Cait Whittard chooses Tennessee
By Bernie Puchalski - November 10, 2021
It was decision time this week for Denis Morris rower Cait Whittard.
The 17-year-old St. Catharines resident had four NCAA Division 1 rowing scholarships to choose from and Wednesday she announced that Tennessee was her final destination.
“I really like the team, I think they have a really bright future and that’s where I figured I could see myself for the next four years,” the Grade 12 student said.
The member of the 2021 Canadian squad for the CanAmMex regatta was able to visit Tennessee during the Thanksgiving weekend and she came away impressed with the school.
“I felt really supported by the school itself and the coaches,” the St. Catharines Rowing Club member said. “Going away from home it is still going to feel like I am at home because of the great group of people around me.”
She can’t wait to get started on her next adventure.
“I am excited about getting to row with a big group of girls and a team,” she said. “I have been rowing the single for awhile now so it will be nice to get into some crew boats and enjoy my university experience down there.”
The racing will also be fun.
“I am looking forward to racing against international athletes and getting to know girls from other parts of the world will be an interesting experience,” he said. “It will be nice to support other athletes who are there and, of course get an education.”
Whittard is planning to study pre-med with the ultimate goal becoming a paediatrician or a paediatric oncologist.
“With the training I am doing now, it has really prepared me for the long hours of balancing rowing and school and what is coming next.”
Since last September, Whittard has been training full-time at the Ontario Next-Gen Performance Centre in Welland.
She feels her next progression as a rower will be to make the junior national team in 2022.
“I will trial for that, keep setting stepping stones and try to improve every time that I am out on the water.”
This fall , Whittard finished third in the single in the under-19 division at the Head of the Charles regatta and this week she will be competing in the single at the national rowing championships in Victoria, B.C. She is going to that event as one of RowOntario’s funded athletes.
“I will be competing against girls my age and girls older than me so it will be a good experience.”
Kevin O’Rourke, the general manager of the Denis Morris rowing team, will miss Whittard.
“Since Grade 9, she has been a phenomenal athlete and played a lot of sports. We were very blessed to have her with the rowing team,” he said. “It is unfortunate with the pandemic that we weren’t able to see her achieve more success for the school from a greedy standpoint.”
Whittard has been an important part of the DM team.
“She always works hard in training and is always leading the pack and encouraging kids,” O’Rourke said. “She is great in the classroom, great in the school and I am really happy for her achieving her success.
“We have a few kids who have gone to Canadian schools but nobody in a long time has gone down to the States since I have been at DM.”
O’Rourke is not surprised at her success.
“She has pushed herself to jump to that next level and she had exceeded expectations a little bit. We knew she was going to be good and after that first year we knew she had the potential to be really good.”
Richard Moreau, Joe Cosby and John White coached Whittard at Denis Morris and were part of the many local coaches who helped her get to where she is today. Other influential coaches were Janet Lancaster and Michele Fisher at the St. Catharines Rowing Club and Greg Szybka at the Ontario Next-Gen Performance Centre.
The 5-foot-11, 150-pounder started rowing in the fall of Grade 9 at Denis Morris and then joined the St. Catharines Rowing Club the following summer.
“I have always been involved in different sports and my dad (Jim Whittard) and aunt (Krista Whittard) both rowed. It has always been in my family so I decided to give it a try in high school.”
Among her other rowing accomplishments are: a Canadian Secondary Schools Rowing Association gold medal in the junior coxed four and a bronze in the senior coxed four; a silver in the youth coxed four at the Head of the Charles Regatta; Canadian and Ontario ergometer championships in 2020; and, a nomination for St. Catharines Rowing Club’s under-17 oarswoman of the year in 2019.
At the end of her Grade 10 season, she began to get scholarship interest.
“I never said this was going to happen. I just worked for it,” Whittard said.