ALL IN A ROW

PG NORTH: NA girls compete in World Junior rowing championships

Thursday, August 17, 2006

By Chris Adamski, Tri-State Sports & News Service

North Allegheny seniors Erin Dauson and Briana Pittman and 2006 alumnus Brittney Kelly and Chartiers Valley High School's Suzanne Maddamma took part in the World Junior rowing championships earlier this month in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

"It went well," said North Allegheny coach Don Heckenstaller, who accompanied the team overseas.

"We didn't do as well as we had hoped [the team placed last], but it is such a tough competition. It's one city against the whole country. But we were happy with the performance. We were competitive."

Kelly, Dauson, Pittman and Maddamma spent a week and a half in Amsterdam, arriving a week before the competition began. Dauson said she and her teammates were honored to be given a chance to represent the entire United States, and to put up a time of 6:54.71 during the repechage round, believed to be the best an American boat has done in the event at world juniors.

"It was amazing," Dauson said. "It was really cool. We stayed in a hotel with all the other rowers from all the other countries and got to meet a lot of foreign rowers and went to practice with them.

"We learned so much from them because there are lots of different things, just the style of training you can tell was different between the different counties."

Part of the reason the times were not to the level of the champion Germans or those from New Zealand, Austria or Great Britain is the cultural difference within the rowing communities in those nations that stress sculling -- rowing with an oar in each hand among its junior (under 18) competitors over sweeping, which uses one oar per person and is most common in the United States.

Also, the Americans have traditionally emphasized the octuple (eight-person), single and double races, while the international community often sends its best athletes to the quad contests. The United States has failed to provide a quad entry in recent years.

Plus, of course, many other nations sent a true national team that had trained together for months after a full nationwide search, while Kelly, Dauson, Pittman and Maddamma -- while recognized as the best team in the United States after qualifying last month at the national tournament in Princeton, N.J. -- were not handpicked from around the country and funded to train together.

Maddamma, who competes with the Steel City Rowing Club, had not even competed together with the North Allegheny rowers until last month.

Throw in the fact that other nations have more developed rowing programs at the youth level -- it is rare in this country to find competitive rowing before age 14 -- and the local team was facing an uphill battle before it even boarded the plane stateside.

"It was good just to compete against that level of competition and see what the international level is all about," Heckenstaller said. "It was a great experience for the girls and it showed how they train and compete in other parts of the world. It will only benefit them in the long run, and they had a good showing, too."

Kelly was awarded a scholarship by Notre Dame and will compete there this coming school year. Heckenstaller said Dauson is being recruited heavily by Ivy League schools and that Pittman and Maddamma are expected to compete at a high collegiate level, too. Maddamma was the second-fastest in the single sculling at the U.S. qualifying behind Lindsay Meyer of Seattle, who earned a bronze in the event, the best showing by an American in the single sculling.

"We trained all summer early mornings working hard," Dauson said.

"We're happy with the way we competed and to post the fastest time the U.S. Quad ever had is great."