Peter Graves enters his second season as Trinity College's head women's rowing head coach in 2023-24, after guiding the Bantams to the grand final in the last two National Invitational Championship (NIRC) Regattas including fourth place in 2022-23. Graves, who was interim head coach in 2021-22 before being hired full-time prior to last season, has extensive experience both as a rowing coach and an elite rower. He had a previous stint with the Bantams as men's novice coach and recruiting coordinator in 2009-10. Last spring, Bantam oarswomen Zoe Tiffin and Alley Johnson both received Collegiate Rowing Coaches Association (CRCA) All-American honors under Graves' tutelage.
Graves is one of the most accomplished oarsman in Trinity history, having powered Trinity crews to as high as a No. 10 nationally among all collegiate divisions and to four New England Small College Athletic Conference (NESCAC) titles and the program's first ever Eastern College Athletic Conference (ECAC) championship during his career. He owns six gold medals in the Head of the Charles Regatta and he stroked the Trinity Varsity Eight to a Henley Royal Regatta victory in 2005. Graves is a six-time member of Team USA in the double and quadruple sculls, and competed for his country in the 2012 London Olympics. He fell one second short of qualifying to compete in both the Beijing and Rio Olympic Games, and has coached for Team USA in the single and double sculls.
A 2007 graduate of Trinity with a bachelor's degree in economics, Graves has coached with Long Beach Junior Crew in California since 2010 and has served as the head women's rowing coach and program manager for the last five years. As head men's novice coach at Trinity, Graves helped the Bantams win both the New England Rowing Championship (NERC) and ECAC National Invitational Championship (NIRC) titles in 2010. He has volunteered as an assistant with Trinity's men's program and locally in Connecticut at the high school level over the last couple of years as well. Graves received Trinity's George Sheldon McCook Trophy as the college's senior male athlete of the year in 2007 and was the first male rower inducted into the Trinity Athletics Hall of Fame in the fall of 2021.
