SEATTLE - Longtime U.S. National Team coxswain Yasmin Farooq has been named the head women's rowing coach at the University of Washington, UW director of athletics Jennifer Cohen announced today.
A two-time Olympian, Farooq, known as “Yaz,” comes to Conibear Shellhouse after 10 seasons as head coach at Stanford, where she won an NCAA championship in 2009. The Collegiate Rowing Coaches Association National Coach of the Year in 2009, she has also been named the CRCA West Region Coach of the Year in 2009 and the Pac-12 Coach of the Year in both 2008 and 2014.
“I am extremely excited to take the reins of such a storied program,” Farooq said. “Washington rowing has a long-standing history of excellence, and I can't wait to get to work to find out where we can take this team.”
Last month at the NCAA regatta at Lake Natoma, Farooq led the Cardinal to a fourth-place overall finish, one point ahead of the fifth-place Huskies. The Stanford varsity eight finished third in the grand final, just a couple of feet ahead of fourth-place Brown.
“This program is a source of great pride to many people, and after spending some time with Yaz, it didn't take long to realize she was the right fit to lead us into the future,” Cohen said. “Her resume speaks for itself, but the further we looked into her background, the more we realized that the work she has done echoes our core objectives of positively impacting student-athletes, building a championship culture, and uniting community.”
A 2014 inductee into the National Rowing Foundation Hall of Fame, for her eight-year career as a U.S. coxswain, the University of Wisconsin graduate has built a reputation for developing high-level rowers. Under her leadership, 14 of Farooq's rowers have gone on to compete at the under-23 or senior World Championships, including two Olympians, winning 27 medals, 15 gold.
A total of 28 Stanford rowers during her tenure have been named CRCA All-America. At Stanford, Farooq coached Elle Logan, an NCAA champion (2009), three-time world champion, two-time Olympic gold medalist (2008 and 2012, both in the U.S. eight) and the Pac-12 Women's Rower of the Century.
Also under Farooq, 138 Cardinal rowers have earned Academic All-Pac-12 and 74 have been named CRCA Scholar-Athletes.
Farooq served as a coxswain for the United States National Women's Eight from 1989 to 1996 and first competed at the Olympics at the 1992 Games in Barcelona. At the 1996 Games in Atlanta, she was the U.S. captain. As an international coxswain, she won three silver medals at World Championship regattas, in 1990, 1993 and 1994, and her international career reached its pinnacle in 1995, when her U.S. eight won the World Championship in Finland, the first-ever world title for a United States women's eight.
Farooq began her career as a coxswain as a freshman at Wisconsin in 1984, winning a national championship in the JV8 in 1986 and eventually serving as captain and earning team MVP honors as a senior.
A native of Waupun, Wis., Farooq has served as a television commentator for NBC Universal for the last four Olympic games and, along with her husband, has produced instructional DVDs for coaching coxswains. She earned a bachelor's degree in broadcast journalism from Wisconsin in 1988.
