Cady Hart-Petterssen found rowing as a freshman at the University of Connecticut. Having never pulled on an oar in her life, the team recruiter grabbed her and her tall friend to test her on the erg. Cady jumped on and hauled away and found her future sport. Her tenacity and natural mobility allowed her to excel in a long person's sport, despite standing 5'5", and she went on to captain the UConn heavyweight boat for three years. Since college, Cady spent time as a yoga instructor while getting a Masters in Exercise Science at Colorado State, then worked as a Corporate Wellness Program Manager and Wellness Coach before moving to Vermont and finding CrossFit. That same passion she had for rowing led Cady to a full time CrossFit coaching job and she was soon competing at the CrossFit Games Northeast Regionals.
Cady became co-owner of Green Mountain CrossFit in 2012 and has since developed a three day a week CrossFit program at the Concept2 headquarters in Morrisville, Vermont, for employees. Cady has also created a successful CrossFit Rowing program at GMCF, teaching many of their athletes the joy of indoor rowing and contributing to the CrossFit Rowing Facebook programming. Through this experience in her own gym and with Concept2, Cady is now also a trainer with CrossFit Rowing.
Judy Geer learned to row in college, and gradually realized that there was no way she was going to "grow up" and stop rowing after her graduation from Dartmouth College in 1975. She went on to compete on three US Olympic Rowing teams in '76, '80 and '84. During this time she also coached rowing, and then went back to get a Masters in Engineering, also at Dartmouth. When she graduated, she joined Concept2, which had been started in 1976 by Dick Dreissigacker (now her husband) and his brother Peter. As happens in family businesses, her responsibilities have migrated over the years as the company has grown. She is currently a member of the Marketing and Communications Team.
Nick Petterssen is a lifelong athlete, dating back to the days of elementary school recess when playground kickball stoked his passion for competitive play. He eventually found that his body type was a good match for the sport of volleyball and went on to have a successful collegiate career playing on the University of Colorado indoor team, and played for a brief stint on the AVP professional beach volleyball tour.
After a knee injury sidelined him from volleyball, Nick moved to Northern Wisconsin to work as an outdoor educator and converted his past passion for alpine skiing into a new discipline of skate skiing. Training as an endurance athlete led to other sports, such as running, then triathlon, then eventually road racing. Always a jack of all trades, when CrossFit stumbled into Nick's life he loved the fact that being good at everything made you very good at one thing. Nick opened Vermont's first CrossFit gym in 2009, met his wife Cady Hart-Petterssen through that process, and they now own and operate Green Mountain CrossFit together. With the Concept2 Indoor Rower such a critical piece to the world of CrossFit, Nick began honing his indoor rowing technique, and when Concept2 introduced the SkiErg his world was made complete.
Sam Loch is a former Australia National Team Rower. He’s a dual Olympian—Beijing 2008 and London 2012—and two-time bronze medal winner at World Championships. Prior to training with the national team, he rowed at Princeton University and graduated in 2006. Just before the London Olympics, Sam offered some training advice that still holds true today.