Scholar Stories: Vanderbilt Grateful for Michigan Rowing Community
4/21/2021 10:00:00 AM | Rowing, Features
Continuing the series that began in 2016-17, each Wednesday MGoBlue.com will highlight a Michigan student-athlete and their academic pursuits. These are our Scholar-Athlete Stories, presented by Absopure.
By Chad Shepard
Lara Vanderbilt was searching for a new community, and she found one in the University of Michigan rowing program. It was a winding path to end up where she is now, but as a problem-solver, once Lara's mind is locked onto a target, there is no stopping her.
Vanderbilt dedicated her final year at Davis Senior High School in Davis, Calif., preparing for her next phase of life in the Coast Guard. She had done her research and knew the Coast Guard Academy in New London, Conn., was where she wanted to be. Vanderbilt was a synchronized swimmer throughout her childhood, earing top-10 finishes at nationals with her team. She played water polo and became a competitive swimmer in high school, which kept her comfortable in the water and furthered her ability to be successful in a team environment. The crossover elements between sport and military life appealed to her: structure, teamwork, pushing through challenges as a group, and the sense of accomplishment that came with that.
After a year of basic training -- called a "swab summer" in the Coast Guard), which is described as "the most difficult and demanding period of military training you will experience as a cadet" -- Vanderbilt was excited to take the next step in her military career. Then, she received crushing news: an unexpected medical disqualification ended her opportunity to serve.
"It was a hard time in my life," said Vanderbilt. "I really leaned on my support systems to help me find my feet again and get to my next task."
That next task was starting over in her search to find a college.
The shock of receiving her medical disqualifier was real, but Vanderbilt wasted little time feeling sorry for herself. She set her eyes on the University of Michigan and its renowned engineering program. Within a month she had applied to U-M, but again had to change course when she was not accepted.
"I thought it was time to come up with another option, but I kept feeling I wanted to go here, and the more research I did, I learned about U-M Flint and the 2+2 program to transfer to Ann Arbor," she said. "I could get all of the prerequisite classes out of the way and with a high GPA in core classes transfer to Ann Arbor."
Having never been to the state of Michigan before, she took a chance. She moved to Flint and dove headfirst into the experience.
"I met great friends and loved my professors," Vanderbilt said. "Small classes helped me get through the challenging prerequisites required for engineering. I just said, 'If my final goal is Ann Arbor, this will help get me there. I'm going to do this.'"
Lara Vanderbilt (left), Victoria Cooke
After two years in Flint, she made it to the Ann Arbor campus, where she received an email sent out to all incoming students with information about athletics at the university. Vanderbilt was intrigued to learn of Michigan's novice rowing program and with a little more nudging from her father, she attended a tryout.
Vanderbilt made the team, and was immediately hooked. She promptly won a bronze medal at the Big Ten Championships with the first novice eight boat (1N8) in her first year as a Wolverine, helping the team capture its first conference title in six seasons. Her junior season was canceled by the COVID-19 pandemic. Now a senior, she is part of a varsity fours lineup that has had a strong spring. Vanderbilt made her varsity debut and stroked the 3V4 three times in the month of April, helping the boat to victories over Iowa, Notre Dame, and Syracuse in that stretch.
Vanderbilt has been a natural fit for the team-first mentality that rowing requires, and being part of the rowing community at U-M is reminiscent of her team-centric experiences growing up, and of those she had as a cadet.
"Before joining the rowing team, I had been missing that part of my life for the prior two years," said Vanderbilt. "It was an awesome way for me to find my own community on campus of like-minded people, and finding that through the novice program was amazing. It was a really cool experience, learning how to row and making really close friends through the process was so rewarding."
Now she feels the bumps in the road along the way have been validated.
"The feeling I get when I'm with my team, or I'm able to uplift people on my team and support our team community however I can, makes me so certain that all the strange turns my path has taken were the correct turns," Vanderbilt said.
As a chemical engineering major scheduled to graduate this spring, she hopes to find the same sense of community and a team environment in her professional life as well.
"Community (health) and public health are things that really interest me," Vanderbilt said. "Women's health and the health of marginalized communities are also things that fit in conjunction with my minor (LGBTQ+ and sexuality studies). There are a lot of appealing jobs for graduates, but I want to take a job where I can help communities."
Growing up in Davis, Vanderbilt was part of an active, outdoorsy family. Davis has more bicycles per capita than any other city in the world, and the Vanderbilt family was always biking around town. Lara's father Eric, a civil engineer, and mother, Pamela, an environmental air quality scientist, raised her and her brother Jacob without a television set.
Eric was a founding member of the club crew program at the University of California Davis in the fall of 1977. The founding members built a boat house, rented oars and boats, and enlisted the help of a volunteer head coach who also stroked the boat. He later helped establish the River City Rowing Club in Sacramento, Calif., and continued to row in masters programs into Lara's childhood.
"He loves the sport so much that it taught me how to love sports and physical activities," she said.
Jacob (left) and Lara Vanderbilt
Lara has memories of waking up early and joining her father at his morning practices. Rising before the sun, she would fall back asleep in the car only to be woken up in time to get breakfast around the corner in Sacramento. The family even had an erg machine in the upstairs bathroom that Lara would slide around on like a toy as a small child.
"I didn't learn until much later the pain that machine can cause," she said.
But it was not until college that she gave her dad's sport a real chance. When she did, she found so many of the things she loved and thrived on: new friends, a new community and new goals. Now it is Lara's parents waking up early on West Coast time to see her 9 a.m. (or earlier) EDT races.
"I think (my dad) did dream about me rowing eventually," said Vanderbilt. "I think they wish they were in a part of the country where they could come see races in person, but restrictions this year have been so strict anyways, they're happy to watch live streams and they're happy with what they get.
"My mom loves to tell her friends about how strong we all look. She loves when we bend over and pick up the boat out of the water. She thinks it's like a superpower."
The sport has a family connection for Lara, but more than that, it centers her by connecting her to the outdoors and the water where she is comfortable. It also brings her gratitude.
"Adventures outside have always been a source of happiness for me," she said. "Rowing brings me back to that. It's easy to get stressed when things aren't going well in life, but being on the water, looking at the surroundings brings me back to the calm feeling of just being lucky to be out there."
Having found what she loves once again, she knows what to look for in the future when her time as a Wolverine is through.
"I'll forever be in search of this feeling I have with this team or in service of this team community," she said. "Whatever job I find that gives me this feeling, I'll know I'm moving in the right direction."
Players Mentioned
