She was referring to Mike Miles, the former University of Dayton crew coach, Atlantic 10 Coach of the Year in 2002, co-founder of the much-respected Dayton Boat Club and husband of elite rowing champion Trish Miles.
Beth Bruggemam, Molly’s mom, remembers the pitch to her then-13-year-old daughter:
“You know how girls are at that age — tall, lanky, sort of uncoordinated? Back then if you’d asked us which of our children would be a world champion, I don’t think Molly would be the first one we named.”
Miles remembers that conversation, too:
“Since Title IX, the opportunities in the sport had just exploded for girls. All the Big Ten schools, places like Notre Dame and Virginia, they offer 20 scholarships for girls. We’d known Molly since she was maybe 5 years old. I thought she had the build for the sport and the opportunity was there.”
Talk about a guy’s gospel being golden.
After graduating from Chaminade Julienne High School, where she lettered in the sport, Bruggeman got a full athletic scholarship to Notre Dame, ended up a three-time All American, made three U.S. national teams and competed three years in a row in the Under-23 World Championships, including just last month in Varese, Italy, where she and her American boatmates won world titles in the straight four and the eights.
And starting Tuesday, she begins training — six days a week, three times a day, and the seventh day she works out on her own — in Princeton, N.J., with the U.S. Senior National team and hopes to represent America at the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro.
“She’s one of the best in the country,” Miles said Thursday. “She was at the very top of the game collegiately and now she’s part of a very select team chosen for the national team. She’s got a decent shot of making the Olympics.”
The other day — on a brief trip home following her triumphs in Italy and then a hiking trip with her parents in Switzerland — Bruggeman recalled what it had been like when she first took Miles up on that church steps offer:
“It was very different for me at first, very hard. I was used to playing ball sports, volleyball and basketball, and this was so different. I remember sitting in the boat thinking about how much my hands hurt and how hot it was.
“But Mr. Miles makes you aspire to do things big. And pretty soon I realized if you keep at it, if you put in the hours and the hard work, you do get better. And pretty soon I fell in love with that idea that I could have real success.”
Beth watched her daughter’s transformation: “You’ve got to give Mike Miles and Trish and the Dayton Boat Club all the credit in the world. And then it’s been all Molly. She really caught the bug because of Mike.”
She said nothing showed that more than when Molly, the summer before her sophomore year at CJ, followed up on Miles’ suggestion of attending a summer camp to get better:
“She got fixated on the Navy rowing camp out East, but she applied too late and they told her it was full.
“Well, she wouldn’t take ‘no’ for an answer. She bugged them and called them and emailed them and finally they took her into the camp, I believe just to shut her up because she would not stop.”
The Dayton Boat Club has become the superb training ground for young rowers, especially area girls, and Miles estimated that as many as 40 of their athletes have gone on to row in college, many on full scholarship.
While Molly was recruited by several top schools, she chose Notre Dame, where many family members have matriculated: “We’ve had family members in the double digits go there or to St. Mary’s College next door. My dad, my brother, my sister (Gretchen is a sophomore rower now), my grandpa, a couple of cousins, a couple more through marriage, all went to Notre Dame. My mom and her sister went to St. Mary’s. And there’s more.”
As she excelled at Notre Dame, she drew interest from U.S. Rowing.
In 2012, her U.S. four (4-) team finished sixth at the Under-23 World Championships in Trakai, Lithuania. Last year in Linz, Austria, in her first time racing in a sculling boat (two oars), Bruggeman’s team was sixth in the quadruple sculls.
This year in Italy, with her parents, Mike and Beth, in the bleachers as they have been at each world championship, Molly was in two different boats for the first time ever and everything clicked.
In both races, her U.S. team won wire to wire.
And while she made her mark on the water, she said her dad was just as memorable in the stands:
“My dad’s a real emotional guy and at the start of the race already he started choking up. He was sitting next to some of the Italian women and they all started getting their hankies out and handing them to him and they were patting him on his back.”
Beth was right next to Mike and chuckled a bit as she recalled the scene:
“People have this impression of Americans and I think everybody was surprised to see this big guy sitting up there in his ball cap and sunglasses with tears just streaming down his face.
“The Italians are so emotional and they understood. The women were handing him tissues. Finally he got ahold of himself a bit. But then came the medal ceremony — and seeing our daughter up there on the stand was such an amazing experience — and it all started again when they played the national anthem.
“Mike’s tears just kept coming and coming. He was a mess … and it was great.”
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