GOOD KALL: Emily Kallfelz competes in the U.S. women’s 4 in action this spring. Kallfelz, a 2019 Princeton grad, will be making her debut in the Olympics later this month when she rows in the 2024 Paris Games. (Photo by Row2k, provided courtesy of USA Rowing)

By Justin Feil

Emily Kallfelz had a great excuse to miss Princeton University Reunions in this May.

The 2019 Princeton graduate was in Lucerne, Switzerland, securing a spot in the U.S. women’s 4 boat to row in the Paris 2024 Olympics, no small achievement given her ups and downs over the last five years.

After emerging from her Princeton crew career with a bright future, a serious injury caused her to miss rowing during the Tokyo 2020 Olympics qualifying cycle and after a slow, patient build and switching rowing disciplines, Kallfelz has made the U.S. team for her first Olympic Games.

“It definitely makes it mean more knowing all that I went through,” said Kallfelz, 27. “I sometimes look back at my training and my notes and say, ‘Oh my gosh, wow.’ It really has been quite a journey. That definitely makes it a little bit more meaningful to me at least.”

Kallfelz was on top of the world when she graduated from Princeton. She was named the USRowing U-23 Female Athlete of the Year for the second year in a row and was one year away from trying to make the U.S. Olympic team for the first time. But almost as soon as the calendar hit 2020 — even before the COVID-19 pandemic shut down the world — Kallfelz was shut down when she tore discs in her lower back.

“Just overused injuries that I didn’t appropriately take time away to heal from,” said Kallfelz. “It was actually during the last Olympics cycle that I ended up having to take about a year and a half off.”

Kallfelz couldn’t row from January 2020 until November 2021. It was demoralizing for Kallfelz, who had taken up the sport at the urging of her parents, both former rowers, in high school and been an instant sensation. Her high school didn’t have a team, but she represented her family and herself well as she won the Head of the Charles in the single sculls and set a course record in 2014, then in 2015 won the Youth Nationals in both singles and doubles, winning doubles with her sister, Eliza. Her strong support at home helped her get a solid foundation in the sport.

“I was lucky that I also had my dad around and he was coaching me,” said Kallfelz. “I pretty much learned how to row on the erg (ergometer rowing machine). He would sit next to me on the erg in our attic for like 90 minutes every morning and just coach me every single stroke. And so once I got into a boat, it was less of like taking the training wheels off in a lot of ways.”

Kallfelz also sailed and swam, but her rowing numbers put her immediately on the radar of college coaches and she took her talents to Princeton. She blossomed into a two-time All-American, four-time All-Ivy League rower, and three-time member of Ivy championship Tiger teams. Her final two years, she was the U-23 US Rowing Athlete of the Year, and at that point seemed to be on track for her first Olympics in 2020.

“I was training with Gevvie Stone (a former Princeton standout) and Cicely Madden (former Brown star) and all these quite amazing athletes,” said Kallfelz. “It was a bit of a shock, I would say, to suddenly be like, ‘this is not actually going to reached because I can’t be doing this for right now.’”

Kallfelz was severely limited in what she could do during the time that her back healed. The world wasn’t doing much due to the pandemic, but she was doing even less.

“There were periods of time where I couldn’t even walk for more than 30 minutes without being in a ton of pain,” said Kallfelz.

Returning to rowing was always in the back of her mind, but the level to which she could return was in question. It depended which doctors or physical therapists she asked.

“Some of them were saying, you could probably come back. Others were saying, it’s pretty unlikely that you’re going to be able to row at a high a high level again,” said Kallfelz. “At that point I was working pretty much full-time and then the rest of my time was spent doing PT. I would work with a physical therapist in Boston about three times a week, and I’d be doing about four hours of PT on my own every day.”

Kallfelz’s focus was on movement therapy and trying to rebuild her strength. She had to retrain the muscle groups so integral to stabilizing her spine — obviously of major importance if she was to row again.

“The mindset was just trying to not have too many expectations for myself,” said Kallfelz. “I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to, even if things went really well, be able to actually, like, row.”

And the way she looked when she resumed her training, she still wasn’t too sure. She started biking and it was slow. She watched video of herself rowing in her return, and she had to fight off comparing herself too much to her old self.

“I looked like a novice out there, like ‘What is happening? This is terrible,’” said Kallfelz. “And just getting back into erging incredibly slowly. And just having to face the fact that I’m not where I want to be and there is a huge gap between where I am and where I want to be. That’s kind of a brutal reality to step into.”

Two months after she started rowing, however, Kallfelz got a boost of confidence. After pulling 2,000- and 6,000-meter times that were more than 10 seconds slower than her personal bests, she came in second in the B final of a USRowing trials race. At that point, she was still doing long, low intensity workouts on the bike and just her higher intensity workouts in the boat and so the result had her thinking more optimistically.

“I’m not training as full out as I could,” said Kallfelz. “So hopefully I could be at some point and I wasn’t getting completely demolished, so maybe things are looking up.”

After so much time off from training, the issue was more in her fitness. She worked to build that up as she resumed more regular training. She was pushing the envelope between regaining fitness as quickly as possible and trying not to reinjure herself. When she was starting, she was fortunate to get in 600 minutes of training in a week. Last month she was averaging 1,500 minutes per week. She had to closely monitor her back.

Kallfelz had thought differently before her injury. She was very outcome-oriented. She was “devastated and crushed” when she didn’t win the U23 single world championship in 2019 coming off third- and second-place finishes the two previous years. Silver wasn’t good enough.

“That was understandable to be upset about not winning, but I think I lost sight of the important parts of things a little bit,” said Kallfelz. “I was a little bit more focused on what I thought I should be able to do.”

Going through an injury that almost cost her her career changed her thinking and her approach to the sport. She is more process-oriented and focused on making incremental improvements — the same way she approached each day as she climbed back to being an Olympian.

“I do think I have a different mental approach to everything now and different mindset that I think has helped me and will it continue to help me more throughout the rest of my career,” said Kallfelz. “So maybe a little bit of a blessing in disguise if you can. If you can believe that.”

In the midst of her comeback, Kallfelz made another major change. She had raced a lot of singles where a rower is sculling with two oars each, then did four years of sweeping in an eight at Princeton. After returning from injury, she worked in a single a lot, was in a quad sculling again, and was in a pair rowing with Texas product Kait Knifton. She had placed 11th in the quadruple sculls at the 2023 World Rowing Championships. She was fifth in the double sculls and seventh in the quadruple sculls at the 2023 World Rowing Cup II, but after it the USRowing high performance coach suggested she return to sweeping.

“It was a huge transition back to sweeping, one that I don’t think is super common,” said Kallfelz. “You don’t really see a lot of flip flopping around last minute from scull going to sweep or vice versa, but the four has been tons of fun. I kind of forgot. I’ve been rowing a lot of singles by myself and kind of forget what it’s like to train with a group and the camaraderie and the entertainment and the energy makes things a lot more bearable. It’s a lot more fun.”

Knifton is also in the Olympic four boat as the stroke, Mary Mazzio-Manson is third seat, former Tiger star Kelsey Reelick ’14 is second seat, and Kallfelz is in bow. They qualified for the Olympics when they placed third at the World Rowing Cup II in Lucerne. Only Reelick was in last year’s four that placed fourth at the 2023 World Championships. With a retooled lineup, the U.S. is hoping for better in Paris.

“We’re kind of new to the whole Olympic rowing thing and I think we all are pretty process-oriented,” said Kallfelz. “Honestly, we’re trying to just focus on right now slogging through training. There’s a lot of it and we’re just trying to focus on making each day a little bit better. That’s what we did at World Cup II. We decided that we just wanted to make each race just a little bit better than the one before it. So that’s kind of what’s pushing us now as well.”

Kallfelz may have missed reunions, but she has been back near her Princeton college roots since March for training. The women’s team has been working out at Mercer Lake in preparation for the Olympics. It’s a full commitment. Kallfelz has worked in tech start-up companies, but quit her last job to focus on training. She now works part time with Broadridge Financial Solutions through a program with USRowing. She is balancing the work and training and looking forward to her first Olympics, and hoping it’s not her last.

“I would be shocked if I was done,” said Kallfelz. “I’m really enjoying it too much to want to be done right now. Whether I make it a whole four years is a whole other question. My back still isn’t perfect, so that’s a factor.”

Kallfelz is determined to make the most of every chance that she has. Paris is next. It has been a long road to get there, slower than she wanted, and she hasn’t forgotten her journey as she relishes her first trip to the Olympics.

“All of that slogging through work to get back to full intensity and thinking that I was actually not really ever going to be able to do that it, I think it does make it that much more satisfying,” said Kallfelz. Obviously the work isn’t over, because we have to go actually and hopefully do well.”

That would be quite a tale for the next reunions.