McDermott Says Harvard to Launch National Search for Women’s Lightweight Rowing Head Coach in May

Harvard Athletics is planning to launch a national search for the next Harvard Radcliffe women’s lightweight rowing head coach in May, Athletics Director Erin McDermott said in a Wednesday interview with The Crimson.

McDermott said she expects to post the job by the end of the season and hopes to have a new coach in place by July, ahead of the fall.

“We haven’t actually posted it yet. We expect to do that as we get closer to the end of the season,” McDermott said. “It would be a national search.”

The vacancy follows the December resignation of former head coach Stacey Apfelbaum, who stepped down after discontent grew among team members over her coaching. Members of the team had intended to report Apfelbaum to Harvard Athletics last fall.

John Lindberg, an assistant coach last year, has led the team in the interim and guided the program to its first Class of 1999 Cup in six years at last week’s race.

McDermott declined to comment on the circumstances of Apfelbaum’s departure, calling it a “personnel situation.”

The search will extend beyond a traditional applicant pool, with the department proactively identifying candidates rather than waiting for applications, McDermott said.

“We certainly also try to be proactive around doing some research of who could be potential candidates, reaching out to some people, not just relying on who comes to us necessarily,” she said.

McDermott said that candidates will be evaluated on more than competitive success, emphasizing alignment with Harvard’s academic priorities and the broader student-athlete experience.

“It is always important that we are identifying and hiring people who really believe in this model, they really care about the full experience of our students,” she said.

She added that the department is looking for a coach who understands that athletes “are truly here to be at Harvard” to pursue academic goals alongside athletics.

“This isn’t about just being as competitive as possible. Of course, we like to be competitive. We like to win,” McDermott said. “But that’s not true if it’s with a coach who is not supporting that full nature of what we’re doing.”

McDermott said she wants a coach who functions as “a mentor and a teacher” and who treats the athletic experience as “more of a pressure release valve” than an additional source of stress for students.

The search comes two years after one of McDermott’s most recent national coaching searches, when players and alumni criticized the process and what they called a lack of transparency surrounding the hiring of football head coach Andrew Aurich. Players at the time had lobbied McDermott to hire an internal candidate, and some said they learned of Aurich’s selection through social media rather than from the athletic department.

McDermott said she plans to solicit input from the women’s lightweight rowing team throughout the process, including specific names to consider and the traits they value in a coach.

“I’ll meet with the team. We’ll talk about the process and what we expect that to entail, and I’ll encourage them to give us feedback,” McDermott said. “If there are certain people that they would like for us to consider, we always ask for them to send us that.”

She said she has been in conversation with the team throughout the year and described the department as “very receptive” to players’ accounts of their experience under the previous coaching staff.

McDermott described hiring head coaches as among her most consequential responsibilities as athletics director.

“I know how much that impacts the experience of the student athletes involved in that program and the health and longevity of that program,” she said.

—Staff writer Julia A. Karabolli can be reached at [email protected].

—Staff writer Tanya J. Vidhun can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her on X @tanyavidhun.