February 9, 2006

Student ready for Olympics

By Alexis Crawford

Student Maggie Crowley will represent the United States in speed skating when the Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy begin next week.

Crowley will compete in the 3,000-meter speed skating event Feb. 12.

The ice is home for 19-year-old Crowley, and it has been for quite a while. She started figure skating when she was 3 and then played hockey. But even when her mother found an ad in the local paper for a speed skating club and urged her sign up, the Olympics were still a distant dream.

“When I was little I thought I was going to be the next Michele Kwan,” Crowley said. “But now that I’m actually going, I can’t believe it.”

While hockey is still one of her favorite sports, Crowley loves the speed and the mental and physical training that speed skating demands. She says that the people she works with make it all worth it. She is coached by four-time Olympian Nancy Swider-Peltz whose daughter, Nancy Swider-Peltz Jr., is Crowley’s training partner.

But combining her education and sports goals required sacrifices for Crowley along the way. Instead of joining the rest of the U.S. speed skating team in Salt Lake City, Utah, she opted to stay near home and attend Northwestern while continuing her training.

“Being on the national team would mean I would live there with everybody,” said Crowley. “It’s just a little more convenient because your resources are right there for you.”

Crowley, a two-time member of the U.S. junior world team, was crowned the 2004 U.S. junior champion and finished second at last season’s event. She was third overall at the 2005 senior-level U.S. championship.

Leading up to the games, Crowley worked out at the Evanston Athletic Club and trained at one of the country’s few speed skating rinks, in Milwaukee.

She originally enrolled at Northwestern in 2004 in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, and while she hopes to major in economics, she has taken this winter quarter off from school to focus on skating.

Alexis Crawford is a Medill senior.