When the Queen's Varsity Rowing Team opens their season in Peterborough, Ont. at the Head of the Trent event, they will do so with an Olympian on their roster.

Gavin Stone (Brampton, Ont.) returns to Queen's after competing in the Tokyo Olympic Games this summer as part of the men's four rowing team that finished second in Final B. But as Rami Maassarani, Head Coach, Rowing, said, Stone is just part of the team.

"The thing I appreciate the most about Gavin is he is extremely down to Earth and if you didn't know he just got back from Tokyo you'd say, 'this is a very fit and fast individual,' but he doesn't say anything about it in the sense that he's just another member of the team and works just as hard as everyone else on the team and gets treated the same way.

"When we went through selection, he went through the exact same selection process as everyone else and had to jump through the same hoops to make the team and never once batted an eye about it. Just the fact that he sets the example that way, is probably the best thing about him. He's just very level-headed that way and that leadership translates to what it is we try to do which is just do all the little things right, take the time to do everything the way it's supposed to get done and then trust the process and the result will come after that."

Stone was Queen's University's Outstanding Performance of the Year award winner in 2018-19. That season he took national gold at the Canadian University Rowing Championships. He also won a pair of gold medals at the OUA Championship, where he was named the male athlete of the year and an OUA All-Star. His team-friendly approach mirrors what Maassarani said is the program's overall attitude.

"Across the board, there's no-one that really stands out just because that's how we approach things. Everyone has their job to do. We certainly think there are a few crews that could do well."

Queen's Rowing hasn't competed since the 2019 season due to the COVID-19 pandemic. That year both the men's and women's side finished third at the OUA Championship and fifth and sixth respectively at the Canadian University Rowing Championship. Maassarani said the team eager to get back on the water this weekend.

"So excited. They've been itching to get back to it. They haven't raced as Queen's in 23 months, so the fact that they get to race with each other after a very long two years of training, it's great," said, Maassarani, who added the team used the year off to focus on the little things they don't usually have the time to."

Maassarani said the team will field more boats this season as a result of a long-term build the program has been going through.

"We're on the tail end of a five-year experiment where we spent a lot of time focusing on performing as well as we could in our smaller boats with the goal of building the team from there. And we're finally in a position now where we are boating some of the larger boats like eights and coxed fours, which we haven't done in a few years. We're going to see how well that worked. From the athlete's side of things, they're all very excited to be able to do that again because it's something that we've been building towards for five years now."

For this season, Maassarani cautioned there really isn't a measuring stick after a year off, but said he optimistic and likes what he's seen so far.

"By all accounts and what we can tell so far in the water, everyone's looking pretty sharp, looking very good."