Home >  Sports >  Other Sports

Monday, August 05, 2002

By Lori Shontz, Post-Gazette Sports Writer

The first time Abby Loughery competed in a rowing event five years ago, her boat flipped over. But she still loved the sport.

In fact, the more time she spent practicing and competing with the Steel City Rowing Club, the more she realized that the sport to which she had been dedicating herself, basketball, was wrong for her. So she dropped it.

"I didn't realize how much I wanted out of it until I quit," said Loughery, 18, who just graduated from Winchester-Thurston High School. "I never really fully enjoyed the sport -- I thought it was just a little normal to not like it at all times. Once I started rowing, I realized you didn't have to hate it as much."

Armed with the willingness to work hard and an innate ability, Loughery has turned herself into a international-class junior rower. She will compete starting Thursday at the World Junior Rowing Championships in Tarkai, Lithuania.

Loughery qualified to compete at the junior world qualifying meet in Princeton, N.J., in late June. She beat her only competitor, a girl she knew from a national meet.

"It was just another girl from the junior nationals in Cincinnati," Loughery said. "I won, she came in second, and no one else really wanted to contest us."

Loughery, a Shaler resident, already has competed at junior worlds, but both times she was in a double.

In 1999, she and Cara Barkley dominated the U.S. trials, winning by more than 30 seconds, but didn't perform well at worlds. In 2001, she and Heather Schofield finished 15th.

"We felt we could have gotten fourth place," Loughery said. "Australia came in fourth. In one of the repecharges, they beat us by four seconds, and we had to stop because we caught a crab [got an oar stuck]. They beat us, but we could have beat them."

She never expected to reach such heights when she joined the Steel City club in 1997, having done so because one of her neighbors belonged to it.

"For some reason, I just knew I wanted to do it," she said.

Loughery has competed in a variety of events but, until this season, she focused on the double. She has been looking forward to concentrating on the single, and has made the most of her opportunities this season.

"Even before I tried it, I knew I'd like it," she said. "I could kind of picture it, and I knew I'd enjoy pulling hard."

Loughery has had three doubles partners, all of whom she said she got along with well. She has found that the single has fewer variables.

"You don't have to worry about getting along with your partner -- it's pretty pure," she said. "But the only bad thing is, when you win you don't have anybody to celebrate with."

Earlier this season, for instance, Loughery won a gold medal at the Pan-American Games, a competition she attended without any of her teammates.

"On the way back, on a plane by myself, it was kind of depressing," she said. "But then when you win, it's all yours."