After coaching UW Men’s Rowing to a national title, Michael Callahan leads the USA men’s eight to the Paris Olympics

Posted on July 24, 2024 by Ed Kromer. This entry was posted in Spotlight, Staff Stories, Whole U Program Information. Bookmark the permalink.

“History never repeats itself,” wrote Mark Twain, “but it often rhymes.”

That famous notion by the iconic American author certainly tracks with UW Rowing, a program that has been so good for so long that its storied history sometimes achieves a measure of rhythmic symmetry. To wit:

In 1936, an understated former Washington oarsman named Al Ulbrickson coached the Husky men’s rowing team to a sweep of the IRA National Championship Regatta before leading the USA men’s eight to glory at the Olympic Games in Europe (a tale that will be familiar to fans of “The Boys in the Boat”).

In 2024, an understated former Washington oarsman named Michael Callahan coached the Husky men’s rowing team to a sweep of the IRA National Championship Regatta before leading the USA men’s eight to another Olympic Games in Europe.

Ulbrickson went on to become a legend of the sport. And Callahan… let’s just say is well on his way.

In 16 years at the helm of UW men’s rowing program, his Huskies have won 12 Pac-12 championships and eight IRA national championships. At the IRAs, they also have won the James Ten Eyck Memorial Trophy — awarded to the top overall team — 13 times and swept the regatta on six occasions.

Callahan is not one to dwell on past achievements.

“Michael would be way too humble to say it,” says Eric Cohen, a former Husky coxswain and long-time program historian. “But if you look at the record objectively, he’s the most successful coach in the history of Washington Rowing. There are few people who rise to the level of their sport that he has.”

Rowing opens doors

Callahan only discovered the sport of rowing after being sidelined from baseball with a broken hand. The son of an officer in the U.S. Navy, he had lived in six coastal states before landing in Virginia, where his public high school had a competitive rowing program.

“I was always attracted to water,” he says. “I grew up around it my whole life.”

What attracted Callahan to rowing was its unambiguous meritocracy. “The thing I loved right away is the way that hard work was always rewarded,” he says. “Success in a lot of sports can depend on talent or gifts that you may or may not possess. There are always limits. But in rowing, the correlation between hard work and success is almost a straight line.”

Callahan’s own powerful work ethic led to a junior world championship and an invitation to row for the Washington Huskies. During his four years at Montlake, he won a share of four Pac-10 titles and bronze and silver medals in the varsity eight at the IRAs. He was named team captain and commodore in his senior season of 1996.

After graduation, Callahan rowed with the U.S. national team for eight years, stroking eights at three World Championships and making the 2004 U.S. Olympic squad, working jobs in finance to support his rowing career.

And then his former coach, Bob Ernst, offered Callahan an assistant coaching position. “When you get an opportunity to coach at Washington,” he says, “it’s something you don’t pass up.”

Callahan learned volumes during his apprenticeship with Ernst, who crafted his own incredible record in 42 years coaching Washington and USA crews. When Ernst left to lead the Husky women’s program in 2007, Callahan was promoted to head coach of the men’s.

Bridging past, present and future

It was a daunting challenge to add his name to the short list of legendary Washington coaches spanning a century of glory: Conibear. Callow. Ulbrickson. Erickson. Ernst.

Callahan, who had studied history at UW, found his footing in those who came before him and the unique culture that they built. He recalls the profound impact of meeting the members of the 1936 varsity eight, who were honored at Seattle’s annual Opening Day Regatta his senior year. “How cool was it that I actually got to meet those guys,” he says. “They inspired me. They still inspire me.”

He resolved to confer that inspiration, that sense of inter-generational connection, to his own student athletes.

One of his earliest standouts, Will Crothers (an Olympic silver medalist with Canada) remarked that “we get a lot of our power from our history.”

That was certainly true. But Callahan understood intuitively that in rowing, as in the financial world that once employed him, past performance does not predict future results. And so, he set out to build a bridge from past to present to future.

“As a historian, what I love about Michael is that he’s so connected to the past. And he learns from the past,” says Cohen. “But that doesn’t mean he’s ever stuck in the past. He has a knack for taking the best qualities of each of these great coaches and incorporating them into who he is as a leader.”

Surrender to the whole

For Callahan, the past serves as foundation for the program, but also context for its future. In his earliest days coaching at Washington, he was intentional about setting an audacious goal for his young rowers. “I remember telling them that I want to help create the next golden age of Washington Rowing,” he says. “But it would be up to them to do it.”

Achieving so transcendent an objective would require commitment far beyond self-interest for everyone involved. And for the coach, it would mean cracking the most mysterious code in all of team sports. “Rowing is a dichotomy,” Callahan explains. “You must have enough ego and belief in yourself to succeed, but you also have to surrender yourself to the larger cause. You’re balancing those two truths all the time. When a student comes in, they’re thinking about their career, their legacy. But I’m telling them, if you want to achieve, you have to give yourself to the whole. You will never do it by yourself.”

Drawing this level of commitment, year after year, gets at the essence of the sport (and the secret of Callahan’s success in it).

He knows how to motivate student athletes because he was them not so long ago. “I was a punk kid when I arrived, with an ego bigger than my ability,” he laughs. “I’ve learned that you can’t tell them. You have to show them.”

Authenticity and inclusivity

It starts with being authentic, which Callahan can’t help but do. Cohen describes his natural state of leadership as perfectly manifesting the program’s core values — hard work, humility, inclusion, selflessness — every day.

But there’s much more to it. Possessed of a curious mind, Callahan is always learning, from coaches, entrepreneurs and other leaders, from the program’s past and from his own past trials and errors. He studies the art and science (both physical and psychological) of rowing. He spends more time observing than talking. He is ever vigilant for teachable moments and ways to connect the team.

And he is always looking for ways to improve. On recruiting. On motivating. On training methods. On racing tactics. Even on the rigging of boats.

He tweaks and tinkers, refreshes, overhauls and adjusts his methods for every new season. Says Cohen: “Michael changes the way he coaches every single year, because every group is different and every year he learns something new.”

What never changes is his commitment to elevating everyone in the program. It takes a kind of magic to get strong-willed individuals to mirror the person in front of them, to “meld their minds and their bodies and their hearts and their souls,” Cohen says. “Michael Callahan is able to make this magic. And he doesn’t just do it for the varsity eight. He does it for the second varsity and the third varsity and the fourth varsity and the freshmen. On his team, there’s no difference between the future Olympian and the guys struggling to keep their spot in the lower boats.”

Callahan says it’s about finding the distinctive strength that everyone brings, whether it’s in work rate, competitive spirit, positive attitude, social support, boathouse humor or whatever. “We try to create an environment where everyone’s effort is reflected in the top boat,” he says. “Everyone matters.

That belief is the recipe for true camaraderie, a kinship forged in shared endeavor and suffering and setback and, one hopes, ultimately triumph (however you define it).

“A lot of people today talk about what leads to happiness,” adds Callahan, who stands as a human bulwark against our growing addiction to instant gratification. “I try to focus on what’s fulfilling. Hard work is fulfilling. Collective effort is fulfilling. In 40 years, these guys will remember what they went through together more than winning a race.”

Historic seasons

But winning is fulfilling, too. And while the Huskies were mounting an unblemished run to their eighth national championship under his watch, Callahan was simultaneously overseeing the selection and development of the US Rowing Olympic men’s eight.

He began national team selection in Florida in February and then brought the newly formed USA eight to Seattle for four weeks of training during the Huskies’ early season. Right after locking down the final Pac-12 championship, Callahan flew to Switzerland to guide the national team to victory in the final Olympic qualifying regatta. He stayed on for the World Cup Regatta before jetting back for the IRAs in New Jersey. The day after the Husky sweep, he moved his bags to the national team’s hotel in Princeton and commenced final training for the Olympics amid a torrid heat wave.

Callahan says the challenge of guiding two of the highest-performance crews on the planet has been more exhilarating than exhausting: “It’s been a joy to be part of both. I have two fantastic groups and really strong support staffs that have made this possible. Winning the IRAs was a huge high. I was rooting so hard for this team because of the commitment they made and the work ethic they showed. But then I immediately refocused myself on the U.S. Olympic eight.”

The boys in this boat

Qualifying for an Olympic berth is a lot different than it was back in the Boys in the Boat days, when collegiate teams often punched their ticket intact. In modern times, the selection process is individual and rigorous and merciless. This may be why they call them “trials.”

What emerges from this competition is an all-star collective of mature, powerful, hardened, hyper-competitive athletes. The best of the best.

Members of this year’s team hail from sea to shining sea, representing Washington, Oregon, California, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine and Florida.

But they are hardly strangers to Callahan. In fact, four of his crew are former Huskies: five seat Chris Carlson (from New Hampshire), seven seat Evan Olson (from Bothell), stroke seat Pieter Quinton (from Portland—and who started at Harvard but rowed his last year of eligibility with the Huskies while pursuing a master’s degree at the Evans School), and coxswain Rielly Milne (from Woodinville).

Callahan says that managing this team is a different challenge from leading college students. But the nation couldn’t ask for a better maestro to strike the right balance of work and rest, to find the most effective motivation, to create the perfect environmental in which to achieve the illusive swing that it takes to succeed in the fastest race in rowing.

“We believe we’re in the hunt for the podium,” Callahan says. “The United States of America has a strong tradition in the men’s eight. And we want to represent our country well in Paris. We have the guys and the ability to do it.”

Back to the drawing board

When it’s over, Callahan will happily return to his home in Portage Bay, surrounded by a family of rowers and Huskies (his father-in-law, Mike Hess, a former UW Rowing captain, is a member of the Husky Hall of Fame).

He’ll be excited to get back to the business of Washington Rowing that drives him forward. Energized by a new season. New lineup. New challenges.

These days, an additional set of unprecedented challenges are coming from the seismic changes in intercollegiate athletics — conference reshuffling, NIL rights, profit-sharing. Cohen believes in Callahan’s ability to adapt and innovate and lead with humanity that will lead the program to the same championship conclusions, no matter how the landscape changes. “He’s a genius,” says the rowing historian. “I’ve seen a lot of great coaches. But Michael is at a level of understanding that I’m not sure that I’ve ever seen before.”

That might be why Washington Rowing has won so many races and titles on his watch. And why the rowing team is always at or among the top of Husky Athletics in classroom performance. And why so many of his two decades of student athletes have gone on to achieve success in life.

So, are we in a golden age of UW Men’s Rowing? You won’t hear it come from Michael Callahan’s lips.

“He’s so humble and so dedicated to these young men that he doesn’t see how much of an influence and impact he has had,” Cohen says. “Not just on Washington rowing and on these student athletes, but on the global sport of rowing.”

“I try to be humble about it,” Callahan confirms. “But there are things we’ve done that I’m really proud of… And there are some things I’d like to improve on.”

Always.

“At Washington, we talk a lot about humility,” he adds. “What we mean by that is always looking for the next challenge. How am I going to keep moving forward? How am I going to make myself and my team better?”

Photography courtesy of University of Washington Athletics and Red Box Pictures.

---

A total of 17 former Huskies are competing in Olympic rowing in Paris this summer. Michael Callahan’s USA men’s eight racing heats begin Monday, July 29, and the finals take place Saturday, August 3. Get all the information on lineups, race times and how to watch here.