PRINCETON, New Jersey - On Wednesday, April 22, USRowing announced the candidates for the U23 US National Team Selection Camp, and men's rowing senior Matthew Blaszczyk was among the participants for this year's camp.
 
The U23 National Team Camp represents the highest level of rowing for college-age athletes in the United States. Each summer, top athletes from around the nation are chosen to participate in the selection camp for the men's eight and the men's four-plus, the two priority events for the USNT at the U23 world championship.
 
"Matt is an uncommonly proficient athlete and showed, in his freshman year, that he had the tools to take his rowing to the elite level," said Head Coach Campbell Woods. "Since that year he has worked diligently towards this goal (alongside the team's goals). Matt is the second athlete to have made the U23 list in the past four years after Christopher Carlson earned a seat in the U23 in 2017. Chris went on to complete his career at the University of Washington, and is now a member of the US Senior National Team and a 2021 Olympic hopeful. Additional recognition is owed to recent graduate and volunteer coach Tadd Bindas, who earned an exact tie to Matt's erg score in 2019 as a senior but was unfortunately waitlisted for the U23 camp."
 
This year's U23 Worlds in Bled, Slovenia have been cancelled, owing to the COVID-19 pandemic and as such this camp will not be held. However, USRowing completed their selection for 2020 after athletes completed their submissions of scores in February.
 
"While understandably the pandemic has put a halt to the 2020 international racing schedule, USRowing wants to recognize those athletes who have earned invitations to our 2020 Under 23 National Team selection camps," said Matt Imes, USRowing High Performance Director. "While these athletes won't get the opportunity to represent the U.S. this summer, they make up an incredibly important part of our national team development program. We congratulate each of them on being selected for the camps, and look forward to many of them representing Team USA in the future." 
 
"While we are disappointed that Matt will miss the opportunity to vie for a seat in the U23 eight and compete for the USA at Worlds, we are excited for him to have earned this recognition as being among the top native-born athletes in the United States," said Woods. "These rowers, competing at the elite level, are showing that Marist's training program is strong and capable of developing talented athletes and propelling them to the top of our sport!"
 
Blaszczyk began his career at Marist as a true novice. Coming from a background in basketball and baseball, Matt joined the men's rowing team in the fall of 2016 having no experience with the sport at all. Within his first term, he had already shown substantial aptitude for the sport, taking the only novice position in the recruited freshman eight that season.
 
In the spring of his freshman year, he pulled off the remarkable feat of making the varsity eight, the fastest boat on the team. Since then, Blaszczyk has been a consistent force in Marist's top crews. He was a member of the Varsity eights of 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020.
 
In 2018, Blaszczyk sat in the sixth seat of the V8 that qualified Marist for the IRA (the rowing national championship), its first appearance in the event in over a decade. In 2019, he returned to the sixth seat in a nearly undefeated crew who took major regular season wins.
 
Blaszczyk has been a member of three top Head of the Charles Crews, which placed fifth, fifth, and second, respectively. This fall, he broke the program record for the 6K distance on the ergometer with the time of 19:32.
 
Matthew will graduate from Marist with a degree in Biomedical Sciences, and will attend podiatry school at Temple University in the fall.