the University of Washington, and said I should consider rowing in college. Being upset from my swim meet (and skeptical), I rolled my eyes, and again told my mom we should go. He handed me his card, and we left. 

 After some careful consideration, my mom and I went up to Seattle to watch a practice, and then I took an official visit not too long after that. After a lot of thought, weighing out all the pros and cons of swimming versus rowing, I decided to take a chance and try rowing in college. Something in my gut was telling me it was the right decision, and I knew it was going to be a pivotal decision in my life. 

The way rowing came into my life, right when swimming didn't seem to be quite working out the way I wanted to, was too significant to pass up. I can't imagine what my collegiate experience would have been like if I had chosen to go to a school I wasn't 110% sure I wanted to go to. I'm so thankful for that moment in the pool lobby, and looking back I wouldn't have changed a thing about my choice to row in college.