West Buffalo Charter School students had a chance to meet an Olympic winner Tuesday. WBFO's senior reporter Eileen Buckley says Amherst native Emily Regan, who captured a gold medal at the Rio Olympics on the U.S. Women's Rowing team, talked about her success.
Students listened closely to Regan as she began her speech by passing around her gold medal. Each student a chance to examine it up close.
“When I pass it around, I had to work for a long time to get it so take really special care of it,” Regan said as she placed her gold medal in their hands.
Regan told students she always believed the women's rowing team had a chance of winning. But her story is about perseverance. She trained for six years before she was selected for the women's Olympic team.
In a WBFO News interview, Regan spoke about her dreams of becoming an Olympian.
“I don’t know if I thought it was realistic or not, but I did actually imagine a lot. And when I was in sixth grade I actually wrote an autobiography for a big class project and the last chapter is about your future and in that I had myself swimming at the Olympic trials for swimming and making the team that way,” recalled Regan.
Growing up, Regan attended St. Gregory the Great School in Amherst.
“Either when I was going into eighth grade or ninth grade—I can’t remember which—but I did a ‘Learn to Row’ camp at West Side during the summer, but I did not row in high school I played lacrosse and kind of went that path instead,” explained Regan.
Regan told students she participated in a number of sports during her school years, but it wasn't until Regan attended college at Michigan State that she started rowing on a team.
“I wasn’t really interested in playing in sports and I sort of fell into it rowing and picked it up and started finding that I was pretty successful and after six years I finally made it,” said Regan.
The charter school students asked variety of great questions about her rowing success. After the presentation, fourth grader Alya Cortez embraced the gold medalist’s message.
“She said, like, keep trying in school. I think that helped me,” Cortez said.
Fourth grader Isaac Rodriguez also listen closely to Regan's message.
“Keep going when life gets tough,” noted Rodriguez.
Regan tells us she begins her training again January 2nd after taking a break. While most training is held in Princeton, New Jersey, winter training takes place in California.
“What does it feel like to hold the gold?” asked Buckley.
“Gosh. Every time I hold it and think about you know what it means to have it reminds me sort of how special the opportunity is that I was given and that I earned, because it is really easy to normalize your life and what you’re doing and forget how incredibility special it is and rare it is to win a medal, so I still kind of get chills when I hold it and think about it,” replied Regan.
