In her seventh season with the Wisconsin women's rowing program, Nancy LaRocque serves as the Badgers' women's openweight associate head coach and recruiting coordinator.
The Badgers have reached the NCAA championship in every season with LaRocque at Wisconsin, and in 2019, LaRocque helped the Badgers to their second consecutive 15th-place result at the NCAA championship.
The team rowed to its 15th-place finish in 2018, using its 13th-place second varsity eight led by LaRocque to power the team result.
As varsity assistant coach in 2016-17, LaRocque helped lead the Badgers to their second-consectuve ninth-place team finish at the NCAA championships, marking the second time in program history that UW posted back-to-back NCAA finishes in the top nine.
For her first two years, LaRocque coached the Wisconsin novices and continued the UW's great novice rowing tradition as she directed the program's second novice eight to a Big Ten title and the novice eight to a third-place finish. The novice eight climbed one spot in 2015, grabbing the runner-up spot at Big Tens.
LaRocque brings a wealth of coaching experience to the Badgers, having served eight seasons as a coach at the NCAA Division I level, most recently as an assistant during the 2009-10 season at Tennessee. Prior to that, she was the head coach at West Virginia from 2000-07, where she helped direct the Mountaineers move from a club program to the NCAA Division I level and then brought it to nationally-ranked status in just three years. Before joining West Virginia, LaRocque was an assistant for two seasons at Division III Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York.
The Dover, New Hampshire, native rowed collegiately at the University of Massachusetts, where she won three consecutive Atlantic 10 championships and gold medals at the San Diego Crew Classic, New England Championships and the Champion International Collegiate Regatta. She was also a member of the Minutewomen varsity eight that placed second at the 1997 NCAA Championships and was a two-year captain for the squad.
LaRocque also has national-level rowing experience. From the summers of 1993-98 she was selected to participate in the U.S. Rowing Association's elite development programs, which identify and develop athletes for the national team. In 1995, she finished second in the quad at the trials for World Championships.
Outside of rowing, LaRocque spent more than five years with Specialized Bicycle Components in human resources, as a recruiter and as an executive assistant to the founder.
