Success in Philly!

The RNY comp summer team headed back to the Schuylkill River for the
Philadelphia Youth Regatta. Once again armed with a young but talented
team, the team finished second in the J16 event, silver in the Girls
Eight, and bronze in the Eight's dash. For the first time, the crew
also fielded a second summer eight that also rowed competitively in
the 8+'s races. The regatta concluded a short but productive summer
racing season for the team. This week, the athletes will be doing some
extra miles and capping off July with an old vs. young RNY race (note:
"old" meaning 18) and a summer barbecue.

A Golden Weekend for Row New York

The team traveled to Providence and Boston this weekend. After
visiting with the coaches and touring the campus at the University of
Rhode Island, the team raced in the Sweeps and Sculls Regatta on the
Seekonk. The varsity four captured gold, the eight took silver, and
even the B eight managed to win its duel against the other B entry.
The team then headed to Boston for the Cromwell Cup, where the crews
finished 2nd and 3rd in the eight and raced competitively in the
junior four event. On what turned out to be a gorgeous weekend, it
was a great start for a young group that included over ten rising
novices.

Rowing with Initiative for Women With Disabilities

Last summer, the executive director of the NYU Initiative for Women With Disabilities, Judith Goldberg, asked me if Row New York ever provided adaptive rowing programs. I said we never had, but we'd love to. She had a group of young women with physical disabilities who were new to the sport of rowing, but eager to give it a try. I put her in touch with our Director of Programs, Previn Chandraratna, and then left on maternity leave.

Previn, when left to his devices, can figure pretty much anything out, and creating an adaptive rowing day with no funding or appropriate equipment was no exception. He pulled the slides off of ergs so the wheelchairs could be positioned right in front of the flywheels and he recruited Row New York summer leaders (experienced Row New Yorkers entering 11th or 12th grade) to help get the young women into the Stillwater training barges. What resulted was an amazing day for all involved. So amazing, in fact, that they came back for a second row last week.

For more information, check out: http://iwd.med.nyu.edu

Building a Boathouse---thanks to Pat Whetzle

The Queens Borough President's office is supporting a multimillion dollar renovation of our current boathouse in Queens. For those of you who have been to the boathouse, I'm sure you know why this is a good thing. The complicated part is what to do about the program while the renovation is taking place. The simple answer is that we will put up a temporary structure for a year or two. Back to the complicated part---this is no small feat.

Luckily, rower/contractor extraordinaire, Pat Whetzle, approached me at our fall fundraising event and said he'd be happy to help with the project. At the time, I had no idea just how invaluable Pat's help would be. After all, how hard could it be to put together a building? The thing must come with directions, right? We're a strong and hardy group. We've put together tables from Ikea. We can rig boats.

But as soon as Pat started talking about demo work in the parking lot, pouring cement, erecting columns with heavy machinery, and getting a hold of a forklift to unload the boathouse pieces, I began to realize that this was no table from Ikea. This is a building! And....it is scheduled to arrive on July 20th at 2:00PM.

So, for those of you here in NYC who are handy or hardy or both....feel free to give a shout if you want to help us put this thing together!

Note: I'll write an update once we have this thing up :)

Row New York Summer Leaders

Every summer, we hire five rising juniors and seniors to work as Summer Leaders for Row New York. It's a total win-win. We get great in house talent to help run our learn-to-row camps for over 200 girls and the Summer Leaders learn to coach and make some cash for college. Okay, they are sitting behind me right now ordering pizza so I am guessing it's a combination of pizza and college.

We have a great group this summer...Kennise, Vanessa, Felicia, Tiffany, and Margot.