Tim Wooge has been elected to the Northeastern University Hall of Fame for excellence in the sport of rowing.
Wooge, Class of '98, was not only one of the greatest strokes to row for Northeastern, he was also an oarsman of international repute. As a budding young scholar and rower from Muelheim Ruhr, Germany, Wooge decided he wanted to continue his education in the United States. Wooge had been a member of the German Junior team and the German Under-23 team. As captain of the Junior team, he had won two national titles in the four without coxswain, and rowed in the World Championships. In the Under-23 competition, he rowed in the World Championship in the four with. He corresponded with Husky crew coach Buzz Congram and soon was a resident of both Huntington Avenue and Henderson Boathouse.
In Wooge's first NU rowing season of 1995, he immediately was assigned the stroke seat. His immense size of 6'8 and 220 pounds, plus years of international rowing made him a prodigious power. The season before had been less than mediocre with a 2-4 regular season regatta record and a 10th place finish in the Eastern Sprints. The 1995 Huskies defeated Boston University, Yale and Rutgers handily but were just nosed out by Brown, Harvard and Pennsylvania for a 3-3 record. The Huskies avenged all those losses by winning silver at the Sprints, coming in second to only Princeton. NU then took bronze at the national championship in Cincinnati.
The season of '96 was both one of the greatest in Northeastern history and certainly the saddest. The Huskies dispatched their regular season rivals in workman-like fashion: BU by 12 seconds, Brown by four, Rutgers by 15 and Pennsylvania by two. And, then came Harvard. In 16 tries NU had only bested the Crimson twice. Behind the powerful stroke of Wooge, Northeastern won by five seconds. The top seed in the Sprints, the Huskies led all the way, winning by nearly two seconds. Then came calamity. Due to compliance confusion, Northeastern had been rowing an ineligible oarsman. NU forfeited the season. However, rowing fans still honor what they won on the water.
His senior season, NU went 3-2, including another win over Harvard, then finished fifth in the Sprints. Wooge was named Most Valuable Oarsman in 1995 and in 1997. He was Dean's List all four years and graduated Summa Cum Laude as a Business major.
Wooge continued his studies at Cambridge University, England where he earned both a Masters and Doctoral Degrees in Business. He rowed for Cambridge in 1999, 2001 and '03, captaining the '03 crew.
