Coxswains Josephine Sedgley ’27 and Joey Sigmund ’25 are feeling confident in their teams’ abilities after winning four races between the two in a competition earlier this month. The program has come a long way since being only a club team in the early 1990s. Even since the COVID-19 pandemic, the program has undergone substantial cultural changes, according to Sigmund.
As a new first-year in the year post-COVID, Sigmund was unsure what to do as a newcomer, or what the team expected from him as a new member. He lacked real direction, and did not know where the team was headed.
“There wasn’t really like a clear path forward for anybody. For my class coming in it was slightly alarming for us, and also just a little bit confusing. There wasn’t anybody telling us where we should be we, where we were, or what exactly we needed to do to be where we wanted to be. We didn’t even know where we wanted to be,” Sigmund said.
As the program developed over the years, Sigmund felt more unity and motivation among his teammates. He credited a lot of the team’s improvement in races to their focus on improving their team culture. When he joined the team, he noticed a divide between the upperclassmen and underclassmen, and the people who walked onto the team versus high school recruits. Sigmund and his classmates sought to see this tension resolved in the coming years.
“We knew what we didn’t want the team to feel like for people, so as we kind of moved forward, we wanted to make sure that everyone felt included or appreciated at practices,” Sigmund said.
Now, Sigmund reports, the team is a lot tighter knit, as both friends and teammates. Going on team retreats together and making sure to hang out outside of the erg room or practice helped the team bond and become closer as teammates. This has led to a rich culture and brotherhood for the rowers.
“I have my brothers with me every day, and that’s the best part. Now that I’m about to graduate, you know, I think about it every day and I’m really going to miss being a part of a team,” Sigmund said.
This brotherhood is something that Sigmund cherishes about the rowing program at Loyola, and it has led to measurable success for the men’s team.
On the women’s side, their positive team culture has also had a measurable impact on Sedgley’s life. She walked onto the team in the fall of her first year and was made coxswain by the next spring. When she started out, Sedgley did not know a lot about rowing. She was even surprised that the rowers sat backwards in the boat.
Now an experienced coxswain and a strong leader of her boat, Sedgely is grateful that she joined the team. She said that it has been an extremely rewarding experience for her. She would not trade it for the world.
“I can’t comprehend how my college experience would be without rowing. It has given me all of my friends and runs all of my schedule in a very good way. It gives me a lot of purpose to being here besides just going to class and doing nothing else,” Sedgley said.
She has greatly enjoyed coming into her role of coxswain, and believes it is a perfect fit for her personality. Previously a horseback rider, Sedgley said she has always enjoyed the technical side of independent sports.
“Rowing is such a technically difficult sport. People don’t understand how hard it is to row that hard and correctly. It’s absolutely jaw-dropping the amount of work that goes into it,” Sedgley said.
Sedgely has great pride for her teammates and their wins and is looking forward to their upcoming races.
Both teams will soon have local races here in Maryland. The men will be at Washington College in Chestertown on April 26, and the women have an upcoming home race on that same day at the Baltimore Rowing Center.
