Completed Event: Rowing versus ACC Championships on May 15, 2026 , , 7th/69 points
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DWR Origins: Maya Blake
4/7/2020 9:25:00 AM | Rowing
DURHAM, N.C. – The Duke rowing program is excited to introduce the "DWR Origins" feature segment, offering a look into how the current roster adopted the sport and what led to them competing for the Blue Devils.
This week's edition highlights junior Maya Blake, a native of Falls Church, Va., who helped Duke earn a silver medal in the 3V8 race at the 2019 ACC Championship as well as a silver in the V4 race at the 2018 ACC's.
Despite Blake's early success in the Blue and White, she was not always set on a rowing career in Durham. In fact, it took her until high school to be introduced to the sport, during a time when she was committed to her first love in athletics – basketball. When Blake's parents, Monica and Kevin, agreed to let her attend boarding school at Phillips Exeter in New Hampshire, the then-AAU standout thought her passion for hoops would be at the forefront throughout her high school career.
"At the time, I was invested in making the varsity basketball team," Blake said. "That was one of my main goals, to play varsity basketball my freshman year. I was training really hard for tryouts, so I wasn't really able to take any time off."
It had always been about basketball for Blake growing up. Her father had played, and she began in rec leagues when she was just five years old. From there, she joined travel teams and eventually competed in the Amateur Athletic Union, where she spent her middle school years traveling all over the east coast while making new friends.
"We traveled to Chicago, we traveled to Tennessee, we traveled to Florida," she said. "We would practice four times a week and play in tournaments on the weekends. So, when I went to boarding school, I was looking to play basketball because it had been such a year-round thing in my life up to that point."
In her first term at Exeter, Blake took a physical education course that featured different sports in two-week periods. During that class, she got to try her hand at water polo, volleyball, hockey and more, which served as her first introduction to what could be found outside of the basketball world she was so deeply immersed in. Blake asserted that she loved it, with the variety and novelty peaking her interest each time. Yet, when the winter sports season approached, the freshman's focus was solely on the hardwood.
"Once basketball season would come around, I got really into it, of course," Blake said. "After trying out, I made varsity, which I was really excited about, and the girls on the team – especially the seniors – became really easy to talk to. Basketball was definitely my biggest passion at that point. It was really difficult because I was pretty good on my team in middle school, and then once you get to high school, obviously it's a different game and you kind of beat yourself up a little bit because you're not the best anymore. It was kind of a good reality check, but at the same time, I was pretty successful in it, so that was a big confidence booster."
Becoming close with the seniors on the basketball team proved to be significant for Blake, even if the reason was unclear to her at the time. While staying in the same dorm as a few of the upperclassmen, she got introduced to Jessica Michaels, a senior coxswain on the rowing team who would go on to compete for Yale. Through building a relationship with Michaels, Blake first learned about the rigorous training that can be found in rowing, and even with its unfamiliarity keeping her at bay, she became more and more curious.
"[Jessica] was having a lot of success at Exeter," Blake said. "She was doing winter training for rowing and was working on things leading up to the season. She would talk to us about workouts and she kind of explained the sport to me, because I had pretty much never heard of it. It's kind of a thing in the D.C. area in high school, but since I didn't go to high school in my area, I had no clue. When she started talking to me about it, it sounded really interesting but I kind of told myself in my mind that I was never going to do it, because it did seem really intense with the way she described it. I was kind of intimidated by it because it was really foreign to me and it was something I knew I'd have to start from scratch, so I actually did not plan on rowing at all."
With Exeter requiring students to participate in a spring sport, Blake kept rowing in mind. However, a combination of it being so new to her as well as not wanting to put stress on her body after the basketball season led her to try out for the track & field team instead.
"I had thrown shot put before, so I was like 'I'm not used to it, but I've done it before,'" Blake said. "It was more familiar to me and less daunting. I also didn't want to fully immerse myself in a sport because at that point, I was really into basketball and I knew I wanted to play basketball as long as I could. So, I thought track and throwing shot put could be fun and not too taxing. The spring track team was also huge, so I knew it'd be an opportunity to meet a ton of people."
After making the team, Blake had figured the potential of her rowing would wither as a brief interest. Yet, after students returned from spring break, a familiar face pleaded with her to switch gears and at the very least give it a try.
"I came back and the senior in my dorm, Jess, kept saying 'I'm telling you – you should really do rowing,'" Blake said. "I figured it was too late. Rowing already had tryouts and I was already on the roster for another spring sport. I said I wanted to try it and she was like 'You can still do it. You can switch teams.' So, I emailed the JV coach for the rowing team and asked her about joining the team. I didn't think she'd say yes, but I thought I would try. I went to her office and she told me I could join."
After notifying the track coaches of her decision to switch sports, Blake's rowing career was born. She arrived at her first practice – a run test, because the New Hampshire rivers had not yet melted – and noticed how many fellow novices had joined the team with no prior experience as well.
"I had friends who were just trying it too, and then there were seniors who were well into it and recruited to certain colleges already, so I thought it was very cool that there was such a range of experience," she said. "I saw that the girls who were really good had also been novices as well, and it was pretty normal to get there as a novice."
It didn't take long for Blake to impress the coaching staff during erg workouts. She had learned the correct form, the ins and outs of the training regimen, and before she knew it she was moved up to the junior varsity group, where it would be determined whether she could keep up with a more advanced and experienced class.
Her first day in the JV group consisted of a test to see how fast each rower could reach 2,000 meters on an erg machine. For Blake, perhaps it was a more relaxed mindset due to the unfamiliarity that allowed her to reach an impressive benchmark in her first go.
"The other girls were like 'We have a 2k' and kind of freaking out, and I was like 'What's a 2k?,'" she said. "I didn't really know how far I had gone on an erg before. With the novices, it was kind of like 'Just go on for 10 minutes.' So, they did a 2k erg and I went 7:50 on my first 2k. I remember the coxswain was yelling at me because she was encouraging me, telling me to 'break eight,' and I had no idea what that meant. She was like 'You're going to break eight.' I was like 'Okay,' and I just kept going."
Blake got her first taste of the physical stress she would endure as a rower, adding, "When it was over, I was exhausted because it was my first 2k and it was crazy. My JV coach was like 'That was amazing. You broke eight and that's great.' Then, I realized I went 7:50 and broke eight, and that was what other girls were striving to do."
She never made the jump up to varsity that season, but was told by the varsity coach to try out for a U.S. Rowing camp that summer so that she could keep improving while her interest in the sport grew. Blake's application for the camp was accepted, along with fellow Exeter teammate and current Duke senior, Kiernan Spencer.
"I just got really into it that summer," Blake said. "I rowed at the camp for two months. I had gotten a lot better because of the camp, so then it just kind of got the ball rolling and then once you were a sophomore, there was a fall rowing program, so I just went straight into rowing again."
In spending three consecutive calendar seasons dedicated to rowing, Blake had found her passion. She realized just how much she came to love the sport when it eventually surpassed her excitement for basketball.
"That's how it kind of transitioned to becoming more serious," she said. "For me, it just became really fun really fast once I got a grip of what I was doing. I was able to control my speed and control myself in the boat. Basketball was kind of a grind because I had been doing it for so long. I was learning things, of course, but it wasn't so fast like rowing was, and that was really exciting for me. I think it was kind of refreshing to do a sport that was so different."
As her dedication for the sport blossomed, she became more and more attractive to the nation's top programs. While competing in a rowing hotbed like New England, Blake did her research on Ivy League schools as well as local colleges that could offer her high-level competition. However, although her surrounding environment would suggest not traveling too far, Duke offered intriguing possibilities, including the chance to reunite with an Exeter teammate.
"I didn't know anybody who went to Duke to row until Kiernen went," Blake said. "When Kiernan left, we were pretty close – I was a junior and she was a senior. She was really excited about it, so I think that was when Duke became a possibility. High school was a really great experience and I loved the people I went to high school with, but for me, I wanted a different four years."
Spencer would be Blake's host on her official visit to Duke. That weekend, Blake was able to pick her brain and observe how much Spencer loved being a part of the Blue Devil family. Additionally, she was able to explore what would become her future home, and it didn't take for the enchantment of campus to captivate her.
"I had never visited Duke's campus. I think when I got on campus, I was just so impressed," Blake said. "Duke is so pretty and I walked to the Duke gardens, and I was just like 'Oh my God, this place is unreal.' It was just overwhelming how beautiful campus was. It was just the perfect weather, too, when I came to visit. Everything really fell into place. It was like a picturesque official visit."
After meeting the coaching staff, Blake felt more at ease about her looming decision.
"I met the coaches and they were great," she said. "They were super helpful during the official visit, and afterwards they were really positive and really helpful with the decision. They were really understanding of the fact that it is a really hard decision for kids to make coming out of high school. A lot of coaches make it feel really high-stakes and really intense, but they were super understanding. They weren't laid back about it, but they understood it was a hard decision for me and they gave me time and space to make a good decision on my own, and I really respected that."
When she returned to Exeter, Blake had her mind made up. The Duke campus and its proximity to home offered all that she could ask for, and being a member of a top-20 program made it nearly impossible for her to look elsewhere. Yet, as Blake puts it, choosing Duke went beyond her athletic goals.
"It was kind of a bigger decision than rowing for me," she said. "It seemed like a good place for me and a good fit for me. I knew that with a program with as good of an infrastructure as Duke's, you could make it whatever you wanted."
#GoDuke
This week's edition highlights junior Maya Blake, a native of Falls Church, Va., who helped Duke earn a silver medal in the 3V8 race at the 2019 ACC Championship as well as a silver in the V4 race at the 2018 ACC's.
Despite Blake's early success in the Blue and White, she was not always set on a rowing career in Durham. In fact, it took her until high school to be introduced to the sport, during a time when she was committed to her first love in athletics – basketball. When Blake's parents, Monica and Kevin, agreed to let her attend boarding school at Phillips Exeter in New Hampshire, the then-AAU standout thought her passion for hoops would be at the forefront throughout her high school career.
"At the time, I was invested in making the varsity basketball team," Blake said. "That was one of my main goals, to play varsity basketball my freshman year. I was training really hard for tryouts, so I wasn't really able to take any time off."
It had always been about basketball for Blake growing up. Her father had played, and she began in rec leagues when she was just five years old. From there, she joined travel teams and eventually competed in the Amateur Athletic Union, where she spent her middle school years traveling all over the east coast while making new friends.
"We traveled to Chicago, we traveled to Tennessee, we traveled to Florida," she said. "We would practice four times a week and play in tournaments on the weekends. So, when I went to boarding school, I was looking to play basketball because it had been such a year-round thing in my life up to that point."
In her first term at Exeter, Blake took a physical education course that featured different sports in two-week periods. During that class, she got to try her hand at water polo, volleyball, hockey and more, which served as her first introduction to what could be found outside of the basketball world she was so deeply immersed in. Blake asserted that she loved it, with the variety and novelty peaking her interest each time. Yet, when the winter sports season approached, the freshman's focus was solely on the hardwood.
"Once basketball season would come around, I got really into it, of course," Blake said. "After trying out, I made varsity, which I was really excited about, and the girls on the team – especially the seniors – became really easy to talk to. Basketball was definitely my biggest passion at that point. It was really difficult because I was pretty good on my team in middle school, and then once you get to high school, obviously it's a different game and you kind of beat yourself up a little bit because you're not the best anymore. It was kind of a good reality check, but at the same time, I was pretty successful in it, so that was a big confidence booster."
Becoming close with the seniors on the basketball team proved to be significant for Blake, even if the reason was unclear to her at the time. While staying in the same dorm as a few of the upperclassmen, she got introduced to Jessica Michaels, a senior coxswain on the rowing team who would go on to compete for Yale. Through building a relationship with Michaels, Blake first learned about the rigorous training that can be found in rowing, and even with its unfamiliarity keeping her at bay, she became more and more curious.
"[Jessica] was having a lot of success at Exeter," Blake said. "She was doing winter training for rowing and was working on things leading up to the season. She would talk to us about workouts and she kind of explained the sport to me, because I had pretty much never heard of it. It's kind of a thing in the D.C. area in high school, but since I didn't go to high school in my area, I had no clue. When she started talking to me about it, it sounded really interesting but I kind of told myself in my mind that I was never going to do it, because it did seem really intense with the way she described it. I was kind of intimidated by it because it was really foreign to me and it was something I knew I'd have to start from scratch, so I actually did not plan on rowing at all."
With Exeter requiring students to participate in a spring sport, Blake kept rowing in mind. However, a combination of it being so new to her as well as not wanting to put stress on her body after the basketball season led her to try out for the track & field team instead.
"I had thrown shot put before, so I was like 'I'm not used to it, but I've done it before,'" Blake said. "It was more familiar to me and less daunting. I also didn't want to fully immerse myself in a sport because at that point, I was really into basketball and I knew I wanted to play basketball as long as I could. So, I thought track and throwing shot put could be fun and not too taxing. The spring track team was also huge, so I knew it'd be an opportunity to meet a ton of people."
After making the team, Blake had figured the potential of her rowing would wither as a brief interest. Yet, after students returned from spring break, a familiar face pleaded with her to switch gears and at the very least give it a try.
"I came back and the senior in my dorm, Jess, kept saying 'I'm telling you – you should really do rowing,'" Blake said. "I figured it was too late. Rowing already had tryouts and I was already on the roster for another spring sport. I said I wanted to try it and she was like 'You can still do it. You can switch teams.' So, I emailed the JV coach for the rowing team and asked her about joining the team. I didn't think she'd say yes, but I thought I would try. I went to her office and she told me I could join."
After notifying the track coaches of her decision to switch sports, Blake's rowing career was born. She arrived at her first practice – a run test, because the New Hampshire rivers had not yet melted – and noticed how many fellow novices had joined the team with no prior experience as well.
"I had friends who were just trying it too, and then there were seniors who were well into it and recruited to certain colleges already, so I thought it was very cool that there was such a range of experience," she said. "I saw that the girls who were really good had also been novices as well, and it was pretty normal to get there as a novice."
It didn't take long for Blake to impress the coaching staff during erg workouts. She had learned the correct form, the ins and outs of the training regimen, and before she knew it she was moved up to the junior varsity group, where it would be determined whether she could keep up with a more advanced and experienced class.
Her first day in the JV group consisted of a test to see how fast each rower could reach 2,000 meters on an erg machine. For Blake, perhaps it was a more relaxed mindset due to the unfamiliarity that allowed her to reach an impressive benchmark in her first go.
"The other girls were like 'We have a 2k' and kind of freaking out, and I was like 'What's a 2k?,'" she said. "I didn't really know how far I had gone on an erg before. With the novices, it was kind of like 'Just go on for 10 minutes.' So, they did a 2k erg and I went 7:50 on my first 2k. I remember the coxswain was yelling at me because she was encouraging me, telling me to 'break eight,' and I had no idea what that meant. She was like 'You're going to break eight.' I was like 'Okay,' and I just kept going."
Blake got her first taste of the physical stress she would endure as a rower, adding, "When it was over, I was exhausted because it was my first 2k and it was crazy. My JV coach was like 'That was amazing. You broke eight and that's great.' Then, I realized I went 7:50 and broke eight, and that was what other girls were striving to do."
She never made the jump up to varsity that season, but was told by the varsity coach to try out for a U.S. Rowing camp that summer so that she could keep improving while her interest in the sport grew. Blake's application for the camp was accepted, along with fellow Exeter teammate and current Duke senior, Kiernan Spencer.
"I just got really into it that summer," Blake said. "I rowed at the camp for two months. I had gotten a lot better because of the camp, so then it just kind of got the ball rolling and then once you were a sophomore, there was a fall rowing program, so I just went straight into rowing again."
In spending three consecutive calendar seasons dedicated to rowing, Blake had found her passion. She realized just how much she came to love the sport when it eventually surpassed her excitement for basketball.
"That's how it kind of transitioned to becoming more serious," she said. "For me, it just became really fun really fast once I got a grip of what I was doing. I was able to control my speed and control myself in the boat. Basketball was kind of a grind because I had been doing it for so long. I was learning things, of course, but it wasn't so fast like rowing was, and that was really exciting for me. I think it was kind of refreshing to do a sport that was so different."
As her dedication for the sport blossomed, she became more and more attractive to the nation's top programs. While competing in a rowing hotbed like New England, Blake did her research on Ivy League schools as well as local colleges that could offer her high-level competition. However, although her surrounding environment would suggest not traveling too far, Duke offered intriguing possibilities, including the chance to reunite with an Exeter teammate.
"I didn't know anybody who went to Duke to row until Kiernen went," Blake said. "When Kiernan left, we were pretty close – I was a junior and she was a senior. She was really excited about it, so I think that was when Duke became a possibility. High school was a really great experience and I loved the people I went to high school with, but for me, I wanted a different four years."
Spencer would be Blake's host on her official visit to Duke. That weekend, Blake was able to pick her brain and observe how much Spencer loved being a part of the Blue Devil family. Additionally, she was able to explore what would become her future home, and it didn't take for the enchantment of campus to captivate her.
"I had never visited Duke's campus. I think when I got on campus, I was just so impressed," Blake said. "Duke is so pretty and I walked to the Duke gardens, and I was just like 'Oh my God, this place is unreal.' It was just overwhelming how beautiful campus was. It was just the perfect weather, too, when I came to visit. Everything really fell into place. It was like a picturesque official visit."
After meeting the coaching staff, Blake felt more at ease about her looming decision.
"I met the coaches and they were great," she said. "They were super helpful during the official visit, and afterwards they were really positive and really helpful with the decision. They were really understanding of the fact that it is a really hard decision for kids to make coming out of high school. A lot of coaches make it feel really high-stakes and really intense, but they were super understanding. They weren't laid back about it, but they understood it was a hard decision for me and they gave me time and space to make a good decision on my own, and I really respected that."
When she returned to Exeter, Blake had her mind made up. The Duke campus and its proximity to home offered all that she could ask for, and being a member of a top-20 program made it nearly impossible for her to look elsewhere. Yet, as Blake puts it, choosing Duke went beyond her athletic goals.
"It was kind of a bigger decision than rowing for me," she said. "It seemed like a good place for me and a good fit for me. I knew that with a program with as good of an infrastructure as Duke's, you could make it whatever you wanted."
#GoDuke
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