2025 Coach of the Year: Yale’s Will Porter

As Yale’s first varsity eight locked in at the start of the Division I grand final of the 2025 NCAA National Championship Regatta on New Jersey’s Mercer Lake to race the heavily favored ACC champions from Stanford, plus Big 10 champs Washington, SEC champs Texas, Tennessee, and Brown, the Eli women had an advantage.

Before the race, their coach, Will Porter, had instructed them to execute a risky strategy: Go out fast and row hard to grab an early lead, then hang on against the fastest NCAA crew ever. (Known also as “fly and die” when it doesn’t work.)

It worked. Yale blasted out of the start, surprising the field, and in terrible conditions that make moves even more difficult, put in long powerful strokes that kept them in the lead all the way to the finish.

“Watching that race, someone made the comment that they thought they were gonna get caught,” recalled Syracuse head coach Luke McGee. “I whipped around, and was like, ‘There’s no way. There’s too much talent, too much skill that he helped build, for that to happen.’”

“He” is Will Porter, the Yale women’s rowing head coach for 25 years, and the 2025 Rowing News Coach of the Year.

“He’s the best, most unrecognized rowing coach in the country. What the hell?” said Yale lightweight coach Andy Card, who has coached in the same boathouse as Porter since 1999. “Will was a men’s heavyweight coach first, and his crews were good, too!

“Drop Will into any boathouse and have him coach men or women, doesn’t matter, that boathouse will be a winning one in short order.”

Stanford earned the 2025 NCAA title, decided by team points, with the Cardinal second eight and varsity four each winning their events at the championship regatta. Stanford’s first varsity eight had been the fastest all spring, beating both Texas and the Canadian National Team (the Olympic silver medalist, albeit with a very different lineup) by open water in April.

They were undefeated in the regular season and won the ACC championships by sweeping the regatta on Lake Hartwell in Clemson, S.C. in May, with no one coming within five seconds of their NCAA boats, and the first varsity turning in a record time of 5:58.6—the fastest NCAA eight, ever.

But Porter had been developing his group through two- and three-crew cup races every weekend throughout the spring

“We have that tri race with Yale and Cornell and Syracuse. He’s a big proponent of keeping those cup races going in the tradition of the sport,” McGee said. “Even when we’re competitors, he’s always got time for discussing ideas, a willingness to talk and to share, which is certainly appreciated.

“Since I first started coaching women, he’s been super supportive. But he’s a real competitor. He makes boats go really fast, and I know every time you race against him, you get the full measure of it. Hard to beat, that’s for sure. We got close once, but definitely, definitely hard to beat.”

Stanford won its Friday heat at the NCAAs and its Saturday semifinal, going a second faster than Yale’s winning time in the other semifinal. For the grand final, racing was rescheduled for early Sunday morning in an attempt to avoid the worst of the windy weather, but the water was rough, whipped up by a stout and gusty tailwind. It was race-able—if only just—in conditions that compress finishing times and margins, something Porter recognized, and took advantage of, to win the race of the day.

“It’s Mercer,” Porter said. “Getting a margin is important, and it’s hard to come back” in such rough water and with such fast times—Yale went 6:08 for the win, an NCAA regatta record, despite the rough water.

Length and power were the keys to Yale’s success in the grand final, Porter said. “Some athletes can do it, some athletes can’t row with that much length” to sustain a lead taken aggressively from the start.

“Will obviously did a great job developing that group,” McGee said.

“Will keeps it simple but not simplistic,” Card said. “Since rowing demands high fitness, technical skill, and mental toughness, that is what he expects from each of his rowers and coxswains on the water daily. He’s matter-of-fact about it, just gives ’em the information they need, and his best crews—that is, most of his crews—act on that decisively.

“Will is the first to say that good rowers make good coaches, not the other way around, and that’s true,” Card said. “Will is good at finding good rowers and bringing out their best.”

“We knew the final would be a drag race and we wanted to be part of it,” Porter said. “It’s one of those things you need to have the fitness base to give you the confidence to really send it, and we did. I am proud of them.”

HONORABLE MENTIONS

A few short years ago, at the 2022 Eastern Sprints, Harvard’s lightweight men finished seventh of nine teams in the Jope Cup points standings, with the varsity second to last in the petite finals. Some supporters of the program were asking if it was time to move on from coach Billy Boyce, who had been the head coach since 2016, following five seasons as an assistant on the heavyweight staff.

They were wrong; it wasn’t.

It might have been time for more training volume and other adjustments made by Boyce and associate head coach Ian Accomando. It was also the last time the Crimson lights weren’t competitive, peaking in 2025 with a second consecutive undefeated season at Eastern Sprints and the IRA national championships, followed by the program’s first-ever Temple Challenge Cup victory at Henley Royal Regatta. Boyce’s lightweights added wins in the lightweight four and eight at the Head of the Charles to round out the year.

Lily Siddall coached the Tufts women to back-to-back NCAA Division III national championships, winning both the first and second eights at the 2025 regatta. Read more about her in our feature story beginning on page 44.

Just about all Washington coach Michael Callahan has done since being named last year’s Rowing News Coach of the Year is continue to win. A defeat against archrival Cal at the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation (successor to the Pac-12) championship after Washington’s dramatic come-from-behind win in the Schoch Cup set up a much-anticipated third meeting at the IRA national championships. White-cap conditions in the semifinal caused a crab that kept Cal from advancing to the grand final, which Callahan’s Huskies won, again.

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