MIT alums to row for Team USA
Dise, Young prepare for Rowing Worlds
Two MIT alumni, Skip Dise ’03 and Stephen F. Young ’09, will be headed to the 2010 World Rowing Championships in New Zealand later this month as members of the United States National Team. Young will cox the men’s lightweight eight, and Dise will row in the bow seat of that boat. Dise and Young were both selected to the lightweight eight as a result of their performance in the selection camp in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.
This past week on Mercer Lake in New Jersey, Young also qualified in the coxed pair event by coming back to win the second and third races at Trials in the best-of-three format. Young and his crew of Nareg Guregian and Justin Stangel, graduates of the University of California at Berkeley and Syracuse University respectively, trailed by five seconds at the halfway mark of the third and deciding race. They made it up, however, in the second half of the race with a convincing sprint to win by a narrow margin of 0.2 seconds.
Dise rowed with the lightweight men’s team at MIT. He was the stroke-seat of the varsity eight and the captain of the team. This will be Dise’s second appearance at the World Rowing Championships; he earned a silver medal in the lightweight eight in Poznan, Poland last year. Before his selection to the national team, Dise trained with the Riverside Boat Club in Cambridge, the Pocock Training Center in Seattle, and the Oklahoma City High Performance Center.
Young was the heavyweight men’s coxswain from 2006 to 2009. During his collegiate career, he helped the MIT team earn respectability. He led MIT’s varsity eight to victories over crews such as Dartmouth College, Princeton University, and Yale University, and earned a 12th place finish out of eighteen at the Eastern Sprints Regatta his senior year, a far cry from the last place finishes that had become the status quo the previous decades. He is currently coxing at the Pennsylvania Athletic Club in Philadelphia.
Young and Dise will now train in the States for a few more weeks before heading to Lake Karapiro on New Zealand’s North Island. The Championships will be held from October 30 to November 7.