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SRINAGAR
Call her Yaz. “Everybody does,” says Yasmin Farooq, a two-time Olympian who was announced as the new head women’s rowing coach at Washington on Wednesday.
After coaching the Stanford women’s program the past 10 years and winning an NCAA championship in 2009, Yasmin on Monday accepted Washington’s offer to become the long-term replacement for Bob Ernst.
In late November, Ernst was abruptly dismissed after 41 years following complaints by some athletes to UW administrators about his coaching style.
The Huskies were coached this season by interim head coach Conor Bullis, a five-year UW assistant, who interviewed for the position on June 3. Washington finished fifth at the NCAA championships last month, one point behind fourth-place Stanford.
Yasmin, 50, spent eight years (1989-96) as coxswain for the US national team and competed in the 1992 and 1996 Olympics, serving as captain in ’96.
Besides being having served as Head Coach, Women’s Rowing at University of Washington, she trained athletes Stanford Athletics.
A Broadcast Journalism media graduate from University of Wisconsin-Madison, she worked with NBC Olympics as Rowing Analyst.
A resident of Stanford, California, she did her schooling from Waupun High.
She rowed collegiately at Wisconsin, her native state, and has been named national coach of the year (2009) and Pac-12 coach of the year twice, (2008 and 2014). She has been a rowing commentator for NBC at the last four Olympics.
She was not thinking about UW until mid-May, near the Pac-12 Championships, when she got a call from Erin O’Connell, president of rowing’s national governing body, US Rowing. O’Connell was the athletic director at Seattle Pacific and a former UW coxswain (1993-96) and a UW assistant coach under Jan Harville.
“I was flattered,” said Yasmin, whose father is a native of Kashmir in northern India. “It sounded like a few people had been talking about who would be good candidates, my name came up and she called me.”
After some internal debate, Yasmin came to Seattle for a May 31 interview when she met many administrators, including new athletic director Jennifer Cohen,
“When I met with her, I knew she was dead serious about the importance of the position and the importance of the program,” Farooq said.
And what is the future for Bullis?
“I would be more than happy to talk with Conor,” Yasmin said. “I think he’s a really good coach, and he did a lot given the situation that he had, for sure. … The most important thing is to do whatever needs to happen for this team to move forward.”
Cohen offered words of praise for Bullis through a university spokesperson on Wednesday: “I would like to thank Conor Bullis for his service as interim head coach. He worked tirelessly to serve our student-athletes and was the ultimate professional throughout his tenure in the position.”
(The story first appeared in The Seattle Times which was later modified and some more information about the subject was added.)
