2011 Ernestine Bayer Award

USRowing has announced the recipient of the 2011 Ernestine Bayer Award, Mayrene Earle, founder of MastersCoaching in 2002. The award, formerly known as the Women of the Year Award, is given in recognition of outstanding contributions to women’s rowing and/or to an outstanding woman in rowing and is selected by the female members of USRowing Board of Directors. Earle will be honored at the USRowing Annual Convention in Hartford, Connecticut, on 1-4 December.



“It’s quite an honor,” said Earle according to USRowing’s press release. “I’d like to think that I’ve contributed a lot to women’s rowing in the 30 to 40 years I’ve been doing it, particularly since I started this master’s coaching group.” She continued “Coaching for masters women isn’t a high priority on most coach’s lists in club programs, so they come to me for a little extra coaching. I’d like to think that I’m making a huge difference in their lives on the water as well as off the water.”

The Ernestine Bayer Award is named after Ernestine Bayer, who pushed her husband, Ernie Bayer, 1928 Olympic silver medallist in the coxless four, to allow her to row on the Schuylkill River in Philadelphia. There she founded one of the first women rowing clubs, the Philadelphia Girl’s Rowing Club. Bayer was the first woman inducted to the National Rowing Foundation’s Rowing Hall of Fame, and the first woman to receive the USRowing Medal. She died in 2006, at the age of 97.

Read more about Mayrene Earle and the The Ernestine Bayer Award here.