The Boat Mover
Turner first ELHS rower invited to national selection camp

Shannon Sousa, The Lyme Times

“It was a great feeling that they wanted me to come. All my hard work and training in the winter paid off.” - Abbe Turner of East Lyme

East Lyme - Throughout her middle school years, Abbe Turner played basketball and softball, but after having arthroscopic surgery due to a knee injury in eighth grade, she was hesitant about continuing with the sports.
But then, the summer before she entered East Lyme High School, Bryan Mahon, Coast Guard Academy Novice Women’s rowing coach and head coach of Thames River Sculls summer rowing program introduced Turner to rowing.

She had found her passion.

After a few months of practicing her stroke in the boat, she was sure the sport would work for her. Mahon thought so too, telling Turner’s parents, “she’s pulling college times on the erg” and “if she likes the sport, she should stick with it.”

“Right after freshman year ended, I knew this would be my sport,” said Turner, 17, who stands 5-foot-10, with blond hair and hazel eyes. “I loved being out on the water. I loved the team aspect and it was the thrill of racing that I liked. I wanted to get as good as I could, and see how far I could go.”

Turner, who is starting her senior year this month, has shown she can push herself to the limit, independently as well as with a team.

Rowing in the sixth seat of the girls varsity first boat, Turner helped lead the Vikings in back-to-back state championship titles her sophomore and junior years. She was also a part of the first place finish at the Q-Cup race in Worcester, Mass., in 2004.

This summer, Turner was invited to participate in the U.S. Junior National Team Selection Camp at the Coast Guard Academy. The camp picks top rowers for boats fast enough to win medals in the 2005 Junior World Rowing Championships in Brandenburg, Germany, earlier this month. She was the first rower chosen from her school.

“I was actually shocked,” she said about being invited to the camp. “It was awesome. It was a great feeling that they wanted me to come. All my hard work and training in the winter paid off.”

Turner made the first cut, one of 47 rowers chosen out of 250 candidates across the country. But she missed the second cut, a group of 15 girls who competed at the world championships.

But missing the world championship cut didn’t leaver Turner idle. She has rowed in regattas in Philadelphia, New Jersey, Indiana, and Canada, and also attended the C.R.A.S.H. B’s World Indoor Rowing Championships in Boston.

Also this season, Turner broke an erg time record previously held for eight years.

After finishing first place in the East Lyme boathouse Wall of Fame in April, Turner set a 2K erg all-time record at ELHS, 7:22:3.

“I knew about the record in the spring of 2004,” Turner said. “So I said to myself, ‘When that season is over, the next time I get on the erg I’m breaking it.’”

Although Turner has achieved success as an individual, she still enjoys the sport’s team aspect.

“(Rowing) is different (than other sports) because all eight rowers are doing the same thing, at the same time, each minute of the race,” she said. “You have to pull hard every stroke of the race. When I was in states, crossing the finish line, and having my entire team with me was a great feeling.”
Having supportive coaches, Turner said, has also made a difference in her rowing career.

“Bryan (Mahon) gave me my foundation,” Turner said. “He’s taught me a lot and pushed me to get better. And Teresa (Tucchio, former ELHS girls crew coach) basically critiqued my skills. But together they both made me the rower I am today.”

“The boat mover,” as Turner is sometimes called, also owes part of her success to Paul Palazzo, a personal trainer at Advantage Personal Training in Niantic. Palazzo has trained with Turner twice a week for 14 months on rowing-specific strength training and flexibility.

“For rowers, their muscles need to be stretched to get full range of motion,” Palazzo said. “We also work on core strength using a nontraditional approach than weight machines; we use more functional exercises.”
Palazzo said Turner is the first rower he’s trained.

“She helps me with the terminology,” he said. “We’ve gotten along really well - we’ve become second family a little bit. I would imagine we will stay in touch (this year and when she leaves for college).”

“He’s been a real motivator,” Turner said. “It’s really helped. I’m so much stronger. It definitely helped get my erg time down.”

Turner has become a top prospect for Division I college coaches in the last year. Most of these college programs offer full scholarships. She said she has narrowed her overall choice of schools to five and is making plans for several “official” visits, according to NCAA rules, in September and October and hopes to have her decision made by mid-November.

“I think to row at a higher level has to be individual,” Turner said. “If I didn’t choose to do the camps and the races, then I wouldn’t have had the same exposure.”

Turner’s mother, Susan, is excited for her daughter to row in college.

“Abbe has done very well academically and in this sport,” she said. “She knows what she’s looking for, and her success in both areas will only increase in the future.”

Mahon agreed.

“She’s a hard worker, she trains beyond what she’s asked to do,” he said. “She is set to have a really good college experience.”