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Head Coach
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Schlenker enters her first season as the head coach of the Wisconsin varsity lightweight women's rowing program. The Oregon native inherits a program that has won two national championships in the last four years, including a varsity four national title in 2011 and 2012.
After spending the past four years coaching U-23 and senior athletes at the Craftsbury Outdoor Center in Vermont, including this year's World Rowing Championships in Trakai, Lithuania, Schlenker will look to build and maintain a traditionally dominant program with the experience she has attained as both an athlete and a coach.
Schlenker, a 10-time U.S. National team member and three-time World Silver medalist (1998, 1999 and 2000), has extensive expertise in the world of rowing after training and being mentored by a handful of prominent world-class coaches, including Igor Grinko (U.S. National Team Sculling Coach, 1993-1999), Hartmut Buschbacher (U.S. National Team Women's Coach, 1995-2000) and UW's own Bebe Bryans (World Rowing Championship Coach, 2002).
The former executive director and head coach at Lake Oswego Rowing was named the NYAC James M. Cooke Athlete of the Year Award in 2003 before joining the 2004 Olympic Lightweight Doubles team. Schlenker also garnered the U.S. Rowing Athlete of the Year award in 1999, just before being named an alternate rower for the U.S. during the 2000 Olympics.
Serving as a mentor for Sparks Consulting, Schlenker has had close contact with student-athletes over the past two years, advising high school-aged youths who were seeking recruitment from college and university rowing programs. Schlenker has also devoted much of her time to pre-elite and masters coaching in Portland, Ore., since 1999, designing individual training routines and executing rowing clinics.
