Rowing title spurs student’s bid for 2012 Olympics

Photo by Fred Loek for Rowing Canada

Medal recipient Morgan Jarvis (middle), Artsci ’05, MSc ’08, Law ’10, at the Canadian Rowing Championships in London in November 2009 with prize donor David Walker, medal recipients Doug Vandor and Cameron Sylvester, and then president of Rowing Canada Aviron Brenda Liski.

When varsity rower Morgan Jarvis, Artsci ‘05, MSc ‘08, Law ‘10, won a national championship last fall, it bolstered his hopes for representing Canada at the next Summer Olympics in London, England (2012).  He brought home the Lightweight Men’s Singles title for the Queen’s Gaels from the Canadian Rowing Championships held last November in London, ON, beating two rowers who had represented Canada at the Beijing Olympics. His win at this significant Rowing Canada event was just the latest of Morgan’s triumphs in the sport.

“I had no idea of where I stood in terms of that competition,” Morgan says. “My goal was to get as close as possible to the top athletes. Now I’m looking forward to training full-time and seeing how much more I can improve.”

Morgan learned to row as a teenager in New Zealand, where he spent several years at a boarding school. He continued rowing competitively during his undergraduate years at Queen’s and medalled at the Under 23 and World Championships in 2004 and 2005. While he took some time away from rowing during his master’s program, he decided to get back into it after entering Law.

Morgan is quick to acknowledge that it hasn’t always been easy balancing the demands of law school with the level of training required to compete at national and international races. He has noted, however, that for some reason his workouts greatly benefit his studies.

Morgan Jarvis rows back to Kingston after a university season race held in St Catharines in 2009.

“I found during my master’s year that when I wasn’t rowing, I was extremely unproductive. I’m actually more productive at work or school when I’m also training hard,” Morgan says. “I learned that I have to have a lot on my plate, and be physically active, to be productive and successful at anything.”

He finds that training twice a day is a must. “I have to remind myself all the time that whenever I think I can skip some training, it might be that little bit that makes all the difference,” he says.

Morgan appreciates all the support he has received from his Queen’s Law classmates and professors, and also from Gowling Lafleur Henderson LLP in Ottawa, where he has worked the past two summers in their Intellectual Property section. If he can make it to the Olympics, Morgan plans to return to Ottawa afterwards and focus again on IP law.

He has had to miss some classes this term to attend national team camps in California. Classmates have helped him stay current and his professors have been accommodating. So has Gowlings, agreeing to postpone his articling with them until the fall of 2012 and enabling him to train full time for the Olympics.

“Thanks to such support,” he says, “I can fully commit a couple of years to seeing how fast I can get as a rower and still not put my legal career at risk.”

He won’t neglect his school work, but he can’t help focussing on the next step towards 2012: qualifying for the 2010 World Championships, set for October 31 to November 7.    

“This year those championships are actually back on Lake Karapiro in New Zealand, where I learned to row, so I’m hoping to make the team,” Morgan says. “It would be pretty amazing to go back, 15 years after I first raced there as a little kid, and compete at the world level.”