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Rocking the Boat Alumni Rowing Team

Rocking the Boat’s Alumni Rowing Team is a fun, exercise-based initiative that allows alumni from this South Bronx-based Youth Development Program to practice and participate in local and regional races.  

Leader

Danise Infante

Location

812 Edgewater Road Bronx, NY 10474

About the project

Participants in all three of Rocking the Boat’s tracks—Boatbuilding, Sailing, and Environmental Science—learn how to row during their time in this award winning Youth Development program.  They love rowing in the traditional wooden boats they or their peers have built, and while they are always welcome to come back and take a boat out on the Bronx River, few take the initiative to do so.  In 2015, the organization piloted an Alumni Rowing Team, the only team of its kind in the South Bronx, to create an organized way for program grads to keep rowing and remain engaged with Rocking the Boat.  It was a big hit! 

Support from the Healthy Neighborhoods Challenge will fund a second year of this fun, exercise-based initiative and allow 16 alumni to participate in 24-30 practices as well as six to eight local and regional races.  Practices lasting three hours take place in handmade wooden boats on the Bronx River at Hunts Point Riverside Park (adjacent to Rocking the Boat) and races are based as close as Manhattan and as distant as Boston and Maine.  The main event they train for throughout the summer is Rocking the Boat’s own fall fundraiser, Rocking Manhattan, taking place this year on September 17—during the Healthy Neighborhoods Challenge!  Rowers exhibit both nautical and leadership skills as they serve as coxswains, or drivers, of the 26-foot long Whitehall gigs that event registrants row nearly 30 miles over the course of nine hours around the entire island of Manhattan.  The coach of Rocking the Boat’s Alumni Rowing Team is Tizoc Gomez, formerly the Community Coordinator and Marine Technology Consultant at New York Harbor School.  With over nine years of experience planning and leading rowing, sailing, and backpacking trips for students, Tizoc ably and enthusiastically leads every practice session and trips.

The Steps

The Alumni Rowing Team has been practicing in the South Bronx all summer and is currently gearing up for a busy fall and winter racing schedule:

September 17, 2016: Rocking Manhattan, NYC

October 1, 2016: Massachusetts Bay Open Water Challenge, Cape Cod, MA

October 29, 2016: Head of the Weir Race, Hull, MA

Mid-November 2016: Village Community Boathouse Race, NYC

February 4, 2017: Boston Indoor Rowing Challenge, South Boston

Mid-Late February, 2017: Snow Row, Hull, MA

Early-June, 2017: Fort Point Channel Regatta, Boston, MA

Why we‘re doing it

Hunts Point is an area that has the highest prevalence of diabetes in New York City and where asthma incidence is continues to be a great concern for both children and adults.  Rowing is an activity that works every muscle in the body, and at the same time is a friendly exercise to all body types and sizes.   It also provides goals in an organic way: a rower consciously creates a trip away from the dock…to the next pier…to the beach across the river…to the marina under the bridge. Each trip builds on the last.  A natural urge pushes the rower to go further each time, helping to build endurance and tone muscles. When rowers gain experience, they feel increasing confidence.  Friends invite friends and teach them how to row, an experience that they will not soon forget.  Adventure awaits across the river, they come back for more—to push their boundaries and continue the cycle.

Through the races and events the alumni team participates in, participants are encouraged to continue to expand their perspective on the world outside of their immediate neighborhood, while still remaining active and appreciative of the waters in their community.  

To show their appreciation for the opportunity that the Alumni Rowing Team provides to keep rowing a key part of their lives and to give back to the organization that meant so much to them in high school, Team members are excited to be spearheading this fundraising campaign.  

$13,242.85 / $13,116.00