Bates Bobcast Episode 188: Catching up with rowing's first All-American, Lisa Hamasaki '95

Today, the Bates rowing program is a national powerhouse, with the women having won four NCAA championships in the last five seasons and the men having become the first NESCAC program to compete at the IRA National Championships. Sporting a donor-funded boathouse on the Androscoggin River that is the envy of collegiate rowing, the Bobcat program is a force to be reckoned with. But Bates rowing has humble beginnings. In 1985, the Bates College Rowing Association was first established, before the college even owned a boat. Then it took until 1999 for rowing to become a varsity sport at Bates. On this week’s Bobcast, we take you back to the early ‘90s, when the program was first getting its feet wet. In 1995, men’s rowing coxswain Lisa Hamasaki '95 put the Bobcats on the map, becoming the first All-American in the program’s history. She joins the Bobcast to reflect on what first took her from California to Bates and what it was like being a coxswain in the time of wooden boats and a much-different Androscoggin River.