s a child in Toronto, Canada, senior lightweight rower Caitlyn Kukulowicz said her parents — like most others in the surrounding area — gave her two athletic options: learn to play hockey or learn to figure skate.

“My parents put me in both hockey and figure skating lessons,” Kukulowicz said. “I think my dad wanted me to play hockey, and my mom wanted me to figure skate. Eventually, I gravitated towards figure skating. I loved that it had this combination of artistry and athleticism.”

More than 15 years later, Kukulowicz’s main athletic pursuit is still contested on water. But now, instead of gliding on blades across the frozen water of indoor arenas before a panel of judges, she rows on the serene waters of the Charles River with the Harvard-Radcliffe Black and White.

Childhood Olympic Dreams

After choosing figure skating over hockey as her main sport, Kukulowicz quickly improved in a country where the sport is highly competitive from a young age. Despite the many opponents she faced, Kukulowicz had a clear figure skating goal from the time she began.

“I had Olympic aspirations from a pretty young age,” she said. “I wanted to go to the Olympics and represent Canada.”

Kukulowicz continued to tirelessly compete in the sport. She explained that before coming to college, she often missed school to skate, practicing both before and after class.

While her skating did not earn her a spot in the Olympics, Kukulowicz began to rack up top finishes once she reached the senior divisions in high school. In 2022, she won Ontario’s junior sectional championship and competed with the Canadian national team twice. She earned a silver medal at the 2023 Skate Milwaukee and was also a 2024 senior Ontario bronze medalist.

Despite her illustrious high school career, Kukulowicz was forced to come to terms with the lack of a competitive figure skating team at Harvard. She continued to train and compete, but ran into struggles with logistics and finding rinks around the city with open ice time.

“I was waking up super early to bike to rinks all over Boston and try to get my training in before my 9 a.m. classes and going back to the rink later in the evening,” she reflected. “It was definitely challenging to balance that with my pre-med course load.”

As conflicts with her difficult academic schedule continued to arise, Kukulowicz was forced to turn to other options.

“I missed a lot of school for competitions, and I sort of felt like I was missing out on the Harvard experience. One of my goals growing up was to come here, and I kind of felt like I had to pick one or the other,” she said. “After freshman year, I kind of took the summer to reevaluate the skating and the school. I still loved skating, but I didn’t really want to sacrifice another year of the Harvard experience to keep doing it. So I thought, what if I took a step back from this and maybe did something else?”

It did not take long after Kukulowicz stepped away from her longtime sport for another opportunity to present itself.

‘I learned to really love the sport of rowing’

Shortly after Kukulowicz made the decision to reduce her commitment to figure skating, she ran into one of her roommates who was on her way to a rowing walk-on info session. She tagged along and quickly became intrigued with the idea of joining the Harvard-Radcliffe lightweight team.

“I started wrapping my head around the idea of being on a Harvard team, and I just thought it sounded really cool,” she said. “It was kind of hard because I was an athlete in my freshman year, but I didn’t represent Harvard or get that team experience. I thought it would be really special to join a group on campus that was also working really hard and committed to something.”

It didn’t take long for Kukulowicz to grow attached to her new community.

“When I went to the boathouse, I could really see that the people on the rowing team were super passionate, committed to these goals, hardworking, and proud to represent Harvard-Radcliffe,” she said. “So I tried out for the team. I fell in love with it, and fell in love with the energy in the boathouse.”

“What I love most about it is that I now get to chase these goals with my teammates and these women who are so inspiring,” Kukulowicz added. “I learned to really love the sport of rowing as well, and all there is about it.”

As she began to pick up the ins and outs of rowing, Kukulowicz quickly came to appreciate how her substantial experience as a figure skater could also aid her on the Charles.

“I think that the mental toughness I developed through skating helps me a lot in rowing,” she said. “There’s a lot of pressure that comes with skating out and being in front of nine judges and all these people who expect perfection from you, and I kind of learned how to deal with that pressure and those nerves. It’s kind of similar to when you’re sitting on the start line of a race, and you don’t want to let the people in your boat down.”

She also noted how some of her characteristics, such as a high work ethic, pay off more on the water than on the ice.

“I feel like one of my strengths is I like to work really hard and try really hard, which didn’t always help me in figure skating, but it does pay off a lot of the time in rowing,” Kukulowicz said.

Nonetheless, she quickly recognized that hard work off the water is not all it takes for success in rowing. Kukulowicz also believes that the understanding of rhythm that she picked up in her time figure skating helps her work in sync with her teammates on the water.

“If you put eight people on a boat who are just pulling as hard as they possibly can with no regard for anything else, that boat is not going to run very well,” she said. “There’s this rhythm that a crew can develop, that when everyone is moving perfectly in time with each other, there’s sort of like a relaxed element. It looks easy.”

“You’re moving perfectly in time with one another, and you don’t have to think so much,” she added. “You just feel it. You feel the rhythm, you feel the stroke, and I think that’s kind of where the art comes in.”

‘One of the coolest things I’ve ever done in my life’

Kukulowicz has seamlessly settled into her new team, racking up successful finishes in the time she has already spent competing.

In her sophomore spring season, the Canadian served as the stroke on the Knecht-Cup-winning novice 4+ boat and the 2V4+ in a victory over BU and MIT, while winning silver at Georgetown and bronze at Princeton. She capped it all off at the 2025 IRA National Championship Regatta, where she and Julia Maciejak ’26 powered their way to a gold medal in the doubles boat.

Kukulowicz’s success continued into her junior year, when she earned bronze at the Eastern Sprints in lightweight four, silver at the Knecht Cup in the lightweight 4+ A, and finished fifth in the V4+ at the IRA National Championships.

Now, Kukulowicz will prepare for one of the few rivers she has yet to medal on — and the one she practices on every day — as she gets set to row for the second time in the Head of the Charles.

“I really can’t wait until next week,” Kukulowicz added excitedly. “I think some of us describe it as the Christmas of rowing; you count down every day until it happens.”

“And I think we’re in a really great place. We’ve been working really hard. The team has been so united, and I’m just excited to go out and see what we can do.”

The jump from the rink to the river and the success that’s come with it has not been lost on Kukulowicz. Last year, when she first rowed in the Head of the Charles regatta, she remembers the gravity of the moment hitting her all at once.

“It was honestly one of the coolest things I’ve ever done in my life,” Kukulowicz recalled. “It was a full-circle moment, because I came into Harvard thinking I knew exactly what my experience would be like. I’d be balancing skating and school, and that would be that. But now, I get to join this crazy legacy of rowing at this school.”

“I’m aware of how cool it is that I came here and got to join this special club,” she added. “I really do feel lucky for that. Racing Head of the Charles kind of puts all those things into perspective, which is really great. And the fact that I get to do this iconic race and be in the boat with my teammates that I care a lot about makes it all the more special.”

For the 2025 Head of the Charles, Kukulowicz sat in the two seat of the lightweight four. The boat finished 10th with a time of 18:23.740.

While boat assignments have not yet been released this year, she hopes to improve her finish this weekend in the first regatta of the fall season.

Despite the amount of success and memories Kukulowicz has had as a rower, she was still reluctant to commit to which sport is her favorite.

“I feel really lucky that I’ve gotten to do both at a high level,” she reflected. “They’re so different, but so similar at the same time. I love them both a lot, and I think that they’re gonna be a huge part of my life from now on.”

—Staff writer Maxwell P. Friedman can be reached at [email protected].

—Staff writer Samuel S. Rudavsky can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on X at @samrudavsky.