Amy Fuller Kearney passed away on Saturday, March 11 after a long illness; born May 30 1968, Amy was 54 years old.

Truly one of the greats of the sport, Amy walked on to the women's rowing team as a sophomore at UCSB and within a year was on the 1989 US Worlds team; she went on to row on 11 US teams in three Olympics (1992, 1996, 2000) and eight World Championship teams between 1989 and 2000. She won an Olympic silver medal (1992) and eight Worlds medals in the women's straight four and eight, including a gold in the eight in 1995 and seven silver medals in the eight and four. She also set several world records on the erg.

Amy was the 1993 USRowing Female Athlete of the Year, a finalist for the Sullivan Award for the top amateur athlete in the country in 1995, and was inducted into the National Rowing Hall of Fame in 2010.

Amy was so good that when she was coaching with the US team in 1997, her coach Hartmut Buschbacher convinced her to get back in the boat, and she made the team.

Amy also made a mark in the sport of sailing, serving as a starboard aft grinder with the America 3 in 1995 as well as a member of the first all-female team to challenge for the America's Cup.

Amy was the UCLA head women's coach for 20 years from 2001-2021; she moved into a role as a senior advisor in the UCLA athletic department in 2021.

Amy walked on to the rowing team at UC Santa Barbara as a sophomore, where she won the school's Athlete of the Year award in her senior year, and was an inaugural inductee into the UCSB Recreational Sports Hall of Fame. She started her coaching career there immediately after graduating, soon becoming the head coach, and subsequently coached at Tennessee, SDSU, and Stanford before being named the UCLA head coach.

Amy's daughter Shannon rowed for the US on the 2022 U19 team in the women's pair.

Amy was a force - intense, committed, relentless and a blast to be around in my experience on the teams we were on together early in her career and as well when row2k started later in her rowing career, and then throughout her coaching career - and she is already deeply missed by the legions of rowers and (I think especially) the decade+ of teammates who loved her. To Amy's friends and family, there are a lot of people who will be pulling for all of you.

We will post more about Amy in the coming days as well as any service information; for now here are some photos from row2k's first ever US World Championship Team galleries, all taken with a film camera, developed at a local store, then scanned on a crushingly slow printer/scanner, whew - nonetheless, the photos of the women's eight were some of the first decent rowing photos on the site. Amy is stroking the women's eight.

The 1999 US women's eight

The 1999 US women's eight

The 1999 US women's eight

The 1999 US women's eight

What a photo: Amy (lower right) with the 1999 silver medal women's eight