Meredith Currier

Board Member

Meredith found her passion for rowing as a senior at the Taft School in Watertown, CT.  When she told her lacrosse coach that she was leaving to join the crew team, her coach said, “Why do you want to go backwards on your butt as fast as you can?”  Meredith still finds answers to that question every day. (More on that later.)  After high school, she went on to train at a high level athletically, playing Division 1 hockey and winning a national championship with the Princeton University Women’s Rugby Football Club. Though she put rowing on hold to focus on frozen water and scrums during the school year, she always gravitated back to flat water in the off season. Her summers took her to the rivers and rowing clubs in Baltimore MD, New Hope PA, and Portsmouth NH, rowing everything from singles to eights. In Portsmouth, she learned to love open, coastal rowing among fishing boats while she began her career as a traditional wooden boatbuilder.

When Meredith moved to Maine in 2001, there were avid rowers on Megunticook and other crews in Maine, but no program to make it accessible to people in our area. Meredith connected with a handful of other rowers who together founded Megunticook Rowing, and Meredith served as vice president and secretary of the board as well as equipment guru and coach until 2015.  During that time, Meredith cleared the Barrett’s cove site and established the basic infrastructure that we still use today.

So, now back to her lacrosse coach’s question.  Meredith has found lots of answers.  Loons.  Sunrise mist on the lake.  A perfect set.  The thrill of regattas.  But most of all, it’s the camaraderie of pulling as hard as you can; giving everything you have with and for your teammates, even when you can’t see the finish line.  That is what has brought Meredith back to the board of Megunticook rowing: her respect and gratitude for everyone who has contributed to our organization over the years.  It has been incredible and humbling to see what’s happened while she’s been away from MR, and that has given her renewed energy to pick up the oar again for the next power 10.