Completed Event: Rowing versus ACC Championships on May 15, 2026 , , 7th/69 points
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Final
Rowing
vs ACC Championships
DWR Alumna Spotlight: Katherine Maitland
4/10/2020 2:34:00 PM | Rowing
DURHAM, N.C. – This week's Duke rowing Alumna Spotlight features 2018 graduate Katherine Maitland, who earned a CRCA second-team All-America selection as well as two first-team All-ACC distinctions in her career.
Maitland helped lead the varsity-8 boat to three appearances in the Grand Final race at the ACC Championship and ended her career by helping the Blue Devils take third place with 72 team points at the 2018 ACC's. A native of London, England, Maitland currently studies medicine at Oxford University, where she competes for the Oxford Women's Boat Club. Prior to its cancellation due to the spread of COVID-19, she was preparing to take part in The Boat Race, an annual race on the River Thames between Oxford and Cambridge University.
While the cancellation of the event presented its own disappointment, she remains immersed in the sport that brought her oversees for her undergraduate years. According to Maitland, the training regimen she has undergone at Oxford reveals many disparities than what she experienced at Duke, but she still relies on her time in Durham to offer a different perspective and style to a British team.
"It's very different than U.S. college rowing, that's for sure," Maitland said. "It made me grateful for the four years I had at Duke actually, and I kept thinking back to all the things that we'd done with Megan [Cooke Carcagno] and with the team, and missing it partly but also wanting to bring that to the UK setup. The two are very different, but I kept trying to find parallels and trying to find ways that I could bring that American spirit to the UK, because British people are quite reserved whereas – I don't know if you've ever been in the Duke erg room when people are doing an erg test – but people will yell."
Perhaps it was that difference that gave Maitland a substantial culture shock when she stepped on campus in the fall of 2014, despite her prior notion that the U.S. and England share much in common.
"I remember thinking 'It won't be that different. They speak English over there – it will be fine," Maitland said. "Then, I got there and I was like, 'What is this place?' Everyone is so friendly. The people at the grocery stores were like 'Have a good day now,' and you're like 'Okay, I will.' You don't really get that here."
Even if an adjustment period was needed for Maitland, she quickly embraced everything about Duke, from the rowing program to her pursuit of a Bachelor's degree in Biology. Her commitment to her studies earned her All-ACC Academic status three years in a row. After taking a gap year following her graduation, Maitland is noticing a contrast in academics that is on par with the rowing-related distinctions that awaited her when she came to the U.S. nearly six years ago.
"I think maybe the transition of going from the gap year to studying again was a lot harder," she said. "In the U.S., I think they were a lot more forgiving academically in terms of schedules and stuff. I could schedule my classes so that it wouldn't conflict with practice as much as possible. I think I had one where I had to miss some practice or something, whereas now they're a lot less accommodating."
Maitland says that her longtime goal has been to compete in the Olympics. That dream is not dissolved, even with this summer's games postponed. However, the 24 year-old now feels that her fascination in medicine, particularly its hands-on application that she gets to experience, has provided new aspirations that go well beyond athletics.
"I think this year, getting to be a bit more involved in medicine, and get to actually go in the wards and meet patients and talk to people and see how much of an impact I can have – doing that as my career has made it more difficult to choose which one I want to do now," Maitland said.
With added free time due to a government-enforced lockdown in the UK, Maitland has taken up running, saying that she hopes to be in similar cardiovascular shape to what was expected of her as a member of Cooke Carcagno's program. She recalls a lot of her time as a Blue Devil with deep appreciation, but rather than remembering the meets themselves, what Maitland misses most is being around the team each day and being able to relish in the team spirit that has proven tough to come by since her senior season.
"There was that phase where people were putting their game face on for Instagram challenges," she said. "I put on some ugly pictures of me rowing and my friend, Sarah Fletcher, who was on the team, was like 'I think you're forgetting this,' and sent me a screenshot of me when I broke seven, which is quite a special memory and Megan actually filmed it. I have a copy of the film and it's just me pulling this horrific face. Around, you can see everyone in the erg room just shouting and yelling and getting really into it, and they look almost like they're more in pain than I am. I've got lots of memories like that in the erg room, just somebody coming up to you and saying that you can actually do it. It's something that you miss in the UK setup."
According to Maitland, many of the rowers in her graduating class remain in close contact. She follows the program on social media and still feels like a large part of its progress, likely because she remembers what it took to build the foundation under Cooke Carcagno. Despite her decision to attend Duke largely centering around her individual development, it was easy for Maitland to embrace the team's familial nature while the coaching staff tried to convince them what possibilities lied ahead.
"I originally came over because of the facilities and the way that I knew I could develop my rowing," she said. "But I really liked the vibe of the university and the girls on the team. I knew that it would be somewhere that I could develop my rowing and then take it where I wanted to take it. It wasn't necessarily about competing with other schools. Maybe more in the latter years when Megan and the coaching staff kind of opened our eyes a bit to what our potential was. It was actually like 'We can be on par with teams like Virginia,' who in my first year seemed untouchable."
The class of 2018's contributions are undeniable. A group that featured Maitland, Fletcher and seven others helped take Duke rowing from a middling program in the ACC to one that consistently finds itself ranked in the national polls and battling for conference supremacy. And while Maitland admits to a level of regret and disappointment felt following her last ACC Championship, she now holds her career in a different retrospect, where the effort that was put into making the group better outweighs any end result.
"I think I cried a lot at ACC's because we wanted to get the NCAA bid," Maitland said. "But it's not something that I look back on now and I'm disappointed at. At the time, I was absolutely gutted that we didn't get to go to NCAA's again, because we managed it in my sophomore year and then were trying ever since to recreate that performance that we had at ACC's. I was absolutely gutted that we couldn't do it, but now two years later, I look back on it and it doesn't make me sad that we didn't do it because I think back about all the hard work that we put in and the outcome really was out of our control."
As the current team looks to realize the championship aspirations that Maitland helped establish, her advice is to not allow them to get carried away in it – something that she wishes she told herself when she was giving her all for the program she loves.
"Maybe there's a more nuanced way to say it, but just to chill out a little bit," she said. "Rowing was my life. I cared about my degree, but I really, really cared about rowing. I think I found it quite stressful when people weren't doing things the way I wanted to do it. I think this is something I've reflected on a lot this year, is just being a bit more in control of what you're doing and worrying less about what other people are doing. That actually, I think, make you happier and calmer and more fun to be around – trying to use what you're doing to bring out the best in other people rather than worrying about what they're doing or trying to change someone."
#GoDuke
Maitland helped lead the varsity-8 boat to three appearances in the Grand Final race at the ACC Championship and ended her career by helping the Blue Devils take third place with 72 team points at the 2018 ACC's. A native of London, England, Maitland currently studies medicine at Oxford University, where she competes for the Oxford Women's Boat Club. Prior to its cancellation due to the spread of COVID-19, she was preparing to take part in The Boat Race, an annual race on the River Thames between Oxford and Cambridge University.
While the cancellation of the event presented its own disappointment, she remains immersed in the sport that brought her oversees for her undergraduate years. According to Maitland, the training regimen she has undergone at Oxford reveals many disparities than what she experienced at Duke, but she still relies on her time in Durham to offer a different perspective and style to a British team.
"It's very different than U.S. college rowing, that's for sure," Maitland said. "It made me grateful for the four years I had at Duke actually, and I kept thinking back to all the things that we'd done with Megan [Cooke Carcagno] and with the team, and missing it partly but also wanting to bring that to the UK setup. The two are very different, but I kept trying to find parallels and trying to find ways that I could bring that American spirit to the UK, because British people are quite reserved whereas – I don't know if you've ever been in the Duke erg room when people are doing an erg test – but people will yell."
Perhaps it was that difference that gave Maitland a substantial culture shock when she stepped on campus in the fall of 2014, despite her prior notion that the U.S. and England share much in common.
"I remember thinking 'It won't be that different. They speak English over there – it will be fine," Maitland said. "Then, I got there and I was like, 'What is this place?' Everyone is so friendly. The people at the grocery stores were like 'Have a good day now,' and you're like 'Okay, I will.' You don't really get that here."
Even if an adjustment period was needed for Maitland, she quickly embraced everything about Duke, from the rowing program to her pursuit of a Bachelor's degree in Biology. Her commitment to her studies earned her All-ACC Academic status three years in a row. After taking a gap year following her graduation, Maitland is noticing a contrast in academics that is on par with the rowing-related distinctions that awaited her when she came to the U.S. nearly six years ago.
"I think maybe the transition of going from the gap year to studying again was a lot harder," she said. "In the U.S., I think they were a lot more forgiving academically in terms of schedules and stuff. I could schedule my classes so that it wouldn't conflict with practice as much as possible. I think I had one where I had to miss some practice or something, whereas now they're a lot less accommodating."
Maitland says that her longtime goal has been to compete in the Olympics. That dream is not dissolved, even with this summer's games postponed. However, the 24 year-old now feels that her fascination in medicine, particularly its hands-on application that she gets to experience, has provided new aspirations that go well beyond athletics.
"I think this year, getting to be a bit more involved in medicine, and get to actually go in the wards and meet patients and talk to people and see how much of an impact I can have – doing that as my career has made it more difficult to choose which one I want to do now," Maitland said.
With added free time due to a government-enforced lockdown in the UK, Maitland has taken up running, saying that she hopes to be in similar cardiovascular shape to what was expected of her as a member of Cooke Carcagno's program. She recalls a lot of her time as a Blue Devil with deep appreciation, but rather than remembering the meets themselves, what Maitland misses most is being around the team each day and being able to relish in the team spirit that has proven tough to come by since her senior season.
"There was that phase where people were putting their game face on for Instagram challenges," she said. "I put on some ugly pictures of me rowing and my friend, Sarah Fletcher, who was on the team, was like 'I think you're forgetting this,' and sent me a screenshot of me when I broke seven, which is quite a special memory and Megan actually filmed it. I have a copy of the film and it's just me pulling this horrific face. Around, you can see everyone in the erg room just shouting and yelling and getting really into it, and they look almost like they're more in pain than I am. I've got lots of memories like that in the erg room, just somebody coming up to you and saying that you can actually do it. It's something that you miss in the UK setup."
According to Maitland, many of the rowers in her graduating class remain in close contact. She follows the program on social media and still feels like a large part of its progress, likely because she remembers what it took to build the foundation under Cooke Carcagno. Despite her decision to attend Duke largely centering around her individual development, it was easy for Maitland to embrace the team's familial nature while the coaching staff tried to convince them what possibilities lied ahead.
"I originally came over because of the facilities and the way that I knew I could develop my rowing," she said. "But I really liked the vibe of the university and the girls on the team. I knew that it would be somewhere that I could develop my rowing and then take it where I wanted to take it. It wasn't necessarily about competing with other schools. Maybe more in the latter years when Megan and the coaching staff kind of opened our eyes a bit to what our potential was. It was actually like 'We can be on par with teams like Virginia,' who in my first year seemed untouchable."
The class of 2018's contributions are undeniable. A group that featured Maitland, Fletcher and seven others helped take Duke rowing from a middling program in the ACC to one that consistently finds itself ranked in the national polls and battling for conference supremacy. And while Maitland admits to a level of regret and disappointment felt following her last ACC Championship, she now holds her career in a different retrospect, where the effort that was put into making the group better outweighs any end result.
"I think I cried a lot at ACC's because we wanted to get the NCAA bid," Maitland said. "But it's not something that I look back on now and I'm disappointed at. At the time, I was absolutely gutted that we didn't get to go to NCAA's again, because we managed it in my sophomore year and then were trying ever since to recreate that performance that we had at ACC's. I was absolutely gutted that we couldn't do it, but now two years later, I look back on it and it doesn't make me sad that we didn't do it because I think back about all the hard work that we put in and the outcome really was out of our control."
As the current team looks to realize the championship aspirations that Maitland helped establish, her advice is to not allow them to get carried away in it – something that she wishes she told herself when she was giving her all for the program she loves.
"Maybe there's a more nuanced way to say it, but just to chill out a little bit," she said. "Rowing was my life. I cared about my degree, but I really, really cared about rowing. I think I found it quite stressful when people weren't doing things the way I wanted to do it. I think this is something I've reflected on a lot this year, is just being a bit more in control of what you're doing and worrying less about what other people are doing. That actually, I think, make you happier and calmer and more fun to be around – trying to use what you're doing to bring out the best in other people rather than worrying about what they're doing or trying to change someone."
#GoDuke
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