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On Three Rivers, it's rowing that's growing
Tuesday, July 10, 2001 By Deborah Weisberg
Y ou could call it a love story, though its happy ending may hinge on money and a lot of hard work.
Dori Martin, a young woman with a shattered leg, is urged by doctors to take up rowing, falls head over heels for the sport and decides to try for the Olympics. She meets the coach of her dreams who becomes the man of her dreams, and turns their Verona home on the Allegheny River into a boathouse and training ground for rowing champions.
Four years ago, she and her partner and coach Ladislau Tompa formed the Steel City Rowing Club, building the boathouse and dock with their own hands, selling cookies and washing cars to raise funds. The fledgling operation with 20 boats has won the backing of sports medicine guru Dr. Freddie H. Fu, and aims to build a world-class training facility on a half-acre of the old LTV mill site on the Monongahela, upriver of the giant UPMC Sports Performance Complex.
At the same time, Three Rivers Rowing Association, Pittsburgh's original rowing club on Washington's Landing with 200 boats, has launched a $4 million campaign to build satellite centers in Millvale and on Neville Island, plus ramps for canoers and kayakers along the Allegheny and the Ohio.
"We can't keep up with the demand," said Mike Lambert, executive director of Three Rivers Rowing. "We have high school teams we can't accommodate because we've run out of room.
"There's a rowing explosion."
While the Three Rivers Regatta has struggled to stay afloat this year, the picture is much different for the quiet sport of rowing. It's experiencing a boom, with visionaries and developers competing to give old waterfront mill sites new meaning.
Mayor Tom Murphy believes the rivers will become so popular for recreational use over the next five years that two rowing clubs will be just the beginning, and that, as more groups use the water, "more stake holders will become involved in protecting the environment," according to his spokesman, Doug Root.
Indeed, there's a lot of room to grow. Philadelphia already has 10 rowing clubs along three miles of the Schuylkill River; Boston has 15 clubs along the Charles River.
$2.2 million plan
Steel City Rowing estimates it will need $2.2 million to build a boat house and training facility on the South Side, with funding coming from a variety of sources, said board member Maury Burgwin of Highland Park. That doesn't include buying more boats, which can cost between $3,000 and $17,000 apiece.
The effort got a big boost at its first formal fund-raiser last month, chaired by Fu, when developer R. Damian Soffer pledged $100,000.
Burgwin said Steel City is seeking an arrangement similar to what Three Rivers Rowing has with the city, which leases its Washington's Landing property for $1 a year.
Murphy is trying to help Steel City secure a location, and referred it to "work out details" with the planning department and the Urban Redevelopment Authority, which owns the LTV site, Root said.
"The mayor's office is open to any group that, in an organized way, wants to promote recreational use of the rivers," his spokesman said. "Steel City Rowing is a group he has met with in the past and I'm sure he'll be doing it again. The fact that Steel City is interested in the South Side would fit in with what the mayor's vision is, just as Three Rivers Rowing did on Washington's Landing. The mayor continues to support the efforts of Three Rivers, too."
Three Rivers Rowing has struck similar arrangements with Millvale, where it plans to build a satellite boat house and training facility with indoor rowing tanks, and with Island Sports Center on Neville Island, where it will build even more boat bays and get to share equipment. The Millvale construction could begin this year, Lambert said.
Pursuing dreams
It was at Three Rivers Rowing that Martin and Tompa, 36, a former member of the Romanian national team, got their start, though they broke away four years ago to pursue their dreams.
"We're grass roots, but we're dedicated to our mission, which is to develop a world-class training facility in Pittsburgh," said Martin, 34.
After starting Steel City, they attracted the attention of people with influence, including a group from the Duquesne Club, who wanted Tompa to train them. They acquired a board of directors and a business plan.
"The interest is there. The water is there. Dori and Laci are there. Whether this will happen is not even a question anymore," said Steel City board member Pam Harding of Squirrel Hill.
Besides the fun of being on the water, rowing opens up scholarship opportunities, especially to young women who have fewer sports options.
Abby Loughrey of Shaler is one of several young women who started with Steel City, and has been racking up gold medals since. This year alone, the club has earned 20 gold, 16 silver and nine bronze medals. Loughrey's latest wins were at the Independence Day Regatta in Philadelphia, and, before that, at the national youth invitational championships in Cincinnati.
"For a small facility, they're turning out some good athletes," Lambert said.
While Steel City wants to serve the broad community, said Martin, its focus is on training competitors.
"I know what Laci did for me," said Martin, who still dreams of another Olympic run. "But it's also my dream to be able to give others a similar chance."
Three Rivers Rowing sponsors all of the city's major races, including the Head of the Ohio each fall. Besides dues from 1,000 members, it receives corporate and foundation support to provide diverse programming, such as rowing for the physically challenged and economically disadvantaged. But Lambert says Three Rivers is more than a community oriented facility. "We're an umbrella for rowers from entry level to the highest level of competition."
He does have concern whether the Pittsburgh community can support two rowing clubs. "Pittsburgh is a small community, and resources are not unlimited."
Lambert invited Steel City Rowing to join in its Millvale development, but Martin and Tompa declined, he said. "They want to go their own way."
Falling in love
Martin discovered rowing literally by accident. She was nearly killed by a hit-and-run driver 14 years ago as she rode her motorcycle through Shadyside.
Then a fourth-year architecture student at Carnegie Mellon University, she spent a month in a hospital, where doctors put her right leg back together with rods and bolts. Her doctors suggested rowing as a low-impact means of rehabilitation.
"I fell in love with rowing my first time in the boat," Martin said. "I didn't even know it was a sport. I just loved being on the water."
She eventually joined the Carnegie Mellon crew team, was "ecstatic" when she won her first race, and became so passionate about rowing, she decided to try for the 1996 Olympics, a goal she thought she could achieve only in Boston with its network of Charles River rowing clubs.
Martin got a call one day from Liz Jones, her former Three Rivers crew mate. "She said there was this wonderful new coach in Pittsburgh and I should come back and meet him. We could train for the Olympics with him."
That was Tompa.
"He was barely speaking English," Martin recalled. "Liz and I borrowed a boat, and paid him what we could. But he basically coached us as a volunteer because we were so determined."
Problems with her left foot and knee led Martin to Fu, orthopedic surgeon and medical director of UPMC Center for Sports Medicine. He not only agreed to postpone her surgery until after the Olympic trials, but offered to head a fund-raiser that would underwrite her trip. He continued to provide support when she and Tompa broke with Three Rivers Rowing, and donated a boat, "Fast Freddie," to Steel City Rowing last year.
Tompa was recently appointed coach at Winchester Thurston in Shadyside. That and support from members and benefactors have given Steel City Rowing an operating budget of about $75,000, Martin said.
Steel City plans to continue using the Verona boathouse after it builds its South Side complex.
"What we have is very special," said Harding, the board member who rows three mornings a week. "The trick will be to hold onto the specialness, when Steel City goes from a 'mom and pop' to a 'Giant Eagle' store."
Deborah Weisberg is a free-lance writer who often covers health issues.
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Steel City Rowing Club, 157 James St., Verona, 412-828-5565