She’s chairwoman of board for Colts
Doe Krug knows diving. Krug, along with her husband, Julian, are co-head coaches at the Pitt Aquatic Club, parents of an Olympic diver, and considered two of the nation’s premier coaches of the sport.
So when Doe Krug gives high praise to star pupil Maria Lohman, it certainly shouldn’t be taken lightly.
“She has the potential to be an Olympian,” Krug said.
Diver. Olympic potential. That’s pretty deep.
Lohman, a recent Chartiers Valley High School graduate, is being honored by the Post-Gazette Scholastic Sports staff not for what she could do in the future, but for what she has already accomplished. A four-time WPIAL and three-time PIAA champion, Lohman has been selected the 2014-15 Post-Gazette South Xtra Female High School Athlete of the Year.
Lohman has made a huge splash in a sport for which one of the primary goals is to make the smallest splash possible. Lohman, a Scott resident, is one of the most accomplished divers in WPIAL history.
She was also regarded as one of the top high school divers in the country. Lohman was named to the National Interscholastic Swim Coaches Association’s All-American team and judged by a panel of coaches as the national champion. She’ll continue her career at the University of North Carolina.
The favorite to successfully defend her WPIAL and PIAA Class AAA titles this past March, Lohman knew the other top divers from around this area and throughout the state had their eyes fixated on her in hopes of unseating her as champion. Lohman said she used that to her advantage.
“I definitely thought it pushed me to work harder to defend my titles,” Lohman said. “It does add pressure. Everyone was expecting me to win again. I just had to work hard and make sure I followed through.”
Lohman’s score at the WPIAL championships eclipsed her previous high-school best and allowed her to become one of just a few divers in WPIAL history to win four titles. Lohman went on to earn a “three-peat” at the PIAA championships. A year earlier, Lohman set a PIAA championship record.
“I know at states [this year] I didn’t perform my best, but at the WPIAL championships, I think that was my best high school meet,” she said. “I was glad to finish out like that.”
It was in fifth grade when Lohman’s now-beloved relationship with diving began. Lohman attended a clinic instructed by her
cousin, Amanda Lohman, a two-time WPIAL diving champion at Upper St. Clair in 2007-08 who went on to compete for the University of Michigan. Maria Lohman liked it enough that she hooked up with her cousin’s coaches, Doe and Julian Krug, to begin learning the sport at the Pitt Aquatic Club.
“You could see the potential right away,” Doe Krug said. “There are some people who don’t show that potential right away who end up being good. You don’t develop mental talent that quickly. The physical talent she had right from the getgo. She was impressive from day one.”
Years later, Lohman is a star. That said, both Lohman and Krug agreed that the former is still far away from reaching her full potential. She’s headed in the right direction, though, and is already competing in the country’s premier events. She will take part in the USA Diving National Championships this month in Orlando, Fla. Lohman will then head directly to Chapel Hill, N.C., to begin the next chapter of her career.
“I don’t want to say she’s the top recruit in the country, but she’s definitely in that top group, and it’s a strong group,” Krug said.
Lohman is the latest in what has been an outstanding crop of female divers to come out of the WPIAL in recent years. Krug’s daughter, Cassidy, a Montour High School grad, competed in the 2012 Olympics. Franklin Regional graduate Samantha Pickens won a national championship this spring at the University of Arizona and is currently representing the United States at the World University Games in South Korea.
Lohman has dreams of reaching those same feats.
“She has the potential to go [to the Olympics],” Doe Krug said, “but it’s never a given to get there.”