Dan Wolleben enters his fourth year on the Fordham Rowing staff after graduating from Fordham in 2004 following an exceptionally successful collegiate rowing career.
In his first two years with the novice women's team at Fordham Wolleben has helped lead two of the most successful novice squads in Fordham history. After his first year as assistant novice coach in 2004-05, the novice squad had its second best year in school history. The following year, eight rowers who were a part of that 2005 novice squad rowed in the varsity eight during the spring season.
In his second year at Fordham, now as the head novice coach, Wolleben's team equaled or bettered their performance of the previous year's crew at every regatta. Wolleben has also been the head coach at Fordham Prep High School in the Bronx for the past two years. He has taken a small upstart team of less than 15 rowers and expanded this team to 40 young men that have medaled three times in the past two years at the New York State Championships, while also making the finals in several other events.
For the past two summers he has continued to work with some of these Fordham Prep rowers while serving as the head coach for the Pelham Community Rowing boy's junior summer program. Here too Wolleben has increased the size of the program, and has also produced medal winning results at several summer regattas with this new program. Many of Wolleben's high school rowers will be going on to college rowing programs such as the Yale Heavyweights, U Penn Lightweights, Boston College, St. Joseph's, Holy Cross and of course Fordham.
A four-year member of the Fordham men's crew, Wolleben was team captain both his junior and senior year. He is a four-time Varsity National Championship Gold Medalist, winning the Dad Vail championship three times and the ECAC National Championship once, while stroking two of those championship winning crews to victory. He joins a unique list of very few rowers in the history of collegiate rowing to win a major national college championship all four years on the varsity level. He was also a member of two top ten nationally ranked lightweight eights as a sophomore and junior.
Wolleben is a three-time New York State Champion and has also competed at the I.R.A. National Championship Regatta three times. As a member of the Senior National Team Development Camp in the summer of 2003 at the Nereid Boat Club in New Jersey, Wolleben stroked the senior lightweight four to a U.S. National Championship. He has also medaled in several other events and competed in the grand finals at the Canadian Henley Regatta.
Wolleben received a Bachelor's Degree in Sociology from Fordham in 2004, with a minor in Religious Studies. He is a 2000 graduate of Xavier High School in Middletown, Connecticut where he was a member of their nationally ranked cross country and track teams.
