Rowe is California-bound

A half-dozen schools courted Cardozo track star Lindsay Rowe, but in the end, the hurdler - ranked as the top female high school senior in the sport nationwide - opted to head to the Pac-10 school with a strong track record of Olympic success: UCLA.
Since 1976, the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) has produced more Olympians and more Olympic medals than any other college. “When I visited, I just really felt at home there,” Lindsay explained at a press conference announcing her decision on Monday, April 30.
In addition to an immediate bond she felt with UCLA’s top female track and field coach, Jeanette Bolden, Lindsay said the mixture of academics and athletics drew her to the university.
The icing on the cake came when Lindsay had the chance to meet Olympian Jackie Joyner Kersee and husband Bruce Kersee while she was visiting the west coast school last week with her mother.
Luckily for the mother-daughter duo - joked Lindsay’s mom, Christina Rowe - a nor’easter forced the cancellation of their flight back to New York, giving them an extra day to spend on UCLA’s campus. “It’s a great hurdling school,” Christina Rowe said, beaming.
Since Lindsay began hurdling two years ago, her mother has helped to chauffeur her around to various meets across the city and state. “I’ve tried to be as much of a support system as I can,” she said, running down a list of competitions where her daughter rose through the hurdling ranks - top in the city, in the state, and now number two in the country.
“Often times I thought that she [Lindsay] already knew what she was supposed to do, but she just wanted me to work harder,” joked James Phipps, coach of Lindsay’s club track team, the New York Novas, of her natural abilities.
However, Lindsay’s success also stemmed from hard work, said Cardozo girls track coach Gail Emmanuel. Emmanuel said that at first she had to get Lindsay out of dance practice and onto the grassy fields behind the Oakland Gardens high school. Before she was introduced to the hurdles, Lindsay was a middle-of-the-pack middle sprinter.
And there was at least one moment when Lindsay’s mother worried about her daughter’s safety - when Lindsay fell during the Loucks track meet in White Plains last year. “I was devastated,” her mother said.
However, Lindsay simply laughed about the fall, and on Friday, May 11, she will return to the same meet to compete again.
When asked how Cardozo prepared her for the competition she faced in college, Lindsay was confident in the training that she has received so far. “I feel like it would have never had happened were it not for the support I got from my coaches and my family,” Rowe said.
School officials, in turn, praised Lindsay as both a runner and a pupil. At the press conference, Cardozo Principal Rick Hallman described the hurdler as “a student who in every sense of the word is a student athlete.”
And the highest praise came from Phipps. “Over the years, I’ve had the opportunity to train some really great runners in New York City … now that I’m getting rid of her, I can safely say that she’s the greatest I’ve ever had,” he said. “She has just scratched the surface of her potential. I see no reason why she cant be a world or Olympic champion if that’s what she chooses to do.”