Dr. Genevra Stone was, in her own words, a nerd. If you told that young student arriving at Winsor School for fifth grade that she would walk out of those doors and earn an Olympic Silver medal she would have said that’s highly improbable.

“I was not an athlete at all,” said Stone, a 2003 graduate of Winsor and the 2025 Martin William Souders Memorial Award recipient. “I played town soccer, but that was it. I walked into Winsor with no athletic expectations whatsoever, and the environment was such that you were just expected to work hard, set your sights high, and everyone would support you in your path to success.”

Karen Geromini, former Director of Athletics and current Chief Operating Officer at Winsor agreed.

“Gevvie was a bookworm,” Geromini said. “We had a lot of different offerings so students could really try any sport they wanted and she tried a whole lot of different sports. Then she got to high school and could try rowing and here we are!”

That path to success in Stone’s life truly began at Winsor where she learned two things that would inform the rest of her life: rowing and science. The first would lead her to multiple world championship and Olympic competitions while the second led her to pursue a career in medicine.

Both on the water and in the classroom, Stone consistently mentioned the learning environment Winsor fostered and how it brought out the best in her.

“We were having dance parties at the boathouse every day,” Stone recalls. “Rarely was there much complaining about things like carrying down launch engines. Practice was so fun and the whole time we were pushing our physical limits on the water, while enjoying each other and what everyone brought to the team while we were off it.”

Helping create that atmosphere was the team’s coach, and Stone’s mother, former Olympic rower Lisa Hansen. Hansen’s coaching combined with the team dynamics and ability in the boat for Winsor led to the school’s Youth 4+ entrant in the 2002 Head of the Charles to take first place in the high school division, marking the first of many individual and team accolades for Stone.

Upon graduating from Winsor, Stone matriculated at Princeton University and helped her 2005 and 2006 Championship 8+ crews take first place in Boston. To this point Stone had followed in both of her parents’ footsteps for so long that the next logical step was the Olympics.

“In a way I didn’t appreciate how difficult it was to become part of a college rowing team because both of my parents and many of their friends were from that world,” Stone recalls. “So in a similar sense, because both my parents had rowed in the Olympics I had no real appreciation for what it took to row in the Olympics.”

Stone recalls walking into the locker room at Princeton and hearing a teammate talking about their experience at the Junior World Championships and rowing on the Olympic course at Athens and realizing that there were so many others out there with the same goal. Following her junior and senior years, she won gold at the Under-23 World Championships and was invited to the Team USA camp ahead of the Beijing Olympics.

“That was the first time in my life that I was training full-time with no academic responsibilities and it was hard on my body, on my mind – for the first time I felt like the slow one,” Stone recalls. “It is very hard – I would actually say nearly impossible – to achieve at a high level when you don’t believe in yourself.”

Geromini and current Director of Athletics Sherren Granese recalled Stone describing the training “like a science project, from how and when she trained to what she ate to how and when she slept was detailed and exact.”

Stone would miss out on the 2008 Beijing Olympic team and over the next few years would balance competitive rowing with periods of time in medical school. She rowed in the 2011 World Championships but did not reach a qualifying place in the single. She was able to overcome that final hurdle by claiming a spot in the 2012 London Olympics at the Last Chance Regatta.

“There had been so many ups and downs, but getting to compete at the Olympics was a dream come true, literally.”

Stone would go on to qualify for the 2016 and 2020 Olympics as well, peaking in 2016’s games in Rio De Janeiro with a Silver Medal in the Single Sculls. When the 2020 games were postponed in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, Stone realized that she had postponed many elements of her own life in service of the sport she loved and decided that after the Tokyo Games the time was right to step away.

With a renewed focus on life off the water, Stone has gone on to flourish in her chosen field of medicine, completing a residency in emergency medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and a fellowship in sports medicine at the University of Utah. She currently practices emergency medicine in addition to sports medicine with Cambridge Health Alliance.

Reflecting on her journey, Dr. Stone is quick to reiterate how thankful she is for the environment Winsor provided for her as a young athlete.

“Winsor made it fun to play sports, no matter your technical ability. I developed into an athlete largely because of that environment. I certainly did not identify as an athlete when I went in as a fifth grader, but I certainly identified as one when I left as a senior.”

For Geromini, Stone represents the best outcome any coach or administrator could ask for.

“When people gain the success that she has in all facets of life, you really hope that deep down they’re good, quality people,” Geromini said. “Good souls. Caring, empathetic, compassionate souls. And that is Gevvie, the complete package.”
 

ADDITIONAL LINKS:

Please view the photo gallery here.

Please view the 2025 program here.

Please view the 2025 NEPSAC Annual Meeting website here.

Please view all award winners here.

Awards ceremony will be coming soon.