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Most weekday mornings are routine: I make a pot of coffee for the office and start checking my emails. I’m not usually scrubbing a dock free of duck droppings or bailing barges filled with water. But that’s just what I found myself doing on two recent mornings, as I helped to prepare the World’s Fair Boathouse in Queens for our School-day Para-Rowing program with coaches Catherine Hicks and Denise Aquino.

Row New York’s School Day Para-Rowing brings 16 weeks of land-based and on-water rowing activities each spring and fall to middle school students with cognitive or physical disabilities. I joined Catherine and Denise to learn more about this unique, fun opportunity for kids whose access to sports is often limited.

Before our students arrive at the boathouse, several tasks have to be completed to ensure that we are ready the moment they walk in. So it’s back to bailing out water, scooping out inches of it in each seat of the barges—the stable, flat-bottomed boats we use for School Day Para-Rowing. Along with putting seats into the barges and scrubbing the dock, I assist Catherine and Denise with getting oars. I’m bewildered by which oar to pick, and after they have a good laugh, they teach me about port and starboard oars. I’m 5 feet tall so many people would think I’d been a coxswain in college—as Catherine and Denise were—but many people would be wrong.

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My view of Catherine and Denise as I sit in (and bail out) the barge.

We’re ready to go by the time yellow school buses park in front of the boathouse gates. Our participants come from schools across the city, and once per week each school comes to Row New York for their P.E. class, learning rowing technique, stretching exercises, and other fun physical activities. As students filter into the boathouse, they’re excited. One girl is thrilled to go fast on the water. Another asks if she can get into the boat the minute she walks in the door. Clearly, this is a P.E. class the kids are enjoying (unlike the much-feared “Dodgeball Day” of my middle school years, when “Twist and Shout” blared from speakers and our gym teachers laughed and laughed). No, these girls want to row.

Eager as they may be, we start with some stretching to warm up the muscles. Catherine and Denise explain the importance of warming up to the kids: “We need to stretch to wake up our muscles, that way they’ll be prepared to row and you won’t get injured!” Catherine enthusiastically leads the stretches, making the students giggle along the way.

stretching para
Touch your toes, Nicole!

After stretching our shoulders, quads, hamstrings, and more, we do a dynamic warming up; jogging along Meadow Lake and looping around to the boathouse. I stand as the marker to run around as students give me high fives and loop back to the boathouse. Denise accompanies girls as they make their way around the loop. With a sufficient warm-up period and many eager questions about when on earth we will get to row, we are finally ready to set up our students in barges.

 

Rana Waving
Raina ready for the high five!

Now it’s time to row!

Denise and Catherine line up students as I help with life jackets. They determine where each student will sit and, armed with my new knowledge of port and starboard oars, I help pass them out. Meanwhile, the coaches carefully help students secure their oars into riggers and seat themselves.

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Denise assists students into the barge.

Catherine and I are the last ones to get into the barge and she instructs me to push off the dock and hop in . . . at the same time. After I shakily do so (it’s harder than Catherine makes it look), we head out on the water. On a beautiful spring day, middle schoolers row around Meadow Lake with Denise and Catherine steering the barges while teaching proper technique.

Today, I’m helping Catherine steer and after going in circles (much to Catherine and the students’ amusement), I really understand what she means when she tells me that the rudder steers opposite to expectations: left is right, and right is left. She instructs each section of the boat to row individually. I sit at the stern steering while four girls in front of me take strokes in the water.

Their joking subsided; the girls are now focused and having fun. As Catherine coaches, I steer to where she tells me. We are soon parallel with Denise’s boat and the girls call out to each other, wave, and laugh. I think to myself, This is way better than dodgeball.

After everyone takes plenty of strokes, we head back to the boathouse. With Catherine’s instruction and student help, I successfully dock the barge. A victory! Denise and Catherine carefully assist each student out of the barge and out of their life jackets, and the students head back to school—but not before bombarding Catherine and Denise with hugs and many thanks. One girl even hugs me and asks me if I’ll be at the boathouse next Friday. With any luck, I will.

If you are interested in School Day Para-rowing, please email Jennie Trayes at jennie@rownewyork.org, or call 718-433-3075.

— Alessandra Simeone, Row New York’s development assistant and occasional para-rowing apprentice

 

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