November 2020 ~
Lorena Legarde’s (Washington-Monroe, 1981) standout athletic career in high school and at the University of Portland helped lead her to a successful, now 30-plus-year career with Bonneville Power Administration.
Athletics taught me all kinds of things. How to work with people, how to deal with difficult people, how to be responsible, time management, accountability, discipline, and just how to strive to hone a craft.
~ Lorena Legarde
Legarde, who lives in Northeast Portland, starred in basketball and volleyball for three years at Wa-Mo (after freshman year at Monroe). She set 20 UP basketball records, earning NAIA All-America honors three times. She was the school’s Female Athlete of the Year three times and the first woman inducted into the UP Hall of Fame.
Legarde also was a bit ahead of her time — she grew up playing against her male cousins and other boys and helped take local prep girls sports to a higher level.
“I was always an athletic kid and had a natural gravitation to sports,” she says. “I loved it. And I knew I had to get a scholarship [to go to college].”
Today, she watches the WNBA and “I wish I were 30 years younger — I think I could have made a team.”
