Student-Athlete Spotlight... 
Margaret Van Cleve
A first-year rower from Pittsburgh, PA, Margaret's rowing experience in high-school gave her the skill to land a spot on the varsity team.
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The Basics...
Sport: Varsity Crew
Position: Port (left side of the boat, for all non-rowers)
Year: First-year
- Hometown: Pittsburgh, PA
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Major: Undeclared
In-Depth...
- One word that best describes you: Gee….gingerrooted perhaps? I’m so bad at one word questions, I can never be concise enough to think of just one single word.
- Role model?Madeline Albright
- Favorite aspect about your team: How everyone is always so excited and nice. Going to practice is such a pleasure because everyone is happy to be there and all of the upperclasswomen take such an interest in the first years and work very hard to welcome and take care of us. It kind of feels like a family.
- What is your favorite thing to do before a race? Before the race I don’t have any sort of ritual, I just kind of chill and wait for the race to commence, they’re normally late and I’m normally impatient. My old coach would talk about conserving our “energy pie” so I was always afraid to exert myself too much. Our team always warms up by running or doing jumpies and then stretching together before we get the boat on the water. Rowing up to the start we always do drills that we have voted on.
- What is your dream job? I don’t really have one.
- If you could play any sport that you have never played before, what would it be? Racquetball, the goggles are enough to make me want to play, I obviously love wearing strange clothes to work out in because I’m normally decked out in crazy spandex. And racquetball looks like such fun.
- Goals for the team: To go to NEWMAC Championships!!!
- What are your plans when you graduate? Well, I hope to graduate. And then see where life takes me. Maybe back to the ‘burgh for a little, maybe to some sort of graduate school, maybe to an investment banker’s fabulous apartment. Really, I have no idea.
- Who is your favorite professional athlete? Honestly, I don’t really pay attention to professional sports. If I had one though, he or she would probably have red hair because it is the best.
- Where do you see yourself in 10 years? I really have no idea, but I hope to be employed, well fed, and still rowing!
- What do you want to know about the future? Nothing, I can’t wait to be surprised.
- What does success mean to you? In crew and in sports success is setting goals for yourself and completing them. Surprising yourself at how much power and strength you really have. Pushing yourself to your absolute physical limit and then reaching it and surpassing it. The best part of rowing is that you can feel yourself getting stronger and you can see your erg times drop. It’s so gratifying to see all the hard work start to pay off.
- What does it mean to be a student-athlete at Wellesley? Lots of admiration from fellow students, in high school people would comment that rowing wasn’t a “real sport” because they didn’t know we did more than simply sit in boats. Here, everyone seems so impressed with our early practices and our work ethic. I kind of feel like a celebrity, even though I’m far from it.
- Something about you that would surprise people: I used to want to be a Broadway star and applied to and was accepted at a performing arts high school. Then I decided it might not be the best path to take, so I stayed in regular high school and started rowing and forgot all about those other ambitions.
- Who is the team’s best dancer? I cant say that I’ve ever paid close enough attention, but now I certainly will.
- Nobody knows how much I like… Peanut Butter, well that’s a lie, I think everyone knows how much I like peanut butter.
Interview questions prepared by: Megan Wood '10
Missed one? Check out the archive: 2007-08 Student-Athlete Spotlights
