HISTORY:
The sport of rowing provides an ideal opportunity to integrate youth from different backgrounds by encouraging positive attitudes and rewarding team effort. In bringing together a widely diverse group of young people from the Greater New Haven area and Lower Naugatuck Valley towns, our program aims to strengthen the relationship between the Yale and New Haven communities.

Since the summer of 1999, we have run a pilot program in preparing to launch a full-scale, year-round program. This pilot program has been staffed by members and coaches of the Yale Crew Program, and has utilized Yale's world class rowing equipment. Participants have been instructed in the Payne Whitney Gymnasium on land rowing machines called ergometers and in the indoor rowing tanks that are equipped with moving water. Participants have then progressed to rowing lessons on the water in the program's three training barges. These pontoon styled boats enable novice rowers to develop their basic rowing skills while at the same time building teamwork and unity within the group. For some children, a lesson in the training barge was their first boating experience. For all participants, it was an exciting way to enjoy exercise while spending time outdoors. A total of six hundred and fifty children from New Haven and the Valley were taught how to row through our program last summer.

In the spring of 2002 we began a rowing program for high school students at the new Gilder Boathouse in Derby. This program was designed to run for four weeks but because of the enthusiasm of the participants it was extended to nine weeks. All of the participants expressed a profound interest in continuing rowing in the coming seasons. This was our first group to spend significant time in racing shells. With this proven demand by the young athletes, the next major expansion for Yale Community Rowing will be into a year-round effort.

Our program has countless benefits for individual participants, providing opportunities for personal growth that extend far beyond the banks of the river. All lessons, indoor and out, require participants to develop mental and physical discipline as they listen to coaches explain the rowing technique before practicing it themselves. Participants are shown videotape of themselves rowing so that they can continue to improve. This process of hard work and improvement, as demonstrated by actual videotape, allows the children to experience the sense of accomplishment that comes with gradual progress toward a goal.

While working toward individual improvement, participants also learn the value of teamwork. The sport of rowing requires all participants to work together, since one individual getting out of sync with others will force everyone to stop. The excitement of learning to row together and of gaining increasing unity shows the children the rewards of working with others toward a common goal. It is our hope that participants will take these lessons of discipline, hard work, teamwork and commitment and apply them to all areas of their lives.

Our program has been received with great enthusiasm, both in the Valley towns and in New Haven. The following groups have also enjoyed the benefits of Community Rowing: the Derby Recreation Center, The Boys and Girls Club of the Lower Naugatuck Valley, the Shelton Parks and Recreation Center, the National Youth Sports Program, Amistad Academy, Pequenas Ligas Hispanas de New Haven, LEAP, American School for the Deaf, and Connecticut Special Olympics.

For further information regarding the Yale Community Rowing Club, e-mail program director Jamie Snider or call him at (203) 432-0311.