The crew season has recently started, and this year they welcomed new head coach, Kara McPhillips. A reading teacher at Jefferson Middle School, she previously coached at the University of Virginia and has been rowing since college.
“I coached at UVA for a while, and then after moving [to Arlington], I got involved with the team,” McPhillips said.
McPhillips graduated from the University of Virginia, and was a member of the rowing team. She became a coach because of her love for the sport.
“I started coaching after college,” McPhillips said. “After college, my head coach suggested that I come back and start coaching.”
Growing up, McPhillips was not super involved with rowing in high school because there was no girls’ team. She knew about the sport because her older brother rowed when he was in high school.
“Then, when I went to college, that’s when I was first on a competitive team,” McPhillips said. “I loved it right away.”
Ms. McPhillips would tell students that crew is an easily accessible sport e because no middle schools in the area have a crew program. She believes that students interested in crew should join because it is a great way to meet friends and succeed. The crew team starts racing in March, and their season will go through to the beginning of June.
“It’s one of the only sports that you can pick up in high school without having done it before, and [you can] become successful really quickly,” McPhillips said.
Wilson Desousa, a W-L graduate and an English learner instructional assistant, is the boy’s’ head crew coach. He graduated in 1996 and started coaching the men’s and women’s crew teams in 1998.
“I started initially [coaching] at W-L, and then I left and coached at Bethesda Chevy Chase High School and Yorktown High School and then came back to Washington-Liberty [High School],” DeSousa said.
DeSousa became interested in rowing when he saw other high school crew teams rowing on the Potomac River.
“My mom worked in Georgetown, and I would go with her to work, and I would see the boats going up and down the river,” DeSousa said. “I was interested and wanted to see what it was, and it looked like fun.”
DeSousa grew up in Arlington, but most notably in the Rosslyn-Courthouse area. He is a graduate of Marymount University.
“I went to Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Connecticut, at the start, and then I transferred to Marymount University in Arlington,” DeSousa said.
In his free time, DeSousa enjoys watching sports, especially professional soccer.
“I am a big avid sports fan, so I like to watch different sports, like soccer,” DeSousa said. “I’m also a big car guy, so I’m always reading up on all the various trends in the automotive world.”
This year, Dane Underwood, the school’s girls head crew coach, is in his 20th season of coaching crew. He previously coached at Oakton High School, but in 2018, Underwood moved to Arlington to coach at the school.
“I actually knew the men’s coach, and he reached out to me and told me they were looking for a new women’s coach at W-L,” Underwood said.
Underwood grew up in many places because he constantly moved as a kid. When he was a junior, he moved to Northern Virginia and graduated from high school there.
“I was a military kid, so I grew up all over,” Underwood said. “I moved around the country every two or three years.”
Before coming to Northern Virginia, Underwood did not know what crew was. He was a swimmer, and his friends from the swim team got him to try crew in the spring of his junior year of high school.
“I was a competitive swimmer since I was a little kid,” Underwood said. “When I moved to West Potomac High School as a junior, I had no idea what crew was.”
Underwood believes that any student can join crew. It does not matter if you are an eighth grader or a senior trying the sport for the first time.
“You can come out and be successful at any age level,” Underwood said. “Like we had a senior novice last year that came out and did great.”
