School: Council Rock North
Swimming/Diving
Favorite athlete: Nastia Luikin
Favorite team: Penn State Nittany Lions
Favorite memory competing in sports: Making districts as a freshman
Most embarrassing/funniest thing that has happened while competing in sports: “One time at practice my teammates and I were messing around, and I decided that I would sit in our makeshift hot tub (a bucket). Well, I got stuck! My whole team tried to pull me out, but nothing worked, so they ended up pouring me out into the pool.”
Music on iPod: Mayday Parade, Paramore, Pittbul, Lady GaGa
Future plans: To be a preschool teacher and help people live out their dreams
Words to live by: ‘Live your dreams, so your life can come true.’ – Jane Ann Cantwell, CR North/CR South Diving Coach
One goal before turning 30: Have a beautiful family and have a successful career
One thing people don’t know about me: I am adopted.
Mandy Joy Lohse has the most appropriate of all middle names.
The Council Rock North diver burst onto the scene with great promise as a freshman, but she has been hampered by a painful shoulder injury for the past three years. The injury not only shattered her dream of one day diving at Penn State University but of diving at the collegiate level at all. As a matter of fact, Lohse has been told that shoulder pain will always be part of her life.
Still, the Rock North senior has a perpetual smile on her face. This season, less than a year removed from major shoulder surgery, she dove through the pain and came oh-so-close to advancing to districts, all the while throwing herself into the new role of helping her teammates.
“If I can’t dive, I want to help other people,” Lohse said. “That’s the one thing I always tell people, ‘If I can’t do it, I want you to be able to do it.’
“I want to see people achieve their goals. I love watching people succeed. It’s one of my favorite things. It’s what makes me smile.”
Lohse, who coaches the Breezy Point diving team during the summer months, has the makings of a very good coach one day, and this past winter, she all but filled the role of assistant coach to Jane Ann Cantwell, the diving coach at Rock North and Rock South.
“I’m telling you – I could not have done it without her,” Cantwell said. “She text messaged who was in school, who wasn’t feeling good, what was going on with the pasta parties and kept me in the loop because I don’t work at Council Rock.
“For me, she was invaluable. One day I couldn’t make a South meet, and North didn’t have a meet. Because of my job, I couldn’t be up to Central Bucks South where Council Rock South was swimming. She went up and sat with the kids.”
It’s the kind of thing both Cantwell and Rock North swim coach Ted Schueller have come to expect from Lohse.
“Jane Ann picks awards for the divers, but if we had them for the divers, she would be one of the ones the girls would consider for an unsung hero award because she just does whatever you need her to do,” Schueller said. “She’s been basically our best diver for four years.
“She’s always there, dives through pain, doing whatever for the team and never wants to be off the board.”
In truth, Lohse had absolutely no plans to get on the board. Until, that is, her gymnastics career of 11 years ended when she was in her early teens.
“When I started growing and hit puberty, it was really hard for me to keep going,” she said. “Once a gymnast hits that point, it’s very, very difficult for them to continue.”
One day Lohse’s parents informed her they’d signed her up for the Richboro Swim Club Dive Team. Her experience in the pool to that point had been nothing more than recreational in the family pool.
“I was ready to give gymnastics up, but it was hard,” Lohse said. “I was used to having practice every day for six hours.
“I was always upside down, I was always doing flips on my trampoline. That’s when my parents decided they were going to put me in a sport where I could do flips.”
Not surprisingly, Lohse – a level eight gymnast while competing for Airborn Gymnastics - was a natural on the board from the outset.
“They were like, ‘You’re very good,’” Lohse recalled. “I was like, ‘Oh, I guess I’m going to dive.’
“Gymnastics is a good setup for diving. I could already do the flips and twists, so it was easy for me to do all the dives.”
Everything was coming up roses for Lohse, who advanced to districts as a freshman. Then – during her sophomore year – the shoulder problems began.
“My shoulder started getting really loose in the socket, and it started actually coming out of the socket during practice,” she said. “A couple of times I actually put it back into the socket myself. It was very painful, and it was hard for me to do my dives.
“I didn’t tell anyone because they would probably have said I couldn’t dive anymore.”
Lohse dove through the pain as a junior and once again advanced to districts after missing out as a sophomore.
“Last year was so painful,” she said. “It was hard, but it was something I really wanted, so I pushed through it. My shoulder was so loose to the point that it would just go back by itself.”
“A majority of the team didn’t know what she went through and the pain she went through to dive last season,” Schueller said. “When she made districts, it was a bittersweet award for going through what she did.”
Lohse’s parent noticed that she was in pain and insisted she see a doctor.
“The first doctor said it was just tendinitis and told me to do some physical therapy,” she said. “I knew that couldn’t be true because my shoulders were swollen, and it was so painful.
“I wanted a second opinion.”
The second opinion revealed that Lohse had two torn ligaments.
“One was detached from the bone,” she said.
Lohse underwent surgery to repair the tears in March of 2010 and underwent physical therapy three times a week until recently. Her doctor discouraged her from diving this winter.
“He said I shouldn’t but said ‘they’re your shoulders,’” Lohse said. “I was like, ‘Alright, I’m diving.’”
And dive she did.
“Diving is a very difficult sport,” Cantwell said. “If you don’t feel good a little bit, it’s that much more difficult.
“She dove this year, but she didn’t do a lot of the optional dives that were super, super hard that she could do, and she almost made districts just doing the regular dives. It’s difficult – you want to do something, and you see kids up there doing a dive that maybe you could do better, but you can’t perform it.”
Despite her limitations, Lohse- the undisputed MVP of the diving team - still won her share of dual meets and finished fourth at the SOL National Conference meet.
“It was very frustrating,” she said. “It was so hard during practices watching other people on my team do dives I knew I could do, but physically couldn’t.
“It hurts to do a front dive. It’s hard, it’s so hard, but I was happy for them that they could do those dives, happy that they succeeded. That’s the best I can do.”
Although she was limited on the diving board, Lohse looked for other ways to help her team.
“I love my team to death, and any way I can help them, I will,” she said. “Even though I can’t help them with the points, I can coach them and I supported them and did everything I could.
“If they had a bad practice, I would talk to them in the locker room and say, ‘Hey, it’s alright. It’s only practice – don’t let it affect you.’”
Schueller describes Lohse as a ‘good student, a good teammate and a great captain’ and someone who even swam for the team in relays when they were shorthanded.
“Jane Ann said she like another assistant coach and right hand person, and she doesn’t know what she would have done without her,” Schueller said. “She’s just a great kid and always does everything you ask and is always, ‘team, team, team.’”
Next year, Lohse – an excellent student with a 3.4 GPA – will attend Bloomsburg University where she will major in early childhood development with her sights set on one day being a coach.
Cantwell is already trying to imagine life next year without her senior captain and unofficial ‘assistant coach,’ who – true to her middle name – brought joy and so much more to the Rock North swimming and diving team.
“She’s such a wonderful kid,” the Indians’ diving coach said. “She’s a really nice kid, and she really wants to do the right thing. She’s pleasant, and I love her as a person. She’s like the little sister I never had. I’m really going to miss her.”
