Washington Adds four to Coaching Staff
The University of Washington Huskies have added Quinn Klocke and Michael Grady as assistant coaches for the men’s rowing team and Brooke Mooney and Maddie Wanamaker as assistants on the women’s team beginning with the 2024-25 season.
On the men’s side, Klocke comes to Washington after three seasons as head coach of the Notre Dame men’s club rowing team. Klocke coached the Fighting Irish to their first ever ACRA National Championship in 2024. While at Notre Dame, Klocke coached seven ACRA All-Americans and three ACRA All-Freshman athletes. He was named ACRA Great Lake Regional Coach of the Year in 2023.
Grady joins the Husky men’s rowing coaching staff as a Cornell University 2019 graduate, the 2024 USRowing Male Senior Athlete of the Year, a two-time Olympian, and a Paris Olympic Gold medalist in the men’s four.
“I actually started coaching at Oakland Strokes shortly after the pandemic,” said Grady. “I really enjoyed working with the athletes. For me getting into coaching now is a pretty easy transition. I want everyone to recognized that they have more in them. If you can realize your potential and break through limits, it does something special to an athlete’s brain.”
On the women’s side Wanamaker knows all about breaking limits as a two-time Olympian who made her first senior national team in 2018 in the women’s four that won gold at the World Championships.
“I’ve known I wanted to coach for a long time,” recalled Wanamaker. “In college I fell in love with rowing, and I’ve always loved working with young people so it’s kind of a no-brainer for me to go into coaching and stay around the sport to give back some of the opportunities that I had. It’s exciting to be at Washington because they have such a robust walk on team, and I walked on to the University of Wisconsin when I was a freshman in college. It’s great to be at a program where I can help other people have that opportunity.”
Mooney, who began rowing as a senior in high school, graduated from Washington in 2018 and was named first-team All-America and Pac-12 Rower of the Year her senior year. She is the current overall women’s heavyweight 2,000-meter world record holder on the C2 erg with a time of 6:21.1 and was in the U.S. eight that finished fourth at the 2020 Olympics.
“A couple of years ago I was training with the national team in Princeton, New Jersey,” remembered Mooney. “I’d just gotten back from the Tokyo Olympics, and I had just injured my shoulder. I was really wanting something else to do. I reached out to one of the local high schools and I ended up starting to coach them. I was talking to Yaz [head Washington women’s rowing coach, Yasmin Farooq] and heard of the opening. I’m really excited to be back and coaching the athletes that are the next generation of Huskies. I’m hoping I can share some wisdom and help them learn to love rowing in college and for the University of Washington.”
Wanamaker, Mooney and Grady are focused on making the Huskies faster. When it comes to their own rowing careers and trying for another national team as Grady puts it, “never say never.”
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