THE FIRST STROKES
From Insecure & Overweight to Olympic Champion
Think of any sport, and Lindsay played it growing up. She was a driven athlete, a good student, and a happy teenager. But when she went to college, everything changed. Because she did not believe she was a college-caliber athlete, she quit sports altogether. She gained weight, skipped classes, her drive was gone. Ultimately, Lindsay lost her way and did not know how to get back on track.
After a sleepless night and a fateful turn of events, Lindsay made the decision to change. By complete chance, on one sunny Saturday morning during her third year at the University of Virginia, she bumped into the then-head coach of the rowing team, Kevin Sauer. It was during that chance encounter that he suggested Lindsay join the team. Although she had never rowed before and did not know how far rowing could take her, she took Kevin up on his offer and joined the team one month later.
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From her first day of practice forward, the sport became an outlet for personal growth and ultimate transformation, one that guided her toward becoming her best. Within one year, Lindsay became an NCAA Division I All-American. In two more years, she made her first US National Team. The year after that, she and her teammates broke the world record, winning their first World Championship Title, the first of an 11-year streak for the US Women...Two years later, Lindsay and her teammates made Olympic history.
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Most importantly, rowing exposed Lindsay to a lifetime of knowledge, experience, and friendship for which she is eternally grateful.​
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Discover the full truth, the raw grit, quiet devotion, and internal landscape of elite performance in Lindsay's debut memoir, Better Great Than Never.
Read it? Loved it? Reach out, I'd love to hear them! Please also consider leaving a review on Amazon and Goodreads.
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Trial By Fire
THE VOICE BEHIND THE MIC.
Educational & Motivational Speaking
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Public speaking used to scare me. So much so that I once dropped a class to avoid it. But that was a long time ago...
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Shortly after I returned home from the Beijing Olympic Games, I was invited to an event celebrating Excellence in the Community. My hometown's local chapter of The United Way was the host. It was the first big event in my hometown following my return, so I was excited about the invitation. I was told that, as an honored guest, I could even invite a few people to attend with me.
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In the days leading up to the event, I envisioned sitting down to share a nice meal with my family, my college coach, and his wife. A special thank you for being instrumental in the incredible journey my life has become.
However, in the final days before the event, when I received a phone call from The United Way's representative, my vision of the evening changed.
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"I think we should meet to review what you will speak about during the banquet," the woman told me over the phone.
Upon hearing her words, my heart sunk. My stomach turned. My face flushed. And...I grew angry. I had not planned to speak. I had never spoken in front of a large group before. And I had certainly never done so on such short notice.
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It was too late though. I could not back out...
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The next day, when I met with the woman from The United Way, she better explained the theme for that year's banquet. Instantly, the theme clicked in my mind--her words resonated exactly with the story of how rowing had entered my life. I knew what I had to do: stand up in front of 350 strangers and tell my story--
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As I stood on stage on the night of the banquet, I stared out at what seemed to be a million strangers. My nerves welled and my heart pounded. So I took a deep breath and focused on what I knew--the story.
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Shortly after I finished speaking, a former executive VP of my alma mater approached my dad and told him, "Not only is she an Olympic athlete, but she's an Olympic speaker too."
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Two weeks later, I was fortunate enough to speak before Johnson & Johnson's global heads of HR. A few weeks after that, they invited me back to speak before another meeting.
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Ever since the night of my headlong, trial by fire dive into public speaking for The United Way, I have not turned back. I have shared stories with groups of all sizes, ages, and purposes, both in-person and virtually.
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From meetings for major corporations to live commentary for USRowing to assemblies consisting of hundreds of elementary schoolers, public speaking in the form of story-telling has become (along with empowerment through coaching and education) one of my passions. ​
Turn Possibility Into Reality
THE VOICE BEHIND THE MEGAPHONE
Row, Move, & Think Like a Champion.
Elite Rowing & Performance Coaching, Educational & Motivational Speaking
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When I retired from my own elite competitive rowing career, a friend said to me that she had learned to, "Never be greedy with knowledge."
Not one day has passed that I have not kept her comment close at heart.
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As I have continued to grow as a coach, author, and speaker in the years since, I have had the incredible honor of coaching hundreds of athletes--including middle- and high- school, college, masters, pre-elite, elite, Olympic and Paralympic, rower and non-rower alike--toward discovering and growing in their own unique possibilities.
In the process, every group has seen a reduced incidence of injury and a stark improvement in performance and wellbeing. There have been hundreds of personal records, and dozens of state, regional, conference, and national achievements, plus innumerable unmeasurable advances.​
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