• VIDEO: GILLIAN  EDGAR

SEATTLE -- Seattle Pacific junior Gillian Edgar has been invited to the USRowing Under-23 Women's National Team Selection Camp that is scheduled for June in Charlottesville, Virginia.
 
Edgar is the only NCAA Division II rower among the 29 student-athletes selected for the pool that will determine seats for this summer's U-23 World Championships squad.
 
"We're just incredibly proud of Gillian," SPU coach Andrew Derrick exclaimed. "She has worked really hard and has earned the right to be there. Despite not being all that long in this sport, she's got a mindset that is very rare and is going to take her far."
 
A product of King's High School in Shoreline, Washington, Edgar didn't start rowing until the fall of 2017, her sophomore year of college. She competed as a middle distance runner on the Falcons track & field team as a freshman.
 
Edgar quickly earned a spot in Seattle Pacific's top crew and has been a fixture in that varsity eight ever since. Despite her novice status and rowing less than a year, Edgar garnered second-team All-America honors in 2018 from the Collegiate Rowing Coaches Association.
 
SPU currently ranks No. 5 nationally in the Division II poll on the strength of impressive early-season results. The Falcons were the lone non-Division I qualifier for the grand final, finishing fifth at the San Diego Crew Classic on April 7 in their last outing.


 
Derrick believes this selection camp opportunity will be beneficial for both Edgar as well as her SPU teammates.
 
"The biggest impact is that Gillian will come back a better rower. She's going to go and row with a really high-level caliber of athlete and she's going to be better for the experience. Whether she makes it this year, or it's a learning experience, she's still eligible to go back next year.
 
"Gillian's going to come back and bring some of that fire and that knowledge and push us to be better. The idea that you don't have to be at one of the top-10 Division I schools in the country to be able to pursue your dreams and national team aspirations, that should be reassuring to a lot of people out there."
 
Hosted by the University of Virginia and led by Cavaliers coach Kevin Sauer, the selection camp serves to choose members for the U-23 women's eight, four, quadruple sculls and four with coxswain that will compete at the 2019 World Rowing Under-23 Championships scheduled for July 24-28 in Sarasota-Bradenton, Florida.
 
The camp also will select a pair to race at USRowing's U-23 World Championship Trials in early July. Sauer will be joined by coaches Brett Gorman (USRowing), Jamie Snider (Yale assistant), Josh Gautreau (Washington assistant), and Kelsie Chaudoin (Stanford assistant) to direct the sweep selection camp.
 
Last year, the U.S. women's four with coxswain and women's pair both won gold medals.
 
The rowing selection camp is a distinctive experience as Derrick can attest. The former University of Washington standout successively navigated those camps to represent the United States in 1999 and again in 2001, when he won a silver medal at the U-23 World Championships in Linz, Austria.
 
"It's a really different mindset. One of the things that appeals to so many people in rowing is the team culture. But you are going as an individual to the selection camp. Some of the rowers will have teammates there, Gillian won't.
 
"It's a unique, individualistic aspect of the sport, but it's one that if you go in with the right attitude will really make you better."