"ruined my experience with the sport "

"Playing favorites and loves an underdog story. Got an impression he does not believe in his athletes."

"I rowed for Dave Sanderson for one semester. During my time here my entire class of about 14 considered transferring. 5 quit after one semester and only 4 from my class ended up completing 4 years of rowing here. I have never been bullied so badly by girls in my life. I had brought this up to the coaches and they seemed a little concerned, but nothing ever was done about it. Before I came to the U bullying on the team was so bad that girls were kicked off. When I brought up how mean the girls were to a therapist on campus she was like oh yea, I've heard about the rowing girls. I was a relatively new rower with a lot of potential. As a walk on with little to no experience I was putting up numbers that were better than girls there on huge scholarships. Because I weighed more than most I'd get ranked at the bottom each week since they classified EVERYTHING by weight. Once I was put in one of the lower boats and another coach told us we were in that boat because we were fat and out of shape (this was my first time ever on the water). One girl on our team developed an ED so bad that she lost 50ish pounds. She got most improved that year. None of the coaches every had any positive feedback to give. I have always been athletic and one of the top performers on my team, but I was so depressed while being here that I was regressing in the weight room and in my athletic ability. Right after I transferred I had some of the best athletic performance of my life as far as weightlifting goes and I was in the gym half the amount of time. I was forced to come to practice when recovering from strep throat AND when I had a UTI and yeast infection at the same time. After I transferred the day after everyone came back from Christmas break they made the team do a really intense workout in the middle of the day in Miami heat. Two girls passed out and had to go to the hospital. For how overworked we were, there were no results. 2022 is the first time in years that the rowing program has been decent. I am so disappointed in this program and the coaching staff. It still brings me to tears to talk about 5ish years later. This is just a minor piece of what I experienced, but I could talk about how terrible my experience was on this team for hours. As long as Dave Sanderson is the coach, this program will not be good. The athletic administration in general was overall pretty great. However, women's sports here are dramatically overlooked and are probably in violation of TITLE IX. If Dave or any of the coaching staff was reading this I would say place a higher emphasis on having a team that feels safe and respected by their coaches and peers. Take the time to get to know what your athletes are going through. We are not just a number on your roster."

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