Two-time National Coach of the Year Lori Dauphiny will enter her 23rd year as the head coach of women’s open crew in 2019, and she has led the Tigers to an unprecedented era of success over her career. Under Dauphiny, Princeton has won two V8+ NCAA Championships and nine Ivy League crowns, and the Tigers will enter the 2018 season having won 61 of its last 65 Ivy League dual races.
The success has been incredible this decade. Since a magical 2011 season, when Princeton went undefeated and won its second NCAA V8+ championship, the Tigers have won six of the last eight Ivy League championships. Over the last three years, Princeton has both shocked reigning No. 1 boat Brown to win the Ivy title (2016) and capped a perfect regular season with a Cooper River record-setting, wire-to-wire win for a second straight title (2017).
Last year, Princeton went 12-1 in the regular season, including a perfect 7-0 in the Ivy League, and won a third straight Ivy League team title. The 1V returned to the NCAA grand final for the first time since 2013 and placed fifth overall, three spots higher than the boat’s seed.
While there isn’t much that Dauphiny hadn’t already accomplished in her career, she did experience some history during the 2014 season. Princeton repeated as Ivy champion for the first time in her career — she would do so again from 2016-2018 — and the Tigers did so in thrilling fashion against a Brown crew which was also ranked No. 1 nationally at the time.
That followed a 2013 season, when Princeton won the Ivy League championship, placed second in the V8 final at the NCAAs and placed third in the NCAA team competition.
The 2011 NCAA title was Princeton’s second in a six-year span. In 2006, she put together one of the greatest college crews in NCAA history with a squad that went undefeated and won the national championship by open water. Her crew in 2011 was equally dominant, going 13-0 in the regular season and then sweeping both postseason competitions.
Princeton’s performance at the 2011 EAWRC Championships (the final year before the Ivy League Sprints) was as impressive as any in recent history. Not only did the open women win their 11th Eastern title, but Princeton swept the 2V, V4 and 3V competitions as well. While the varsity eight placed first at the NCAA Championships, the team also added a fourth-place finish; in 16 NCAA Championship appearances, Princeton has been among the top four six times.
Dauphiny has also placed several recent rowers in major international competitions, including a historic showing in the 2012 London Games, when five Princeton alumni competed. Three earned medals in the W8+, including two-time Olympic gold medalist Caroline Lind ’06. Lind was also part of the U.S. gold medal-winning 8+ at the 2008 Summer Olympics. Both Andreanne Morin ’06 and Lauren Wilkinson ’11 earned silved medal with the Canadian 8+. Stone and Wilkinson returned to the 2016 Rio Games, and they were joined by Kate Bertko ’06, another member of the historic 2006 NCAA championship team.
A multiple-time Mid-Atlantic Coach of the Year, Dauphiny led the Tigers to a magical three-year run of 2004-06, when Princeton won an NCAA title and two Eastern championships and reached the grand final at the 2004 Royal Henley Regatta. Her squad advanced to the final of the Remenham Challenge, where it fell to the Thames Rowing Club and University of London. She returned to Henley in 2011 with her EAWRC/NCAA champion V8.
Dauphiny, who also worked with the 2004 U.S. Olympic Team, was named head coach of women’s crew at the conclusion of the 1996 season after leading the novice program to five straight Eastern Sprints titles. She was named EAWRC Novice Coach of the Year in 1993 and 1994 and Varsity Coach of the Year in 1997, 2004, 2006 and 2011. She was also named Woman of the Year by USRowing in 2006, an award given in recognition of outstanding contributions to women’s rowing. Prior to her arrival at Princeton, Dauphiny spent two years at Columbia coaching the women’s novice crew.
A 1985 graduate of Washington, she enjoyed an outstanding collegiate career that included a second-place finish at the 1984 National Collegiate Rowing Championships. She also was a three-time winner at the Pac-10 Conference championships, the West Coast’s equivalent of the Eastern Sprints. Dauphiny twice won gold medals for the U.S. at the Canadian Henley.
Dauphiny has spent summers since 1997 working with the U.S. national team and coached the pair and lightweight double at the 2004 Olympics.
