Fiona Murtagh has been inducted into the Fordham University Athletic Hall of Fame.
The University of Galway RC member and Olympic Bronze Medallist was one of nine Fordham alumni honoured at the Forever Fordham event on Friday, September 25 at Fordham’s Rose Hill Campus. Murtagh was unable to attend the ceremony.
Fiona arrived at Fordham in 2013 and spent three years in New York, studying and competing on the university rowing team. A General Science major, Fiona recalls making the difficult decision to leave her hometown of Moycullen at the age of 18 for a place at the prestigious university on the cusp of Manhattan and the Bronx.
“It was my first time away from home, I was 18. I was like, how am I going to survive this? But I loved it, it was such a fantastic experience and it was one of those things that helped me grow up really quickly and I learned so much about myself during my time there.”
Having spent a year at the University of Galway, Fiona began looking at options abroad having heard of the opportunities available from both an academic and athletic perspective, however it was Fordham that came in with the first offer and from that point her decision was made – with a little help from her parents back home in Moycullen.
“My parents were really influential in their support for me. I remember my mom would tell me, in the mornings I was going, and in the evenings I was staying. It was such a scary decision. But mom basically encouraged me to give it a try, that if I didn’t like it I could always come home.”
From there Fiona went on to achieve unparalleled success at Fordham, winning the Head of Charles two years in a row, holding the women’s school record on the ergometer for both 2K and 6K as well as becoming the first woman in Fordham history to win an Olympic medal in 2020. While her athletic achievements were admirable, her fondest memories were the people she met along the way and her teammates who remain some of her closest friends ten years on.
“The girls were so loving. Some of them are still my really good friends to this day. It was one of those life experiences of going through something so different with similar people, especially some of the girls who were international students like me, all going through the same thing. The training we were doing, the frequency, the scale, the focus – I think that set me up to adjust to the high performance life and demand going forward.”
