The Temple men’s crew team had not won a Varsity 8 gold at the Dad Vail Regatta since 2021.
Grace Crosby and her teammates were determined to change that.
Crosby naturally had the best view of how things were unfolding early last Saturday morning as the boat’s coxswain. Temple was in firm control through the race’s first 500 meters before La Salle made a late push.
As the Owls crossed the finish line behind a well-executed sprint sequence, Temple’s fans watching from the shore of the Cooper River erupted. They knew the Owls had won by three-tenths of a second ahead of the Explorers, but the crew didn’t want to celebrate prematurely.
“Usually you can tell by the end who crosses the bow or who crosses the finish first,” Crosby explained. “But if you look at pictures, there's a bunch of us that are like, ‘Did we win?’ I don't know. … There were loud cheers from the shores. We were like, I think we won, but I'm not sure.’”
So Crosby did something virtually no one else in any other sport could do in that moment. She picked up her phone and dialed her coach, Brendan Cunningham.
Crosby always has her phone on her for safety reasons and to record the races so she can continually work on her cadence.
This time, Crosby just needed to know:
Did we win?
“It was five seconds,” Crosby recalled. “I was like, ‘Did we win?’ He was like, ‘Yes, we won.’ Hung up. We immediately all started crying.”
The emotional win was one of three golds on the day for the Temple men’s crew team, as the second Varsity 8 and the men’s Freshman/Novice 8 also won their respective races. The Varsity 8 victory secured the Richard O'Brien - James Hanna Trophy for the 23rd time in the program’s history and vaulted them into the IRA National Championships, which will take place later this month on the Cooper River on May 30 through June 1.
Crosby, who rowed at Delaware’s Padua Academy before walking on at Temple, fell in love with the sport through her father, Jerry, and her two sisters, Jess and Teresa. Jerry rowed at Monsignor Bonner and later coached there while he attended Saint Joseph’s, while Jess became a coxswain at St. Joe’s and Teresa followed her to the Hawks as a rower.
As a guest on this week’s OwlScoop podcast, The Scoop, Grace recounted a memorable week that saw her graduate from Temple’s Klein College of Media and Communication and win a Dad Vail gold less than 48 hours later.
