Senior coxswain brings lighthearted leadership to her final season

Logan Warwick always wanted her coach Amy Fuller Kearney to make a Snapchat so they could exchange pictures of their dogs, but it took some time for her to come around.

“When we were coming home from Crew Classic, her daughter was playing on my Snapchat so we convinced her to make her own,” Warwick said. “Now the team snaps her a lot and she snaps us pretty funny things.”

Warwick really brought her coach into this century, according to Fuller Kearney. As a senior coxswain for the varsity eight boat, Warwick is the soul of her team. Her ability to lead the team and joke with the coach helps everyone feel comfortable and willing to work harder.

Recently, the team came back exhausted from Clemson, South Carolina, but Warwick saw it as her duty as both coxswain and captain to get her team back to the level that they needed to be at. She was able to rally her team by addressing how moving forward is their only option and by doing so, they can only get better.

“How we move forward defines us,” Warwick said. “So we can either succumb to our exhaustion or we can, basically, fake it until you make it, as I say, so just keep working hard everyday.”

Approaching the end of her final season, she’s holding nothing back. Warwick still remembers what drove her to become a rower and the moment she knew that rowing was her passion.

Rowing wasn’t unknown to Warwick – it was a popular sport in her hometown of Newport Beach, California – but it wasn’t until being pushed by a friend’s mom that Warwick joined the Newport Aquatic Center.

“When I was in eighth grade, I decided to do the summer camps where you learn to row, and I actually rowed for a couple of weeks,” Warwick said. “I quickly became a coxswain and just fell in love with it right away, so I never looked back.”

Coxswains need to be small and loud and know how to lead. Those requirements were perfect for Warwick; she is 5-foot-4 with a booming voice that can be heard from start to finish at the docks of Marina del Rey, California.

As Warwick got older, she knew that she wanted to continue being a coxswain for as long as she could. When college recruitment time arrived, she refused to talk to any coaches that weren’t from UCLA. As a third-generation Bruin, Warwick wanted nothing but to be a coxswain for the Bruins.

When she finally came to UCLA, she started off competing in the freshmen eight, which at the time was a Pac-12 boat. (Now, the freshmen eight is called the novice boat for new rowers and doesn’t compete.) As her second year came around, she moved up to varsity, where she raced against USC in her favorite collegiate experience.

“No one expected us to beat USC, and we ended up being ahead right off the start, then all the way through,” Warwick said. “We beat them by open water, and that was really fun because people just weren’t expecting it.”

That season, Warwick’s boat went on to get second place in the Pac-12 championship and eighth in the NCAA championship. Even with a slight change in the lineups, Warwick was able to get her team together for a victory.

“Logan was mature beyond her years,” Fuller Kearney said of her first impression of Warwick. “She really cared about this team and everybody on it and she let everybody know it.”

Warwick’s bubbly personality shined through at one particular practice. She and freshman second-varsity-eight coxswain Gray Strandberg look very similar and decided to wear the exact same outfit from head to toe at practice so when they were in the water, they looked identical. Fuller Kearney was lost and couldn’t tell them apart; she was stuck yelling “whoever you are” instead of their names, giving the team some laughter during their tough practice.

Warwick’s teammate and roommate, senior Alice White, recalled that during races, Warwick is always pumped up and in the moment. Warwick sometimes will start to bang on the boat, yell or even forget to be counting the strokes, but White finds her passion inspiring.

“She’s always enthusiastic even on days when it sucks, she just always brings the positive and very vibrant feel to practices,” White said. “Even when I know that she doesn’t want to be there or she’s having a hard day.”

Looking back on her four years of collegiate rowing, Warwick advises the younger girls to never let the lows get too low, and that the most important thing for success is how they handle adversity.

As Warwick thought about her fondest memory of her collegiate rowing career, she knew that rowing would always be her family. Her coaches and teammates said she is never sad, but she was a little emotional about the memory of the silent row that she and the team recently did for a former teammate, Kirsten Snook, that died in a car accident. The team left the bow seat of the varsity eight boat empty with no oar and no seat – just flowers – because that was Snook’s seat. She was a senior when Warwick was a freshman, and Warwick remembers Snook as being an inspiring, positive and fierce competitor.

“Just seeing everyone come back for her really shows you how rowing is greater than yourself and how these friends are for life,” Warwick said.

Everyone coming together allowed Warwick to realize that even though her rowing career is coming to its end, she will always be part of the team.

“You come together in these moments,” Warwick said. “It’s just really amazing to have such a strong family.”