Alumni Spotlight: Clara Rasmussen (PYR ’19)

For Clara Rasmussen, rowing always felt like it was waiting for her.

She grew up on a boat in Seattle, listening to University of Washington crews row past in the mornings. Her family attended the Windermere Cup every year. Long before she ever picked up an oar, rowing was already part of the rhythm of her life.

“It felt inevitable,” Clara says. “Rowing was there before I even knew it was there.”

Still, it took a friend’s encouragement to get her into a boat for the first time. After trying nearly every sport growing up - soccer, basketball, and even parkour -  nothing truly stuck. Then, in middle school, a friend convinced her to attend a learn-to-row camp on Lake Union.

“She just said, ‘You would love rowing,’” Clara remembers.

She was right.

Clara joined the Pocock Middle School team and then the high school team, where she spent the next four years immersed in the sport. What she found was more than athletics - it was community, purpose, and a place where hard work mattered more than anything else.

“Everyone is in it together,” she says. “You have to love it because you’re getting up at 4 a.m. every day. There’s something life-changing about being in a space where everyone is working hard and wants to be there.”

As Clara settled into the rowing world, she also became aware of the financial realities of the sport. It was obvious which athletes came from more affluent backgrounds, but she never felt excluded. Instead, she found a connection with teammates who shared similar experiences - athletes catching the bus together, stepping outside their comfort zones together, and building friendships through the shared effort of the sport.

“It was nice not to feel alone,” she says. “We were all doing something we loved and finding our community.”

The financial aid Clara received made rowing possible and ultimately opened doors beyond high school. Rowing led to scholarship opportunities for college that otherwise may not have been financially attainable.

“It gave me a huge appreciation for the opportunity,” she says. “I felt like I had this one chance, and I wanted to make it worth it.”

But Clara’s biggest lessons from rowing had little to do with medals or erg scores.

“Rowing is an equalizer,” she says. “I wasn’t the fastest athlete or the person with the best grades, but rowing showed me that you can still flourish and be successful through hard work and loyalty.”

One of the people who helped shape that understanding was her coach, Briana Schulte.

Clara describes herself as a quiet teenager - someone who showed up, worked hard, and rarely drew attention to herself. Brianna saw leadership qualities in her long before Clara saw them in herself.

“She made me feel really seen,” Clara says. “She told me, ‘You have qualities that can really help this team. I want you to be a leader.’”

That leadership didn’t come through being the loudest voice in the room. Instead, Clara learned to lead by example - through consistency, work ethic, and care for her teammates. By her senior year, she was named co-captain.

“Briana taught me that leadership can look different,” Clara says. “You don’t have to have the most to say to lead.”

Today, Clara is still connected to rowing, now coaching at Lake Washington Rowing Club and helping introduce others to the sport that shaped her life. She also coached summer camps at Pocock because, she says, she wanted to give back to the community that gave so much to her.

After graduating from college, stepping away from rowing was difficult. For years, the structure of training, practices, and teammates had defined daily life.

“It was a shock to the system,” she says. “Eleven practices a week teach you a lot about hard work.”

Still, she knew rowing would find its way back into her life eventually.

“I needed to take a step back,” she says. “But I also knew I would come back to rowing and find my love for it in a different way.”

Because for Clara, rowing has never really been just a sport.

“There’s something really special about rowing because you truly have to work together,” she says. “In a lot of team sports, you can still shine individually. In rowing, if you only shine individually, you won’t succeed. You have to trust the people around you.”

That trust - built through countless early mornings, hard practices, and shared effort - created friendships that remain years later.

“No one really understands what you’re going through except your teammates,” Clara says.

Now, even as her role in the sport evolves, rowing remains a constant in her life.

“I think rowing is really special,” she says. “It makes sense that I would find it.”

And perhaps, in some ways, it was always waiting for her.