Labor


Lora Webster mixes business with family fun and keeps a hands-on approach to balancing a hectic schedule.


intensive


LORA WEBSTER WILL TELL YOU THAT SHE AND her teammates on the U.S. Women’s Sitting Volleyball Team live in an alternate universe. She explains it this way: “We go to the Paralympics, and everybody at the


Paralympics knows why you’re there,” she says. “And then you come home and it’s like nobody has any idea where you’ve been for the last three weeks, and they don’t know what you just did.”


What they did was win the U.S.’s first Paralympic sitting volleyball gold medal ever with a 25-12, 25-12, 25-18 sweep of China in Septem- ber. That’s news that should be known in our universe, and the back story is important, too. Players like Webster, who has competed in four Paralympics, and teammate Katie Holloway, who has competed in three, have gone to enormous lengths to get to the top of a game that isn’t


48 | VOLLEYBALLUSA • Digital Issue at usavolleyball.org/mag


by Don Patterson Photos: Webster family, Bill Kauffman, Holloway family


To pursue their love of volleyball and help the U.S. Women’s Sitting Team reach the top, Lora Webster and Katie Holloway created their own training opportunities while living more than 1,000 miles away from their teammates. It was challenging, tiring and, at times, frustrating. But the payoff – a Paralympic gold medal – made it more than worthwhile


flush with cash. And even with the gold in hand, there’s plenty of work ahead for U.S. players and coaches if the program is to maintain the high standard it has set for itself. One big priority, says U.S Women’s Sitting Team Head Coach Bill


Hamiter, is figuring out how to keep talented veterans like Webster and Holloway around for four more years. “We’re not government funded like teams from the other countries,” he says. “It gets tough on our athletes because they have to have jobs to support themselves. Trying to balance everything out is difficult.” It’s especially tricky for the handful of non-resident players like Web- ster and Holloway whose home base is far away from the team’s Edmond, Oklahoma, training headquarters. Holloway, 30, lives in Belmont, California, and works full time as a fitness and wellness coordinator at a Veterans Affairs (VA) facility in Palo Alto. Webster, 30, is a full-time mom and a student – she’ll graduate from Stony Brook University in May with a degree in sociology – who lives with her husband and three young children in Point Lookout, New York. Unlike resident sitting athletes who practice five days a week from


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