Hannah Heideveld is headed back to the Senior World Rowing Championships, and this time she’ll be racing in her native Netherlands.
The former Scarlet Knight will line up for the host country’s women’s 8+ at the Aug. 24-30 event as the defending world champion crew. It will be Heideveld’s second appearance at the Senior World Championships after rowing for Team USA’s women’s 8+ in Shanghai, China, last year, where the boat finished fifth.
Heideveld brings a strong international résumé into the regatta. She is a two-time gold medalist with the United States’ women’s 8+ at the World Rowing U23 Championships and also competed at the 2024 U.S. Olympic Trials.
At Rutgers, the 2025 graduate built a career that put her among the program’s most decorated rowers. Heideveld was a three-time CRCA All-American, earning first team honors in 2025, second team recognition in 2022 and honorable mention in 2023. She also collected three All-Big Ten First Team selections and was named the 2021 Big Ten Freshman of the Year.
Her final season in New Brunswick was a big one. During Rutgers’ historic 2025 campaign, Heideveld helped the Varsity 8 finish runner-up in the petite final and place eighth overall at the NCAA Championships, then rowed to silver at the Big Ten Championships.
Her earlier Rutgers crews also left a mark. Heideveld was part of the Varsity 8 that finished 14th and helped Rutgers place 15th as a team at the 2023 NCAA Championships. She also rowed with the Varsity 8 that won the C finals at the 2022 NCAA Championships and with the boat that took fifth at the 2021 NCAA Championships.
Rutgers has long been a pipeline to national-team rowing, and Heideveld is the latest example. Scarlet Knights have earned six medals at the Senior World Championships, including gold in the women’s 8+ by Jennifer Dore-Terhaar in 1995 and Maite Urtasun in 2002 for the United States. The program has also produced at least one medalist at every U23 World Championships since 2018, including Femke de Witt with bronze for the Netherlands’ mixed eight and Louise Dinard with bronze for France’s pairs in 2026.
Heideveld’s name also appears on Rutgers’ list of Scarlet Knight senior national team members, a group that stretches from Jennifer Dore-Terhaar’s silver in the 1993 Senior World Championships through Heideveld’s fifth-place finish with the USA women’s 8+ in 2025 and her upcoming Netherlands berth in 2026.
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