As I was wrapping up my final weeks at the Democrat and Chronicle during the summer of 2011, Rochester's Abby Wambach led the U.S women's soccer team, American fans and myself on one exciting journey. Wambach's heroics on the international stage allowed me one final chance to have a lot of fun designing news pages that Rochesterians would add to their scrapbooks.

Abby Wambach saves the U.S. (July 11, 2011)
Wambach had quite possibly the biggest goal of her career when she scored on Brazil during the final minutes of stoppage time. The U.S. won the game in a shootout and advanced to the next round of the Women's World Cup.


Wambach's world (July 13, 2011)
If you didn't know who Wambach was by this point, you weren't paying attention.


It's Abby again (July 14, 2011)
At this point, our sports staff couldn't have even written a better story than the one Wambach was writing.

Wambach: Roc Star (July 17, 2011)
With Wambach in the 2011 Women's World Cup final, the Democrat and Chronicle chose to celebrate the event with a special section technique we had never used: A spadea. Up to this point, spadeas had only been used for advertising.