Tessa Haining
Squads
Boat Race History
- 2024 Oxford Women’s Blue Boat
About Tessa:
What course are you studying and what level?
MPhil Modern Languages
Why did you chose that course?
Words are how we narrate and experience the world around us, and what connect us to the thinkers who came before. It’s a great place to interweave reading, writing, thinking, and art.
When, where and why did you start rowing? And what do you love about the sport?
Started rowing in 2018 or so at my high school BB&N on the Charles River, then moved half a mile downriver to row at Harvard-Radcliffe for four years, with stints at Community Rowing and Union BC at either end of the river. I love sunny mornings, moving well, being outside, working just harder than you think you can go, and Welch’s Fruit Snacks.
What was your first rowing club and coach?
John Cotter at BB&N
What or who was the earliest sporting inspiration you remember as a child?
My dad used to drag me, kicking and screaming, on weekend runs to the library near my house and back – tough love, but without it, I probably wouldn’t have learned to make sport a consistent part of my life as it is today.
How has rowing and being part of the Boat Race squad impacted your life?
Couldn’t have asked for a more impactful, more hardworking group of people. That’s what makes the whole experience, win or lose – it’s the people.
If you weren’t a rower, what sport do you think you’d excel at?
Sheep herding. Or maybe velodrome.
What is your favourite non-academic book?
War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy (1869)
