By John Raffel
Correspondent
MARION – Georgia Meyer was an extremely successful athlete at Marion in sports such as softball, volleyball and basketball before graduating in 2023. But this most recent season she had a unique and successful career on the women’s rowing team for the University of Michigan.
At Michigan she was a member of the 2024 Big Ten Championship Team
As a freshman, she made her Michigan debut rowing in the third seat of the 2N8 as it timed 7:20.5 against Ohio State in the morning and 7:52.0 for an afternoon win over OSU at the Big Ten-ACC Challenge (March 30)
She rowed in the third seat of the 2N8 as it timed 7:15.9 to defeat Michigan State (April 6)
Meyer helped the 2N8 place third in the mixed eight race against U-M’s winning 3V8, the 1N8 and an Open 8 (April 13) in 6:51.06 from the fifth seat
Meyer finished second (7:08.804) and first (7:07.868) from the third seat of the 2N8 on the first day of the Big Ten Invitational (April 19)
She placed first (6:58.898) with the 2N8 in the third seat on the second day of the Big Ten Invitational (April 20)
Meyer won a gold medal in 6:46.798 from bow seat of the 2N8 to help the team win the Big Ten Championship (May 19).
Meyer said the Michigan coach got her contact number off a softball recruiting file.
“She got ahold of me from there and asked me to come to tryouts,” Meyer said. “I was already there (at Michigan). I had academic reasons for being there.”
Currently, Meyer is a biology major.
Rowing is a spring sport.
“We won conference this year and it was a lot of fun,” Meyer said. “I would say it took me five months to feel comfortable (with rowing) and with what I was doing. Michigan does a really good job of acclimating and teaching you everything.”
Meyer said there are no set positions but seats in the boat which the rowers are assigned.
“I was between five and eight,” she said. “Most of the competition is in a lake. From there, it’s kind of similar to swimming. There’s two different kinds of boats that race. There’s fours and eights. I race in the eight. That means we have eight rowers in a coxswain. We race for two kilometers. A good time is between six and seven minutes.”
The season started in February and ended in early June.
Meyer is spending her summer in Marion.
“I’m still training and trying to stay in shape,” she said. “I’ll go back in August and try to relax because I get a summer program there.”
Meyer said she hasn’t determined if she’ll return for her sophomore season.
“I loved this last year and I wouldn’t trade it for the world,” she said.
