Taylor Brown
Austin, Texas, United States
Rowing
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Biography
I began rowing nearly 12 years ago at St. Andrews School in Middletown, DE. During my time at St. Andrews we never won a championship, never got a medal, and never went to Henley, however, I gained something much greater: the value of being humble in victory and proud in defeat. I credit Coach Lindsay Brown with cultivating my love of the sport, even through tough times. With a 1500 meter buoyed course, and just under 3k of rowable water, Noxontown Pond was a beautiful place to learn to a beautiful sport.
In stark contast, the Seekonk River, in Providence, Rhode Island, will often test the limits of your abilities through its stiff winds, rain, and cold. My experience at Brown University was worlds different than my experience at St. Andrews. I enjoyed every minute of it, and it has completely shaped me into the rower and the person that I am today. Coaches Paul Cooke, Joe Donahue and Judah Rome showed me how to be a relentless and passionate racer. At Brown Crew, I learned to respect my opponent as competitors, by racing as hard as I could every race, whether we were down a length or up five lengths, I would not relent until the finish line. This is something I carry over to my training and competiton even today. We were pretty successful during my four years at Brown, but you can read all about that in the resume section of this website.
After graduating Brown University in 2012 with a degree in Psychology. I decided to stick around Providence for a year and pursue work in the mental health field. This proved to be very valuable for my career because I realized that I did not want to be in the mental health field! So upon making that realization, I applied for, and got into, graduate school at The University of Texas - Austin, where I got a degree in Kinesiology with a concentration in Sport Management. When I moved down to Austin, I decided to begin training again because why not? As I was learning to row the single scull, I started getting more and more excited about the prospect of racing in this boat class. I had never raced in the single before, and I had only sculled a few times in the past, this was going to be fun. It was fun, but it was also really hard going from rowing on port in an eight to sculling in a single. There are many more technical elements that I never really realized during my time at Brown. However, I started to pick them up quickly and had some help along the way. My parents and my wife were huge supporters of my competition, they really were the backbone of my training and without them I would not have been able to accomplish what I did. Also, Olivia Gardner was a large supporter of my efforts in 2014, and I still remain thankful to her for that support through those early goings as a more novice sculler. In 2015, I spent much of the year on the erg, training for the Crash-B indoor rowing championships, where I placed ninth overall. Then with no intention of competing in the spring, I took some time off. After a month or so of not competing, I decided to get back in the boat and see how it felt. Well, I was hooked again from there and decided to train for the Pan Am games trials in May. That spring I was finishing up my graduate work and was much too busy to think about competing at the other trials events. Pan Am trials was some of the best rowing I had done to date. I came up short, but was able to place second in the M1x, which I thought was a pretty good improvement from the previous year.
After Pan Am Trials I decided to take some time off because I was getting married in August, and wanted to focus on that. As August rolled around I decided that I wanted to try my hand at coaching. For the 2015-2016 season I was the head Boys Varsity coach at Austin Rowing Club as well as the Volunteer Assistant Coach for The University of Texas Women's Varsity rowing team. Both of those experiences were amazing, and helped me really see the sport from a much different perspective than being a rower. Coaching alongside Dave O'Neill was very extremely valuable in not only my development as a coach, but also as a rower. Coach O'Neill looks at the sport and training in a very unique way, which has made him very successful, and I think I have been able to integrate some of that perspective into my own thinking about rowing.
After finishing both seasons it was summer again, and I had some decisions to make. I decided to apply for the newly formed forth paid coaching position at UT. This was perfect! I could get paid to coach division 1 athletes and work with an amazing coaching staff, all while learning more about rowing and coaching? How could that be any better? But, unfortunately, I was not offered the position. However, it's not all sad. Kate Bertko, a seven time national team member and Rio Olympian, was offered the position. She will do an amazing job, and the rowers are very lucky to have her joining the staff.
Since Pan Am trials 2015, I always felt like I had more to give. I felt like I never reached my full potential and there was still more I could get out of myself. Well it is time for me to nut up or shut up, because this guy is going all in. This will be a real adventure, and I am looking forward to every moment of it, good and bad. I am officially training for the 2017 World Rowing Championships in Bradenton, Florida. Here we go.