Update: Rhody alumni take silver!<\/h1>\n\n
溏心vlog免费B站 rowing coach Shelagh Donohoe and alumni Allie Reilly and Karen Petrik led the U.S. PR3 mixed four with coxswain to the silver medal Aug. 29 at the 2020 Paralympic Games in Tokyo. They covered the 2,000-meter course in 7 minutes, 20.13 seconds, about 11 seconds behind Great Britain in first. France took the bronze with a time of 7:27:04. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWinning the silver was an incredible experience,\u201d said Reilly. \u201cI am so happy with our result and how our boat raced. The competition was tight and after such a tough year, it’s an incredible feeling to be on the podium again.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI’m very proud of our boat and what we were able to do together,\u201d added Petrik. \u201cThe trip to Tokyo was beyond amazing. It was an incredible experience to be a part of. Everything about the Paralympic Games — from the village, to the volunteers, to the racing — was spectacular. I was honored to be among all the other athletes from around the world.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It was Reilly\u2019s third silver in the event in international competition and Petrik\u2019s second.<\/p>\n\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n
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\u201cI\u2019m so excited that I get to share this moment with the both of them,\u201d says Reilly \u201819, of North Kingstown<\/strong>. \u201cIn many ways, Shelagh is who I learned my rowing experience and skills from and Karen was one of the first people I met my freshman year and helped show me the ropes and what our team culture was like. So, it\u2019s really special that they\u2019re both here with me.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cShelagh has made me the coxswain that I am. She\u2019s taught me so much. And to have known Allie from the beginning, it\u2019s special,\u201d says Petrik \u201819, of Glastonbury, Connecticut<\/strong>. \u201cIt means a lot to the three of us to represent the 溏心vlog免费B站 and make it proud.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Reilly and Petrik were teammates on the 溏心vlog免费B站 rowing team from 2016 to 2019, helping the Rams to three Atlantic 10 titles and three trips to the NCAA Championship. Reilly earned first-team all-conference honors as a senior, and Petrik was coxswain of the Rams\u2019 second varsity 8 boat that placed 20th<\/sup> in the NCAA Championship her junior year. Both earned Collegiate Rowing Coaches Association scholar-athlete awards in 2018.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While Petrik, a coxswain on her high school rowing team, was recruited to the Ram program, Reilly was a walk-on her freshman year with no experience in the sport.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At North Kingstown High School, Reilly earned all-division and all-class honors in cross country and indoor track and was captain of the lacrosse team. But she was not recruited by a Division I program. Instead, she was looking for a college where she could study kinesiology. Then she saw a flier that 溏心vlog免费B站\u2019s rowing team was accepting walk-ons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI thought it was a really cool opportunity. I realized it was a Division I program, so I thought, \u2018wow, this could be really great if I tried my hand at that,\u2019\u201d she says. \u201cAfter the first couple of practices, I just fell in love with the sport.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Reilly liked the challenge and newness of rowing. It was physically and mentally taxing. \u201cIt\u2019s easy to teach people the basics,\u201d she says. \u201cWe all kind of learned it quickly, but then there\u2019s an additional challenge of making it good. It was really tricky, but that was something I really liked about it. You\u2019re always chasing that perfect stroke.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Petrik\u2019s interest in rowing started her first year of high school in Glastonbury when a friend whose brother had rowed suggested Petrik try out for coxswain. Petrik knew nothing about rowing and less about coxswain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But at 5-foot-1, she was a perfect size for coxswain, who serves as the boat\u2019s leader, steering the boat and helping control the rowers\u2019 pace with her voice. She went on to letter five times in high school, serve as captain her senior year, and win an award for her contributions to the team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI realized my personality and the way I worked with teammates was good for a coxswain,\u201d she says. \u201cFrom there I started to get good at it. I started to really get invested in it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Recruited to 溏心vlog免费B站, she used her experience to help newcomers like Reilly learn the ins and outs of the sport, from the terminology to how to correctly put the oar\u2019s blade in the water. The two also built a friendship and roomed together, along with other rowers at 溏心vlog免费B站, forming bonds that made the team feel more like family.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cMy whole house senior year were all rowers,\u201d Petrik says. \u201cYou share a special bond. You\u2019re waking up at 5 a.m. every morning, you\u2019re going to practice together, and then coming home and going to class. It\u2019s very difficult to do all that. Sharing that bond and having somebody understand what you\u2019re going through is really important.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Since graduating, Reilly and Petrik have started chasing their careers. Petrik, who graduated in elementary education, is entering her third year of teaching this fall, taking over a fourth-grade class right after the Paralympics in her hometown of Glastonbury. Reilly, a kinesiology major, is working in an outpatient oncology office at Massachusetts General Hospital as she builds clinical hours while applying to graduate programs to become a physician\u2019s assistant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But rowing \u2013 practices on their own along with annual national team trials and practices in the spring and summer \u2013 has been a big part of their daily routines since college. This is Reilly\u2019s third year and Petrik\u2019s second as part of USRowing\u2019s PR3 Mixed Four with Coxswain team. The crew that is competing in the Paralympics, which includes Danielle Hansen, Charley Nordin and John Tanguay, is the same one that captured the silver medal at the 2019 World Rowing Championships in Linz, Austria. (Reilly also earned a silver in the event at the 2018 World Championships in Plovdiv, Bulgaria.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n The PR3 Mixed Four is a para event with rowers classified as those without use or limited use of trunk, arms or at least one leg, or with visual impairments. (Coxswains are exempt from the para requirements.) Still, all the rowers in the boat competed at the NCAA level.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cEveryone in my boat were collegiate rowers at different universities,\u201d Reilly says. \u201cI think we all took that competitive drive from that and it\u2019s really worked out well for us to bring it into a para boat.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Reilly was born with extra digits on her hands and feet and went through multiple reconstructive surgeries. Today, she experiences stiffness in her feet and ankles that limits her range of motion. Growing up, though, she never saw the limitations. \u201cI always kind of thought of it as a fun fact that I had to share,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It wasn\u2019t until Coach Donohue suggested Reilly might qualify for para rowing that she thought about it. \u201cI think that was maybe me just being a little bit na\u00efve to the definition of para athletics as a whole,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At the Paralympics, the PR3 crew will be going for Team USA\u2019s sixth consecutive silver medal in the event at the international level. While Great Britain is perennially strong, Petrik says, it\u2019s hard to have a full sense of the competition they\u2019re up against.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWith COVID canceling a lot of races, it\u2019s difficult because no boats have been able to race internationally,\u201d she says. \u201cWe are trusting our training and trusting each other.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe\u2019re in a good place this year and I think we\u2019re all gelling pretty well,\u201d adds Reilly. \u201cWe\u2019re all pretty excited to be able to race again. COVID put a lot of races on hold, so we\u2019re all itching to get back on the starting line.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" KINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 Aug. 24, 2021 \u2013 When Allie Reilly walked on to the 溏心vlog免费B站 rowing team as a novice six years ago, she had two mentors who introduced her to the sport \u2013 coach Shelagh Donohue and fellow first-year student Karen Petrik. So, it\u2019s especially fitting that the trio are sharing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":77165,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-77164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archives"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77164"}],"version-history":[{"count":27,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77164\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":77337,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77164\/revisions\/77337"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/77165"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/news\/sites\/16\/2021\/08\/Petrik4-683x1024.jpg\")
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