SAN DIEGO — This summer, the San Diego Rowing Club will see its third athlete compete in the Olympic Games.
Azja Czajkowski, from Imperial Beach, is on Team USA and will make her Olympic debut in a two-person boat in Paris.
Chris Callaghan, Executive Director of the San Diego Rowing Club, told CBS 8 two other club members have made it to the top international competition: Tom Peszek in 2012 and Sally Scovel in 2000.
Azja Czajkowski
Czajkowski spoke with CBS 8 from a pre-Olympic training camp in Italy, where she was spending time training with teammates as they adjusted to European time ahead of their travel to Paris.
Growing up in San Diego, Czajkowski was part of the San Diego Rowing Club's Junior program. She graduated from Stanford University in 2023 with a double major in product design engineering and communications, in addition to five years on the school's rowing team.
Whenever she was home from school, on summer or winter breaks, she'd go back to the San Diego Rowing Club, taking a single boat out to train.
Competing in the Olympics didn't become a realistic thought for Czajkowski until she returned to campus after the Covid-19 pandemic.
She's treated the sport intensely since high school — she's always been a competitive person, she said. But spending time away from training with a team made her realize how much she valued rowing.
Czajkowski came home to San Diego when the pandemic hit. She was a sophomore in college at the time. The rowing club was open on a limited basis, with strict guidelines about training or rowing with other people, she said.
She spent a lot of time while the world was shut down running along Silver Strand bike path alone, thinking "wow, I really miss rowing."
Czajkowski and a couple friends from high school began meeting at the Rowing Club boathouse once a week to train with stationary rowing machines, spaced six feet apart. After, they'd go grab burritos, finding some sense of normalcy in their new pandemic tradition.
"It was one of the things I looked forward to every week," she said.
Czajkowski approached the sport differently when she returned to campus.
"I think I had a newfound gratitude for being on the rowing team," she said.
Not only did she love it more, but her performance made a big leap. Her pandemic training paid off: She set PRs by 12 or so seconds and jumped from around 15th fastest on her team toward the top. The shift was "fun, but also jarring," she said.
The Olympics suddenly became something she could consider, and she wanted to give it a shot.
After college, Czajkowski moved to New Jersey to train at Princeton while she worked a remote job. She has spent the past year there training, save travel for Olympic trials.
Czajkowski qualified in a two-person boat in early May. As she prepared for Paris, she felt a mix of excitement and nerves — "a lot of adrenaline," she said.
She comes from a family of rowers.
Her father rowed at the United States Naval Academy, and her mom rowed at Georgetown University, according to her athlete bio for the U.S. Rowing Team.
In 2022 Czajkowski was named U.S. Rowing's co-Under 23 Female Athlete of the Year. She is also a two-time Pac-12 Conference Athlete of the Year, in 2022 and 2023.
“Having the privilege to pour myself into this sport for the last eight years it’s been beyond special,” Czajkowski said in a news story on Team USA's website. “I hope that girls see us doing our thing and see us pouring ourselves into what we’re passionate about and feel confident doing the same thing.”
This fall, Czajkowski is moving home to San Diego and plans to coach the Junior program at the rowing club where she got her start with the sport.
"It's definitely a place with a lot of memories," she said.
She hopes to expose the organization to more high schoolers across San Diego, especially those who wouldn't necessarily see themselves as rowers. She wants to show kids that once you get to the rowhouse, it becomes a much more inclusive space.
"It's really good for kids to have a place other than home and school where they can feel like they belong," she said.
Tom Peszek, Sally Scovel
Two other members of the San Diego Rowing Club have competed in Olympic Games and are now on the club's volunteer Board of Directors.
In 2012, Peszek came in 8th in men's pair at the London Games. Sally Scovel competed in the 2000 Olympics in Sydney.
Here is the rowing schedule for the Olympic games this summer.
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