The Jumbos complete three-peat as first and second varsity eights dominate all four races they compete in
The big celebration after the record wins by the Tufts women's rowing team.
The Tufts women’s rowing team etched itself into the record books on May 29, winning its third straight NCAA championship in action at Lake Lanier Olympic Park in Gainesville, Ga.
The Jumbos first and second varsity eights dominated all four races they competed in at the NCAA championships. With impending weather moving Saturday’s racing to Friday, the Jumbos were forced to race twice on both the 1V8+ and 2V8+ sides in the same day.
The truncated timetable was no obstacle for the Jumbos, who matched last year’s dominant performance of 56 points with the pair of victories. Tufts 1V8+ won its third straight at the national meet, while the Jumbos’ second varsity also repeated as national champs. Bates College was second with 45 points, while William Smith College earned third place with 44 points.
The first race of the morning was for the 2V8+, and the Jumbos’ boat led by coxswain Maddie Rosato and stroke Erica Wayland cruised to an open water win over William Smith with a time of 6:40.139. They were more than nine seconds faster than the Herons in the heat, while besting Bates by over 17 seconds.
Three races later—at 7:46 a.m.—the Jumbos’ 1V8+ squad was in the water for their first attempt of the day, and it was soon apparent they were the boat to beat. The Jumbos cruised to a six-second victory over William Smith in the heat, while besting Williams College by over eight seconds.
The worry with early dominance in the heats was how the Jumbos would respond coming back less than eight hours later. It proved to be no problem for the defending champions.
In the 2V8+ Grand Final, the Jumbos’ boat of Rosato, Wayland, Katherine Tombaugh, Zenani Himlin-Mayekiso, Celia Carson, Sam Dodds, Claire Carson, Lecia Sun, and Sonja Wartman never trailed. Tufts led by two seconds at the 500m mark, and slowly and surely extended that lead up to four seconds by the 1500m mark.
Williams and William Smith would charge down the stretch, and despite a late crab for the Jumbos, Tufts was able to cross the finish line with a time of 6:35.056 to earn the second varsity crown and 16 points for the Jumbos total.
That set up the Grand Final in the 1V8+, where Tufts was looking for its third straight championship and third under the direction of legendary coxswain Hannah Jiang. Wasting no time getting out to lead, Tufts led by more than two seconds at the 500m marker. Using power and experience, the Jumbos held that lead the rest of the way while crossing the line by 4.31 seconds for the win.
The boat of Jiang, stroke Rose Tinkjian, Sami Haynes, Josie Monroe, Sydney Barr, Sonia Haynes, Aubyn Mackey, Saskia Petitt, and Emma Lyle was good for 40 points, earning the second straight perfect team score for the Jumbos. For Jiang, Tinkjian, Lyle, and Haynes, it was their third NCAA crown as members of the first varsity boat. Monroe and Barr became repeat winners.
Tufts became just the third program in NCAA Division III championship women’s rowing history to win three or more straight national championships, as Williams College won eight straight from 2006 to 2013 and Bates College won four in a row from 2017 to 2021, including a missed year due to COVID-19.
The back-to-back-to-back national championship win caps another tremendous year for Coach Lily Siddall’s Jumbos. They also won their third straight championships at the Head of the Charles Collegiate Eights, and took their fourth straight National Invitational Rowing Championships Points Trophy.
The title continued an extraordinary year for Tufts Athletics, as the women’s rowing team joined field hockey, men’s soccer, and men’s lacrosse teams as national champions in 2025-26.
