Fairfield will compete at the NCAA Championship for the first time in program history.
In a regatta that came down to the final race of the afternoon, the Fairfield Varsity 8 crossed the finish line first to win the 2025 Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference Championship this past Sunday on the Cooper River in Pennsauken, N.J.
This MAAC Championship is the first since 2000 for Fairfield Women’s Rowing. The Stags will compete at the NCAA Championship for the first time in program history.
The Stags tied with Jacksonville for first place in the team standings with 47 points; Fairfield’s victory in the Varsity 8 served as the tiebreaker.
"This is incredibly exciting, especially with a lot of teams in contention," said director of rowing David Patterson, PhD. "Year in and year out, we just work as hard as we can and put on the best performance. We have been close by coming in second a few times and in third a few times. We just needed something special to happen to get us to the top of the table and that happened today with the way the results panned out."
Patterson was named the MAAC Coach of the Year for the second time in his 18-year career with the Stags.
In addition to the win by the Varsity 8, Fairfield earned points via a third place finish from the Second Varsity 8 and a fourth place showing by the Varsity 4. Earlier in the day, the Second Varsity 4 placed third in a non-scoring race.
Fairfield was represented on the All-MAAC First Team by a quintet from the Varsity 8 boat: Victoria Conrad ’27, Catherine Morrissey ’25, Margaret Squire ’27, Arianna Welton ’25, and coxswain Alexandra Tomlinson ’26.
"I am so proud of the entire team," Patterson said. "The theme of the year has been ‘forged, resilient, built for life’ and we bought into that from the start. I can say without hesitation this team is built for life and created a memory that will live for the rest of their lives - the first Fairfield women's rowing squad to compete at the NCAA Championship.”
The 2025 NCAA Division I Championship will be held from May 30 to June 1 on Lake Mercer in West Windsor, N.J. The field is made up of 22 teams: nine earning automatic bids through conference championships and 13 receiving at-large bids.
