By Josh Brown
Miami Valley Today
TROY — Even though she competed in three varsity sports throughout high school, Laura Borchers didn’t think she would be continuing her athletic career in college.
Instead, the Troy High School senior adding an entirely new sport to her repertoire.
Borchers, a mainstay for the Trojans’ girls soccer, basketball and track and field teams for the past four years, recently signed her National Letter of Intent to attend Eastern Michigan University — an NCAA Division I college — and be part of its rowing team.
In the end, Borchers — who thought she already had her college plan taken care of — got an offer that she simply could not refuse.
“No, it wasn’t even on my list,” she said. “I applied to eight colleges, and Eastern Michigan wasn’t even one of them.
“I got this note in December about rowing, and I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to compete in a D-I sport at the college level.”
Most of Eastern Michigan’s teams compete in the Mid-American Conference, but the rowing team competes in the Colonial Athletic Association. In the 2018-19 season, the Eagles matched their best finish ever at the CAA Championships, placing third overall. The team was unable to complete the 2019-20 season due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
And even though rowing wasn’t a sport that was even on the 5-foot-10 Borchers’ radar before the opportunity with the Eagles, she said that that is a fairly common thing in the sport.
“They say more than half of their girls have never done it before,” Borchers said. “They recruit multi-sport athletes that are tall and have good grades. They say that if you can do multiple sports, you can learn.”
Borchers, who had been planning on going to Ohio State University and participating in club sports, said she planned on studying exercise science with the goal of becoming a physical therapist.
Borchers closed out her high school career with a solid yet incomplete senior season. In soccer season during the fall, she was a leader in the Miami Valley League Miami Division champion Trojans’ defensive backfield and also tallied three assists. And during basketball season in the winter, she averaged 3.9 points, 5.7 rebounds, 2.0 assists and 0.8 steals per game for a Troy team that finished 14-9.
But Borchers’ senior track season was called off along with all of the other OHSAA spring sports due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Which has left her a chance to prepare for Eastern Michigan in the fall.
“It’s been kind of sad,” Borchers said. “I was glad that I had the opportunity to go to state last year. Now, I’m just staying focused and getting ready for this fall. That’s my top priority.”
Contact Josh Brown at [email protected].
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