Emilie is our Executive Director and Head Coach, and balances her JLRC work while also coaching at a local university, and serves as the Regatta Director for the Lake Wheeler Invitational. Emilie has extensive coaching experience at four collegiate programs and five non-profit rowing clubs. She has been a rowing coach for over a decade and is Level II certified by US Rowing.

Emilie is a master of logistical planning and has used those skills to run programing, coordinate teams, and run regattas. Emilie was a competitive collegiate rower, an honors student, and has degrees in Packaging (engineering) as well as a Masters of Arts in Sports Coaching. If you’re thinking we can’t believe how lucky we are to have Emilie as our Executive Director and Head Coach, we agree.

Lauren began her rowing career in the winter of 2019 with North Carolina Rowing Center in Summerfield, NC. She went on to qualify for and compete at Youth Nationals in the spring of 2021 in the Women’s 2x race. Her head coach knew that although she had decided to step away from competing in college, she would still want to be part of the rowing community. Once she found out she got accepted into NCSU, he suggested she take a coaching position that had opened up at JLRC. In the Spring of 2022, she joined on as an assistant coach and has been with us ever since. Her passion for teaching and coaching continues to be fueled by the drive and enthusiasm of JLRC’s athletes. She hopes to take what she has learned from coaching and implement it into her time at Duke as an Occupational Therapy Doctorate student.

Caroline started rowing in 2017 with Gryphon Crew (formerly REACH Rowing) through L&N STEM Academy. Upon graduating, Caroline served as their Learn-To-Row coach for the summers of 2021 & 2022, coaching for them during breaks from university. She joined the University of Vermont rowing team in 2021 and served as their equipment manager. With UVM, Caroline both raced and coxed boats at club nationals in Tennessee (ACRAs). She graduated from UVM in 2024, earning a BA in Environmental Studies with a concentration in sustainable agriculture. Caroline spent her final semester of university in Costa Rica studying sustainable development on a permaculture farm. 

Wolf launched his rowing career here at JLRC in 2019, and rowed throughout middle and high school with us. Now a sophomore at NC State, Wolf is studying electrical engineering, while he continues his rowing career with State’s club rowing team. He has experience with both coxing and rowing. He is a valuable alum and coach, and we couldn’t be more excited to welcome him “home.”

Ashley has over a decade of experience as a coxswain, beginning in 2011 with Asheville Youth Rowing Association (AYRA) and continued coxing with the UNC Chapel Hill Women’s Rowing team under coach Emilie Gross. She started coxing the 3V8 during her freshman year and finished her career coxing the 1V8 during her junior and senior year. During her time at UNC, she gained experience coaching middle and high school rowers. After graduating, Ashley briefly lived in Boston and was a “coxswain for hire” at the Head of the Charles. Even after moving to the DMV area, she found ways to stay connected to rowing by holding a coxswain clinic for a local high school team.

 Ashley graduated from UNC Chapel Hill in 2021 with a B.A. in Chemistry and is now back in the Triangle, starting her PhD in Molecular Genetics and Microbiology at Duke University in 2024. She is excited to be back on the water and can’t wait to work with JLRC rowers and coxswains