The path to the pinnacle of athletic performance is rarely linear. Class of 1975 rowing alum Carol Love has reached the highest level of success as an athlete and coach by finding her "on-ramp," even when it has required a leap of faith.

Born and raised in Toronto's Willowdale neighbourhood, Love grew up a multi-sport athlete focusing primarily on alpine ski racing. In a highly decorated varsity career, she won two Ontario Women's Intercollegiate Athletic Association (OWIAA) individual gold medals representing McMaster on the slopes. What she couldn't have anticipated was discovering a new sport that would lead her to her Olympic dream.

"It all started on Hamilton Harbour," she smiled.

Within the first two weeks of pursuing her dual degree in physical education and sociology, Love (Eastmure at the time) was invited to walk onto McMaster's rowing team. Despite having never tried the sport before, she was quickly offered a spot on the novice team. She carried on competing as a skier while also honing her skills on the water. By the end of her varsity career, Love had led the Marauder women to an OWIAA Championship banner on the regatta.

"I really enjoyed the ski racing that I did at university, but rowing was just the type of hard work and team sport that I loved," she said. "I have a lot of gratitude for McMaster and that opportunity."

Love's determination to put everything she had into a new opportunity placed her in the perfect position at the perfect time. Women's rowing was set to be introduced to the Olympics for the first time ever at the 1976 Games in Montreal. Following her graduation in 1975, Love was recruited by her country to move to Burnaby, B.C., to train with the national team in preparation for the Games. 

"From being a young child there was an Olympic dream there," she remembered. "Rowing was the sport that opened up that opportunity."

Love took another leap of faith by moving across the country at 23 to train for the Olympics with the best in Canada. Her tenure on the national team preempted any federal funding for the athletes, and many of them worked part-time jobs. Love herself worked at a McDonald's restaurant to help fund her Olympic dream.

"That was the year they decided the world needed Egg McMuffins," she laughed.

Love had a much larger end goal for her summer than serving breakfast sandwiches. That July, she competed in Montreal as part of the women's eight group that narrowly missed the podium with a fourth-place finish overall. Not to be discouraged, the team claimed their spot on the podium by capturing bronze at the 1977 World Championships in Amsterdam the following year.

After performing on the world's largest stage, Love knew it was time to launch her post-athletic career. Following the World Championships, she was offered an assistant athletic director position at Trent University, and she jumped at the opportunity. She played a crucial role in developing the Excalibur varsity, recreation and aquatic programs there. She also made her first foray into coaching rowing, a profession she says she was lured into for her wealth of experience in the sport.

"I think coaching found me," she explained. "At Trent, there was a group of male rowers getting ready for the Olympic Trials, and they asked me to coach them. I knew I had something to offer, and I became more and more involved."

Love was hooked by her new role as a leader on the water. She accepted more and more part-time coaching positions, many of them volunteer, as she continued her administrative work at Trent. She was also one of the early leaders in establishing high school rowing programs in the community. Love credits longtime Trent athletic director Paul Wilson and McMaster physical education professors Geoff Gowan and Rose Hill for developing her interest in sport administration and athlete development.

"I've had great mentors who have developed me as a person and as a coach," she said. "[Professor Gowan] just lit up everything about teaching and coaching for me."

After spending a few years overseas as the director of a YMCA in Dunedin, New Zealand, Love and her husband Brian, a fellow rower whom she met while preparing for the 1976 Games, returned to Peterborough to start a family. Love knew that a family would present challenges in the often-unforgiving landscape of high-performance coaching.

"I knew high-performance coaching was difficult to fit in with the family. I was coaching a team for Rowing Canada, and we were on tour in Australia for a month. I left a one- and three-year-old at home and felt really conflicted. I wanted to be home."

"I thought maybe having another child would keep me at home," she added.

Love got more than she bargained for with that third child, giving birth to a set of triplets. The Love family had their work cut out for them after more than doubling the children in the household.

"I went from two to five kids, and I was at home for the next fifteen years. My coaching became more domestic."  

Working from contract to contract, Love continued to stay involved with coaching as much as possible. She began coaching skiing again when her children took up the sport, eventually finding a home as head coach of Trent's rowing program from 2005 to 2015. Towards the end of that tenure, she began working with Rowing Canada's NextGen national talent development program in Ontario, a role she stayed in for a decade.

Her success in identifying and developing Canada's brightest budding talent led to an eerily familiar opportunity. In spring 2022, Love was offered the chance to join the National Training Centre coaching staff in Duncan, B.C. For the second time in her life, Love was pulled west to chase the Olympic dream – this time as a coach. With her children now grown and beginning their careers, Love did something she has never been afraid to do: seize the chance to showcase her talents at the highest level.

"All my children and my husband said 'go,'" she said.

Love moved to the West Coast on her own and hasn't looked back, having most recently guided Canada's women's eight back to the world podium with a third-place finish at the recent 2023 World Rowing Cup II in Italy. She stresses the importance of empathy, integrity and transparency in her coaching success and also points to her years as a sport administrator for helping her develop the skills needed to coach the best of the best.

"I love the face-to-face aspect of coaching. In my position now, you also have a large staff of experts, including nutritionists, physiologists and biomechanists. You almost become a general manager of the team – that's where my administrative experience kicked in."

Up next for Love and Team Canada are the September World Championships in Belgrade, Serbia, which are the qualifier for the 2024 Olympics in Paris. She's set to stay with the team through the 2026 Commonwealth Games.

"I'm probably at the height of my career, and it's come much later in my life," she reflected. "But I have so much to offer – it's really fulfilling."

Love says that the opportunity has come at the perfect time because now she can give it everything she has.

"It's been a really circuitous career of getting to the top, and I think there's nothing wrong with that. It's almost like I was on a highway and had to get off it for a while because I had other important things in my life that took over. But I was able to find the on-ramp again."

Whether it was finding a window of opportunity in a new sport, working part-time to support her Olympic dream, or moving across the country to bring her 30 years of coaching experience to the highest level, Love has always had a knack for finding her on-ramp.

Aside from inspiring the athletes she coaches, Love hopes that her journey can serve as inspiration for young women in a high-performance coaching profession that needs more female representation.

"It was a problem, and it still is a problem today. But I'm optimistic that there are more opportunities for women to be supported. That's part of what drives what I'm doing right now. It's really important that other women see that."

Love's journey to reach the pinnacle of her sport twice should instill no small amount of inspiration in anyone seeking their own on-ramp, even when it isn't clear where it might turn up.

"A few years ago, I was contemplating what retirement would look like … you have to follow your passion."

For Carol Love's Olympic and McMaster Athletics Hall-of-Fame career, the first on-ramp was on Hamilton Harbour.