By MARK MOSCHETTI
For spufalcons.com
 
SEATTLE – When Gem Gatmaytan first went to the NCAA women's rowing championships three years ago as a Seattle Pacific freshman, she was a back-up. In rowing terms, a spare, someone fully prepared to step in on a moment's notice if needed.
 
During that 2023 national regatta on the Cooper River in New Jersey, her moment never came.
 
Fast-forward to spring 2026. The Falcon senior is on her way to the NCAA Division II regatta once again, the fourth such trip during her four-year career. Those days as a spare are far behind her.
 
No longer a back-up …
 
… she's now up front.
 
Gatmaytan will occupy the bow seat in the varsity 8+ shell this week when she and her teammates head to Georgia. Competition at Lake Lanier Olympic Park in Gainesville is set for Friday and Saturday.
 
"I truly think anything is possible. This boat has come together a lot and has been able to come together over the same goals," Gatmaytan said. "I think the focus we've been bringing the past few days will bring us there. We have our sights set on getting a trophy, and I truly think that's possible. We're excited to race."
 
Falcons head coach Kenzie Waltar, in her first year at the helm after serving the past two seasons as the lead assistant, is just as excited to race – and to have Gatmaytan in the big boat.
 
"Gem's a racer. She loves getting out there and competing, and she loves hyping people up," Waltar said. "She's a leader on the erg, a leader on the water, and has a great attitude. ... She's pretty small, but she's very powerful in that."
 
FROM SITTING AROUND TO SITTING IN A SHELL
Many college rowers don't actually become rowers until they get to college. They often have plenty of athletic background – just not in rowing.
 
Gem Gatmaytan definitely knew her way around a shell when she arrived at Seattle Pacific in the fall of 2022. After all, she had been sitting in one, such as it were, since seventh grade.
 
"My best friends at the time – there were three of us – we were doing absolutely nothing. My mom and their moms were sick of it," Gatmaytan recalled.
 
The Pocock Rowing Center, which is synonymous with the sport in the Seattle area (and located about three miles down the Ship Canal from SPU) had started a learn-to-row camp. Gatmaytan signed up … or rather, her mom signed her up. Ditto for the moms of her two best friends.
 
"It was just two weeks to commit to it, and my mom said, 'If you don't like it, you don't have to do it again," Gatmaytan said
 
"I always loved being on the water. So I said OK."
 
She hasn't stopped saying it ever since.
 
"I absolutely fell in love with it in those two weeks," Gatmaytan said. "Both of my best friends didn't want to do it anymore. I stayed and made some more new friends, and did my first fall season on the middle school recreation team."
 
It didn't take long for the diminutive Gatmaytan – even today at age 22, she's just 5 feet, 2 inches tall – to discover she was quite good at something she might never have tried on her own. The following spring, having moved up from the middle school recreation group to the competitive team, she rowed at the Northwest Youth Regionals down in Vancouver and came home with a gold medal.
 
"I had never won anything to get a medal before," she said. "I was like, 'Oh my gosh – I can do that. I did that! I've been chasing that feeling ever since.
 
"Being able to do that with a team in such close proximity is really special. Then I stuck with it, and here I am," she continued, adding with a smile, "because my mom made me do it."
 
RIGHT CONNECTION, RIGHT TIME
Gatmaytan continued rowing throughout high school, attending Bellevue's International School, across Lake Washington from Seattle. Pursuing rowing in college would have seemed like a natural thing for her to do.
 
Turns out she had to be talked into it.
 
"I'm 5-2, I hadn't been close to breaking eight minutes on my 2K (workout), which is kind of like a standard to have," she said. "But my coach back then (Helen Tilghman of Pocock) out of nowhere just said, 'Have you thought about rowing in college?' I said, 'No, why?' She said, 'I'm going to send a couple of e-mails.'"
 
One of those e-mails was to Caitlin McClain, head coach of the Falcons from 2021-25, now coaching with USRowing and a very close friend of Tilghman.
 
"I spoke to her, and Gem was the first person she could think of," McClain said "She said that Gem was out there in her single, always moving it well compared to her peers who on paper might look like they had more potential. We started communicating. The school fit Gem's needs, she had been a leader and loved rowing, and fortunately, she chose to come to SPU and keep rowing."
 
Gatmaytan was delighted with how everything gradually played out.
 
"That was something that was unexpected and it paid off beautifully," Gatmaytan said. "I'm so grateful to Coach Caitlin and to Helen that gave me this opportunity. It has been an incredible experience to prove to myself every single day that I'm so much stronger than I think."
 
GOLDEN FINISH
Right away as a freshman, Gatmaytan earned a seat in the varsity 4+ boat for the first three regattas. She moved up to the JV 8+ shell, and made that  trip to the 2023 NCAAs in New Jersey as one of Seattle Pacific's two spares.
 
As a sophomore in 2024, Gatmaytan became a regular in the bow seat of the varsity 8+, and stayed there …
 
… until the beginning of the week leading up to the NCAA nationals in Bethel, Ohio. Gatmaytan, Bella Lisenby, and Megan Rouse were switched from the eights to the fours. The only holdovers in the smaller boat from the Great Northwest Athletic Conference Championships two weeks earlier were coxswain Aleksia Haugen and bow Hannah Miller.
 
The new combo clicked immediately. They won their NCAA prelim heat by almost seven seconds, earning a spot in the next day's all-GNAC grand final against Humboldt, Western Washington and Central Oklahoma.
 
Seattle Pacific garnered the gold, beating second-place Humboldt by three-plus seconds.
 
"It was exhilarating," Gatmaytan said. "I think our program, being able to spearhead that history of our first national championship, was an incredible feeling. There was so much pressure. All of those boats and some of those people in the grand final had already gained a national championship before, so they knew they could do it. But for us, it was our first time."
 
First time in a grand final, and just their second time racing together.
 
"We had a target on our back," Gatmaytan said. "The night before at our visualization meeting, one of our coaches (assistant Gracie Hoidal) said, 'You keep talking about how nervous you are with that target. Don't even think about it, because 10 or 20 strokes in, you're going to be so far up, they won't be able to see you.' And it was true."
 
McClain wasn't at all surprised that Gatmaytan fit right in.
 
"The reality is Gem's ability to row any boat, any seat is a big part of her story," she said. "She is incredibly strong and skilled in her technique. There's always a mental and emotional piece to it, as well. That was a piece of the success of the four that year was their ability to work with the uncertainties, not totally sure of what was going to happen, but going to go out there to figure it out."
 
BOW BALL TO BOW BALL
Gatmaytan was back in the eights last year as a junior, typically in the No. 2 seat, helping SPU place fourth in the grand finals at NCAAs.
 
This spring, she has been a steady presence in the bow spot, where she has a clear view of not only how the Falcons are doing, but of how their opponents are doing, too.
 
"You shouldn't always be looking out of the boat. But when you do, it's cool to see if you're ahead or if you're down, especially in the bow," Gatmaytan said. "It's motivating to see that, 'OK, we need to take three more hard strokes.'"
 
What she also has seen this spring from her seat are a number of photo finishes.
 
--At the Falcon Regatta on the Ship Canal on March 21, SPU was just two-tenths of a second behind Western Washington for second place.
 
--At the Florida D2 Spring Invite on April 4, the Falcons prevailed in a three-way battle for second place, finishing their 2,000 meters in 6 minutes, 54.3 seconds. Humboldt was at 6:54.6, and Embry-Riddle was at 6:54.8. That made SPU the best of the D2 boats; the only shell ahead of them Vanderbilt, the lone D1 boat.
 
--At the Western Intercollegiate Rowing Association (WIRA) Championships on April 26, the chase for second place came down to Humboldt (6:57.781), Puget Sound (6:57.825) and Seattle Pacific (6:57.973).
 
"In Florida, we had that photo finish, but I knew we won," Gatmaytan said. "We had taken one big stroke and we were up at the finish line, but not everyone saw that. We advocated to our coach, she advocated to the other coaches that we (were ahead) because I was able to see that.
 
"There happened to be a coach that took a video and they took a screen shot of it, and it showed that we won."
 
Humboldt and defending national champion Embry-Riddle will be joining the Falcons in Georgia for this week's nationals, along with nine-time winner Western Washington, plus Thomas Jefferson of Philadelphia and Rollins of Winter Park, Florida. Western, Humboldt, and SPU are the top three seeds in the eights; the Falcon fours are seeded No. 5.
 
"This whole eight has been really jazzed the entire season," Gatmaytan said. "We recently found a lot more speed the last couple weeks and we were able to show that for the first time at GNACs (on May 16). That was one of our strongest performances since Florida."
 
Waltar is expecting more of the same this week.
 
"We've been duking it out with Humboldt and Western all year. Every race seems like it's a bow-ball to bow-ball situation," she said. "(At GNACs), the other teams had a pretty solid sprint, so we're trying to work on that and trying to improve that. It has been really close all year."
 
JUST CALL HER 'COACH'
Her college rowing career is down to its final few races: Friday's preliminary heats, a repechage heat if needed later in the day, and then either the grand finals or petite finals on Saturday.
 
"I never thought five years ago that I would be in this position," Gatmaytan said. "It's really hard to think that it's coming to an end. But I'd like to think I'm passing this legacy on to others."
 
One way she already has been doing that and could continue to do so is by coaching.
 
Gatmaytan started that pursuit through Camp Lucy, a free Pocock Rowing Foundation program geared toward and inclusive of middle school girls of all backgrounds, in particular those of color or those facing different socio-economic situations.
 
"I feel like being a coach was kind of built into me from when I first started rowing," she said. "Typically, bow seats are rowers who are smaller in stature, and since middle school, I've been in a bow seat. And if you don't have a cox, you're kind of the cox – steering, motivating your boat, and saying the race plan."
 
From her spot in the bow, Gatmaytan is seated behind all of her teammates, so none of them can actually see her during a race or during on-water practice sessions.
 
But they definitely know she's there.
 
"She'll knock-knock the boat, something that's kind of unique to our sport," Waltar said. "When a piece is good or if they felt really good during a break, she'll knock on the side of the gunnel. And then, the whole boat knows, 'Hey, that was good; that was awesome.'"
 
From her beginning at Camp Lucy, Gatmaytan moved on to coaching learn-to-row programs for high school and middle schoolers at Pocock, and this past year coached at Holy Names Academy, a Catholic all-girls school on Seattle's Capitol Hill.
 
"Inasmuch as I would love to be back in a boat after graduating, I definitely think I need a break (from that)," she said. "I can see myself coaching for a long while. Every kid deserves a team. We want to bring rowing and also just youth development to kids who otherwise wouldn't have it. It's absolutely a passion for me."
 
Part of that passion extends beyond rowing to her academic major of exercise science and to her work as president of Seattle Pacific's chapter of the Student-Athlete Advisory Council. For the second straight year, Gatmaytan earned a spot on the GNAC All-Academic team, with an ultimate desire to pursue a master's that would lead to a career in athletic training.
 
Even in that regard, she wants to work with young people, just as she does with coaching.
 
"As much as I love college students and even athletes older than that, I want to make sure I coach secondary students and younger groups," Gatmaytan said. "If they have that athletic coaching and athletic trainers who are giving them those opportunities to grow and find themselves through sport, I want to be that person for them."
 
The SAAC chapter that she leads here is wrapping up one of its busier years, with a focus on mental health, the organization of activities such as monthly movie nights and community service outreach such as Operation Christmas Child Boxes and working with the Ballard Food Bank.
 
But the favorite part of most days for Gatmaytan still revolves around rowing.
 
"We're a really fun boat," she said. "We just push off of each other and have a lot of fun outside of racing. We've done a lot of boat bonding, and we're good friends outside the shellhouse."
 
Now, they'll take that bond on a 2,650-mile journey from Seattle's Ship Canal to Georgia's Lake Lanier. When Gem Gatmaytan gets there, she won't be staying on the shore as a back-up.
 
She'll be stroking from her seat that's right up front.

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