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Two Superstars. Former Dynamic Teammates. Same Mission. Same Purpose.
The Southeast Dual-Threat, hailing from the Greater-Atlanta Metropolitan Area, and both graduates of Atlanta Junior Rowing Association nestled in Fulton County’s very own, Roswell, Ga., Kate Pitzel (Class of 2021) and Mary Claire Warren (Class of 2022) headed North to further their careers, one after the other.
From Pair Partners to National Standouts in their own right, Pitzel joined Justin Price’s Scarlet Knight Machine at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J., to compete within the Big Ten Conference, with Warren accepting her Ivy League Admission to Brown University, under longtime Head Coach, John Murphy, in Providence, R.I, a year later.
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Ahead of her Senior Year in 2024, Pitzel was ranked within the All-NCAA Top-25 Women’s Rowers across Division I College Rowing by For Stars Network. Culminating her Senior Showdown, the Georgian was nominated as a 2025 All-Star by FSN during the Post-Season, grouped within the very best in the landscape, and as proven in her achievements.
During Warren’s Junior Year, she was simultaneously nominated to FSN’s Top-25 Ranked Women’s Rowers as Pitzel, being one of only two rowers from Brown selected. At the culmination of the 2025 Rowing Season, she was tabbed an All-Star, along with Pitzel.
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For the second-consecutive year during the Fall of her Senior Year, Warren earned and was penciled in by the FSN Staff as one of the Top-75 Players headed into the 2026 Campaign, a three-tiered assortment of rowers within NCAA Division I Women’s Rowing split up into categories based off of where they stack up against their peers; Mary Claire was selected in the Top-25 Category among the nation’s best, respectively.
Year after year, collegiate crews from the United States travel across the pond to Oxfordshire, England at Henley-on-Thames to compete in the annual, famous six-day bracket style event on the River Thames, Henley Royal Regatta.
Rutgers Head Coach, Justin Price, along with the support of Scarlet Knights’ Alumni and Athletic Department, made it a mission to begin training for the trip to the United Kingdom, where they would ultimately make history.
Entered into the Island Challenge Cup, composed of college student-athletes competing in the Women’s Eight through a head-to-head dual, the Scarlet Knights etched their name into the regatta’s archives.
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Pitzel and her crew defeated five head-to-head races, marking the first time in a 50-year period where the program not only competed in the prestigious regatta, but obtained the iconic “Red Box” as a token of excellence winning the regatta in the final against Newcastle University.
Fast forward one year later, Atlanta heritage returned with Warren and her crew in the fight. Winning a handful of dual races leading up to the final, she brought her Sunday’s best representing the Brown Bears. Bruno charged down the one mile with pure tenacity trading off bow-balls one after the other ahead of the race favorite, Washington Huskies.
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Warren surged over the last quarter of the sprint with glory on the line, and her teammates followed suit. The Bears outraced Washington by half a length, and the Red Box was awaiting her retrieval.
FSN’s Hudson Forster spoke with the Head Coach of Atlanta Juniors, Maddux Castle, following the 2026 Regatta, and although he didn’t have the pleasure of coaching the dynamic duo at the time when they were on the AJRA Roster, the word on the street was that both Pitzel and Warren were as fierce as you can get.
“These two top performers are standout athletes and were once leaders on our team… This Henley result [2026] speaks to the level of care that we have here at Atlanta for fostering speed,” Castle attested.
His statement stood true as proven throughout their victorious pursuit at the highest stage in all of College Rowing. At the next level, and in many circumstances, season-ending injuries may arise, the stakes are high and competition advances, student-athlete talent levels may not reach their peak and therefore plummet, but the duo, on their own respective journeys, both supported by opposing programs, reinforced Castle’s statement to be true.
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Pitzel is relentless, and when it boils down to the final meter, she’s the one you can count on as a catalyst.
While at AJRA, she tells FSN that her “teammates worked hard, went fast, and pushed me to do the same to raise myself to the standard that they set; Rowing at AJRA meant being surrounded by other girls who set the standard for hard work and speed.”
Elite athletes are more than cognizant that training is powered by being “accountable for your own performance, development, and success,” she added.
“The coaches I had set the standard, running our team pretty similarly to a college team with structure and culture, which meant I wasn’t in for a shock adjusting to college rowing, which was a major benefit for me during my first year of college. I made great friendships and developed the mindset needed to succeed on the collegiate scale.”
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Warren made it clear that the AJRA Coaching Staff “taught me never to write myself out of an opportunity, and would always remind me that I was capable of far more than I often believed,” she added. Not so dissimilar to Pitzel, she alluded to the fact that her “work ethic, competitive spirit, and willingness to grow would allow me to succeed at a higher level.”
The famous motto of “The Body Keeps The Score” reigns true with athletes. Former coaches pave the way to help lead their athletes down the right path for the betterment of the athlete’s development.
Pitzel recounted a fond memory of her time in Roswell during her Freshman Year of High School, training alongside AJRA Assistant Coach, Sarah Hudnall ‘13, and NCAA Medalist for the University of Michigan in 2017.
“We had just done a 20x1 on 1’ off workout on the erg and she called me over at the end of practice with my splits written out on a sheet of paper and had highlighted every piece that I ended with ‘XX:XX.0.’ She told me there was no reason to end a piece on a ‘.0’ and that I should do whatever it takes to push it down ‘.1’ to get to the next split, because if I was fast enough to go ‘.0’ I could go ‘.9.’ Every single workout from then on, I thought about chasing that ‘.9’ and pushing myself that much more. Even in my Senior Year at Rutgers, I was doing everything in my power not to end on a ‘.0.’ Having the mindset of doing just a little more than you think you’re capable of is quintessential AJRA to me. I truly can’t say enough good things about how AJRA set me up for college and set me up to grow,” she exclaimed.
Hudnall tells FSN that both Pitzel and Warren were “two excellent athletes that had that killer mentality that you want in an athlete. As a coach, you’re always looking for that attitude, and when you have players showing up and those same traits are carried over into their collegiate success, it’s just amazing to see.”
The foundational teachings and lessons from coaches along the way for Pitzel were graciously constant post-youth rowing. Advice from her mentors persisted, all laid out for a common goal. She hopes that others in the younger generation, but even any athlete, both internal and external to the sport, can take away those same lessons proudly.
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“When I reflect on my rowing career, something Justin [Price] used to tell us at Rutgers was how ‘Getting better isn’t complicated. It might not be easy but it is simple,’” she stated.
Elaborating on the meaning of success, Pitzel believes that she “would leave others with that thought of delayed gratification. To succeed, it doesn’t require any elaborate workout or secret formula, it just takes consistent, hard work, every day. Do a little more work than you think you need to do each day, and in enough time, you’ll be a completely different athlete than you were before.”
While reflecting on her journey thus far, rowing at one of the most prestigious regattas in the world was something Warren never imagined during her Junior Year of High School once set eyes on competitive rowing. The fact that “would one day [she would] be part of a team that races in the Grand Final at NCAAs or wins the Island Challenge Cup at Henley Royal Regatta,” was nowhere near her imagination, but her coach in High School reminded and encouraged her “to pursue opportunities that [she believed] were out of reach because they probably weren’t [after all],” she stated.
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For Warren, outside of culminating her rowing career at Brown as a Henley Champion, racing against Washington on July 5th was business usual to her and her teammates. Bruno took on the Huskies a month earlier in the Grand Final at the NCAA Rowing Championships in Gainesville, Ga., on the 1996 Olympic Games Race Course, Lake Lanier Olympic Park, but unfortunately fell short.
Brown made it a “commitment to stay internal… allowing [for the crew] to row each race with confidence in one another, [their] preparation, and will to win,” Warren asserted. “We never looked at the draw or results from other races, and we didn’t know who we were racing each day until our coaches told us the night before.”
The well-known proverb, “what you don’t know, can’t hurt you,” really reigned ever true for Warren and her teammates throughout that six-day stretch in the United Kingdom, and the results spoke for themselves.
Reminiscing on her time at Atlanta Juniors, but additionally at the Division I Level, Warren recounts the years she spent racing alongside and against Pitzel.
“When I first started rowing with Kate, I quickly realized that she might be the most competitive person I’ve ever met,” she said confidently. “This made her so fun to race with and a fierce competitor to race against.”
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Without a doubt, “she would always commit fully to anything that she was challenged with, whether it be the pieces we would do in practice, races we would compete in together, or the 2014 National History Bee,” she added. “I knew anytime I was in a boat with Kate, she would do whatever it would take to get our boat ahead, even if she was experiencing heart palpitations,” said Warren.
When race day against Rutgers came knocking, Warren’s profound emotions were significantly present, but remained reserved by her own efforts. With bow balls aligned, Pitzel in the next lane over, and before the flags were in motion, Warren didn’t let her team know how anxious she was to face Kate. In her mind, she knew “Kate was definitely not going down without a fight,” she tells FSN.
Without Kate’s influence on Mary Claire in Roswell, the storyline across the pond would be nonexistent. Warren shares that “Kate is the person who convinced me to come to AJRA in the first place, so I am forever grateful to her for that.”
The gratitude stemming from the two headliners remains deep. Warren’s excitement for Kate in 2025 was off the charts, even if her team were repeatable opponents during the season, and glory was on the line.
“I had seen Kate work so hard for so many years both at the junior and collegiate level, and was so proud of her that all of this hard work had culminated in a final victory at Henley,” she said. “While Rutgers became, more or less, one of our rivals throughout the [2025] Season, our team was really rooting for them throughout their campaign since it’s always fun to see another American crew succeed on that stage.”
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Giving back to Atlanta Juniors is imperative for Mary Claire. She makes it a commitment during her breaks from school to spend her time on the coaching launch down the Chattahoochee, analogous to Kate.
“AJRA has this tradition called ‘Jingle Row,’ where every Winter, Atlanta Alumni and Junior Rowers compete in mixed lineups over random length/timed races, like backing from the dock to the bridge or spending two minutes at twelve strokes per minute,” she later elaborated. “As a junior, I remember thinking it was the coolest thing ever to row in boats with college rowers, and then, as a college rower myself, I was so excited to return and carry on those traditions.”
For Warren, it reminds her of where she started and the hard work that got her to where she is today. She hopes that by returning to the AJRA Boathouse, she can be an example for the youth on what someone, once in their position, is more than capable of.
Both Pitzel and Warren were foundational assets to their respective programs, doused in pure tenacity and the fight to win, no matter the circumstance. The duo cemented themselves as true champions outside of American Charters, and remain idols to countless of youth rowers within the Atlanta Rowing Community and ecosystem.
From this point forward, the story starts to take shape: Rowing up and down the banks of the Chattahoochee River, making it to the highest stage in College Athletics, and both officially bringing back merited hardware only a small percentage get the opportunity to obtain, where will the Southern Heritage lead?
Warren is headed to Oxford in the Fall, and Pitzel’s utilizing her degree and focus in Accounting with Ernst & Young, an internship that led to a Full-Time position on Staff after graduating from Rutgers in May of 2025.
As Grammy Award Winner, Ray Charles, and his 1960-Signature Hit Record, “Georgia On My Mind” famous lyric expresses that “The Road Leads Back To You,” Atlanta Junior Rowing Association was the true blueprint for both Kate Pitzel and Mary Claire Warren, and touched the two to the core with flying colors, along with countless of youth rowers in the Fulton County region of Atlanta that will continue to grow and achieve their goals in life through the core convictions and principles dedicated to the athlete from the very beginning.