2009 Youth Challenge Kayak Program

August 5th (Tuesday) started off like any other day. Wake up, work , race home, hitch the trailer and 18 boats to the car and head to Cornwall for an en evening of fun with kids on the water.
When Aime-Jean, Cheryl and I arrive in Cornwall we were greeted by a bunch of long faces. Ohh, ohh…
So the challenge began. Let’s motivate 11 kids (another excellent turnout) that look down and out and ready to rumble.
What did we do? Trial and error. After a short stretching session we sent everyone on the water and pushed them hard during the warm up. Stretching had to be kept short so they could get moving on the water fast).After a warm up we separated the group into the rolling kids and those that want to be the rolling kids. Cheryl spent most of her time with the always adorable Jaylee who was just too happy to flip over and wet exit, over and over again. Very cute!
Aime-Jean took the half the group to the faster moving water and worked on entering and exiting current and eddies. I spent my time teaching the roll.
Rolling is definitely about desire, motivation and a lot of repetition. Sean, as always, was up to the task and worked on his hip snap till there was no hip snap left. I was not sure that he might get it that evening but it should be soon.
Melanie pulled off a few good rolls and Bray showed me that she was retaining what she learned!! Very cool.
Justin and Kyle should not be too far behind if we can keep their attention long enough
After an hour of lessons we started having a hard time with the attention thing again so we went to the next task: GAMES! If we could keep their attention long enough to set up teams we would be able to play a game of Kayak Polo to blow off steam. Daylan and Brandon go at each other during the polo like life time arch rivals. It is good to see them work so hard.
By the end of the evening most of the kids were tired and it showed. The attitudes were calm and there were many more smiles.
The lesson of the evening was respect.
Kids are funny creatures. (I should know, I think that I am still not much more than a kid. Just look a bit rough around the edges but still just a kid). When we get comfortable with each other we run the risk of taking each other for granted. And this was very evident that evening.
The “dog days of summer” are tough on kids. No matter how much you have available to you to keep busy, there comes a period in the summer when kids simply get bored. Tuesday was the peak of that period for them.
This combination is a recipe for disaster. So we ended the evening with a more serious tone that usual. I do not like to preach to people but tonight I let our young friends know that our volunteers care very much about them and want to be able to provide the best possible experience and learning environment for them and so deserve a measure of respect for the effort and time that they have committed to the program. When I invite people to come out and help me teach in Cornwall, they do so with open minds and more importantly, open hearts. This is something that needs to be recognized and acknowledged by the kids. Being able to do so is a very important step in the transition from Young person to adult and I hope that we are able to help them along in this way.
Tuesday evening was a learning experience for the kids (on many levels) but also a very important learning experience for me. I know how much these kids and their success mean to me. I hope that I have been able to convey this to them.
So we ended the evening with a review of their success and a few jokes.
I am proud of each and every one of them and am looking forward to the 4 weeks that we have left with them.

Robert Zwanenburg
www.cornwallwhitewater.com