In Focus: Kady Glessner

January 24, 2012

When she was a junior in high school at Holy Names Academy in Seattle, Wash., a camera was never far from Kady Glessner’s hand.

Her mother, Margy Pepper, was an amateur photographer and complied stacks of albums full of pictures. Glessner loved looking through them and wanted to make some of her own. She liked it so much that she was strongly considering going to art school.

“I took a photography class and my teacher thought it was something I should pursue. I always sort of loved it. My mom was pretty talented. And I was one of those people that always had a camera in my hand,” Glessner said. “I always liked to document everything.”

But then came her first rowing race.

Glessner had everything she needed to be a top rower on her school’s team. She was tall, athletic and had an older sister, Molly, who rowed and was there to encourage her.

But she just wasn’t feeling it.

“My high school was one of only two that had a crew team, so that made it pretty easy and I was always told I had the right body for it,” Glessner said. “But when I first started rowing, I didn’t really like it that much and I didn’t really understand what was so exciting about it. All we ever did was row by pairs in eights and it never really felt good.”

It was late fall, as Glessner clearly recalls, and the water on Green Lake was being whipped into a white-capped mess by high winds. The conditions were so bad, the race was shortened from 1,000 meters to 500.

Waves were crashing into the boat and it was not an idyllic start to a rowing career. But it was the day Glessner was hooked. “It was 500 meters and I remember we just went for it and I got to pull really hard.

“Five hundred meters is not enough to exhaust you, but I remember it was just so much fun getting up to speed and so much fun seeing how fast you could go and having other crews next to us. The rowing in my head really wasn’t pretty, so I’m sure it looked worse, but it was just fun to pull hard. I was hooked.”

Glessner has been pulling hard ever since.

After graduating high school she spent the next four years rowing at Northeastern University. While she was an undergraduate, Glessner competed on her first national team and won gold in the eight at the 2006 World Rowing Junior Championships and then repeated the feat in 2008.

University of California women’s rowing coach, Dave O’Neill, was the under 23 coach that year and he encouraged Glessner to keep going. She took the advice and has now rowed on three senior teams, winning gold in the eight in 2009 and 2010.

This past summer, Glessner rowed in the pair with Caryn Davies. While they did not race in the top final at the world championships in Bled, they did finish high enough to qualify the boat for the 2012 Olympic Games in London.

Today, Glessner is training and in the mix for the squad that will go to London. She is one of about 20 women competing for a spot on the team.

Life these days is all about rowing, eating, resting and rowing. There is still a camera with her, but very little time to shoot pictures. “There’s not enough time now. Between eating, rowing and napping, there is not enough time.”

SHORT STROKES

Glessner graduated from Northeastern in 2008 with a degree in psychology . . . She had been considering going to graduate school but has become interested in a possible career in nursing and medicine . . . Glessner likes to read and do research on the internet . . . She said she is known on the team “for being quiet and just putting my head down and doing the work and that’s kind of the way I like it. Who knows, afterward I might be a totally different person. But for now I like being a hard worker, going to practice and pushing myself.”

Ed Moran

Features