CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — MIT women's openweight crew head coach Holly Metcalf is the 2024 recipient of the US Rowing Medal of Honor, awarded to a member of the rowing community in the U.S. who has rendered conspicuous service to or accomplished extraordinary feats in rowing. It is the highest honor USRowing can bestow.
An Olympic gold medalist, a lifelong coach, and a founder of multiple rowing non-profit organizations, Metcalf is in her 18th season as head coach for the MIT openweight women in 2024-25. She has transformed the program into a team that is competitive within the Eastern Sprints, as well as in the Patriot League, where the Engineers' varsity 8 squad has regularly gained the Grand Final. Additionally, in every year under Metcalf, the team has earned Public Recognition Awards from the NCAA for its exceptional academic performance. In the 2017 Patriot League Championship, the team finished fifth overall behind a third-place showing by the varsity 8 as Metcalf was honored as the 2017 Patriot League Coach of the Year.
Metcalf was a six-time member of the U.S. National Team and won four World Championship medals. She was a member of the 1984 women's eight that won the first-ever Olympic gold medal for the U.S. women's national team. She coached the U.S. women's national team to a silver medal at the 1990 World Rowing Championships.
Metcalf has founded multiple non-profit programs to provide access to rowing to communities in need. In 1994, she founded the Row As One Institute, which offers masters women top-level coaching. She extended this concept to girls from under-resourced communities in Boston in 1996 with her G-ROW program. G-ROW was one of the first programs of its kind and helped lay the foundation for similar programs across the country. The program has incredibly high college acceptance rates for their rowers. It is now called RowBoston at Community Rowing, Inc. Metcalf created WeCanRow in 2002, a wellness and rehabilitation organization for female cancer survivors, which recently evolved into WeCanRow National. At the 2024 Head of the Charles, cancer survivors honored Metcalf for her work and raced in the Survivor's Row exhibition race with two entries from WeCanRow.
A graduate of Mount Holyoke College, she was selected as a member of that school's inaugural Athletics Hall of Fame in 2013 and is a member of the National Rowing Hall of Fame, the Maine Hall of Fame, and the New England Women's Sports Hall of Fame. Metcalf was previously awarded the 2008 USRowing Woman of the Year with her Olympic teammates and the 1999 USRowing Woman of the Year with Ernestine Bayer. She has also won the 1999 New England Women's Leadership Award, 1998 New England Hero Award, 1998 Girl Scouts of America Leading Woman. She was also named one of Boston Magazine's Top 50 Most Intriguing Women.
(Portions of this release courtesy of USRowing)
