Lisa Coughlin
This spring will be Lisa's fifth year with TC Williams Crew.  She started coaching in 2004 with the novice boys and switched to coaching novice girls in the spring of 2005.  Lisa is an Earth Science teacher at TC, and rowed for four years at the College of William and Mary.

E-mail Lisa Coughlin

Bess Dopkeen
Bess began rowing at the beginning of her freshman year of high school and went on to become varsity co-captain of her crew team at Kenwood Academy, a public school in Chicago. She was coxswain of the Tufts University varsity  lightweight women's boat during her freshman year, and cox for the varsity open weight her second. She spent two seasons coxing for Community Rowing, a competitive adult team on the Charles River in Boston, MA.

Bess moved to Washington, DC on a fellowship after graduating from Tufts in 2004 and immediately joined Alexandria Community Rowing's competitive women's team.  She has been coxing for them ever since.  This is Bess's eleventh year of competitive racing, and her third year as coach for TC Williams girls crew. In her free time she works as an analyst in the Office of the Secretary of Defense at the Pentagon.

E-mail Bess Dopkeen

Azim Khodjibaev
Another TC Crew alumnus returns to the fold for the 2009 season.  Azim is a 2003 graduate of TC Williams, and rowed for TC Crew for five years and the ODBC crew for three.  His coaching experience includes two years teaching the novice adult rowing program in ACB Summer Crew.

A native of Tajikistan (Central Asia) who's lived in Alexandria since 1994, Azim works in Old Town as a marine transport analyst for the Coast Guard, and his wife Noelle teaches PE and health at GW Middle School. 

E-mail Azim Khodjibaev

Mercedes Kiss
Mercedes was introduced to rowing as an 8th grader in 1998. Her passion for the sport grew while rowing for Coach Jon Schildknecht in her first two seasons, and her freshman 8 boat went undefeated. Mercedes spent the next three years rowing for Coach Steve Weir on the lightweight 8. This boat went undefeated as well during her sophomore season.

Due to rowing with talented crews, Mercedes earned numerous medals and awards, including five golds at the Northern Virginia Championship Regatta, three golds and a bronze at Stotesbury, one gold and one bronze at the SRAA Nationals, and one gold and two bronze at the Canadian National Championships. In her senior year she was Washington Post All-Met, All-Virginia, and was given the TC Williams Coaches Award. 

Mercedes graduated in 2008 from Virginia Tech with a degree in architecture. Though she no longer rows for Steve, she now works with him at a firm in Old Town Alexandria, and considers him her mentor. Mercedes lives in DC with excellent friends, is planning a road trip out west with her brother, wants to run a marathon this year, could do away with winter entirely, is an eternal optimist, and smiles whenever she sees flat water. 

Mercedes is very excited to be back at the boathouse, and will team up with Jon to coach the women's lightweight 8.

E-mail Mercedes Kiss

Jessica Stabler
Jess began rowing at Marietta High School (Ohio) in 2000. Most of her high school rowing was focused on the lightweight eight boat. As a lightweight rower, she participated and placed in many regattas such as the Midwest Championships, SRAA Scholastic National Championship, Wyandotte, Occoquan, and Michigan Scholastic.

In college, Jess was a coxswain for the Ohio University Men’s Crew. The crew was a club at OU and student run. Jess was part of the crew’s executive board and participated in many regattas such as SIRA and Dad Vails. OUMC is also the current host for the MACRA (Mid-American Collegiate Rowing Association) Regatta.

Jess graduated with a degree in Early Childhood Education in 2008 and intends to become a full-time teacher this year. She has great respect for this sport and enjoys watching all of its participants learn and grow. She is excited and eager to work hard with the novice this spring season.

E-mail Jess Stabler
 

Boys Coaches

Peter Hearding
Peter is entering his seventh year as a coach for TC boys crew, and his third working with the JV boats. In 2005, he helped guide the freshman 8 to the Virginia State Championship. Peter rowed for TCW in the senior 8 and was a member of the Washington Post All-Met team in 1997. He went on to Syracuse University to row as a freshman. After graduating Pete returned to Alexandria and lost no time getting back into crew.

Peter has also coached the boys side of the Old Dominion Boat Club program during the fall seasons of 2006 and 2007. During the 2007 season, ODBC boys won all three of the local races they entered – Head of the Potomac, Occoquan Chase and the Head of the Occoquan, and placed 10th out of 55 entries at the Head of the Charles. Peter also coaches the Alexandria Community Rowing Men’s Sweep program. 

Peter is married to a fellow TC Crew alum, Lexye (Street) Hearding, works for Homeland Security, adopted a black lab named Toby, isn’t any good at home repair, enjoys reading the Sunday Post, runs a lot but is not particularly fast, incurs icy stares from his darling wife when he acts like a lunatic while watching Redskins football games and Syracuse basketball games, worries about greenhouse gas emissions, thinks much of the decline of western civilization can be attributed to Dr. Phil, believes William Faulkner to be the most overrated American writer and Walt Whitman the most underappreciated, and usually finds it difficult to say anything intelligent about himself.

E-mail Peter Hearding

Matt Holland
Matt Holland is in his third year of coaching for T.C. Williams. He is a veteran of the Potomac, in Alexandria and Washington, DC. In the 1990s he rowed for TC Williams under coaches Phil Yeich, Sarah Washington, Ed Cannon, and Mike Penn. He also competed out of Thompson's Boat Center racing in the 8 and 4, medalling in both events at Mid-Atlantic Championships. Matt went on to James Madison University, where the Shenandoah's unpredictability prevented him from continuing to row (that and JMUs lack of a rowing program). Matt continues to row competatively, mostly on the erg against the fish game. 

Matt is also a 3rd grade teacher in Alexandria and is busy working hard to recruit future Titan rowers, starting with his current 8 and 9 year old students. They have come to love the erg and are accustomed to completing 20-30 burpees for late and incomplete homework assignments. Matt plans to have them weighing in at 225lbs and standing 6'4" tall by the time they reach 8th grade. 

When he is not teaching and coaching he enjoys photography, traveling, and doing anything he can find to spend time outdoors. In 2003, Matt biked 4,300 miles from the east coast to the west coast and most recently completed a 2,300 mile bike ride from Seattle to Chicago to raise money for Leukemia and Lymphoma. While long distance bike treks are not in Matt's future plans, he is searching for a challenge for this upcoming summer. 

E-mail Matt Holland

Patrick Marquardt
Patrick is a native to Alexandria and fellow TC Titan. In 1998, he rowed his way to a bronze metal at Stotes under Freshman 8 Coach Jaime Rubini. In 2000, Patrick was a member of the TC Junior 8 ("we rowed like…") for Coach Ed Cannon, that won the Canadian National Gold Medal.

After graduating in 2001, Patrick went on to James Madison University where he majored in math and economics. As an active member of the JMU econ department his senior year, he taught elementary macroeconomics to entering students. He worked as an analyst for Systems Planning and Analysis before deciding to return to the world of academia. In 2006, he began the pursuit of a master's degree in economics at George Mason University. The following semester he was given the opportunity to take a brief sojourn to Central America and spent eight months teaching English at the San Mateo Bilingual School in Santa Cruz de Yojoa, Honduras. 

Patrick is currently working to complete his masters, and is focusing his efforts on a study on the economics of anarchy in the Sengoku Period of feudal Japan and an analysis of the impact of U.S. monetary policy on Latin American growth.  He looks forward to study breaks out on the Potomac and inspiring new Titans to succeed in the crew program.

E-mail Patrick Marquardt

Adam Soller
Adam is entering his first year as a member of TC's coaching staff. Last year he was an assistant coach with San Diego Rowing Club's Men Junior team where he assisted with the coaching of the team's sweep and sculling boats that culminated in two of the team's entries qualifying for US Rowing's Youth Nationals where the Lightweight 4+ earned silver. Prior to this, Adam coached at Sidwell Friends for two years in DC.

Adam began rowing competitively during high school in the DC area, initially with Gonzaga and later with West Potomac. Following graduation, Adam attended the Virginia Military Institute and was forced to take a hiatus from rowing as there was no crew due to the "river" in Lexington being barely wider than some of the streets in Old Town. Upon returning to the DC area in 2003, he joined Capital Rowing Club and has since raced in sweep and sculling events up and down the East Coast.

An avid sports fan, who is also the oldest of five boys, Adam works in Old Town where he provides venture debt to biotech companies. Outside of work he can be found trying to keep his golf shots out of the rough, learning how to fly fish or heading to the closest resort to snowboard on recently fallen snow.

E-mail Adam Soller

Steve Weir 
Steve retired as girls head coach at the end of the 2008 season, after 33 years of coaching at TC Williams, but will stay on ias rigger and substitute coach.  Steve began rowing lightweight 8 at F.C. Hammond High School in 1968, and coxed the Championship junior four at the Stotesbury Cup Regatta that year.

He began coaching at TC Williams in 1975, Dee Campbell’s first year as head coach for the TC Girls' Crew Team.  He started coaching the lightweight women’s team in 1978, and became the head women’s coach for TC Williams in 1994.

His crews won 12 Stotesbury Cup and SRAA Championships and five Canadian Secondary School Rowing Association Championships. The trophy for the Women’s Lightweight Eight at Stotesbury Cup Regatta is named “The Steven T. Weir Cup”.  

On October 4, a large crowd gathered at the Dee Campbell Rowing Center and Oronoco Park to pay tribute to Steve for his outstanding coaching career.