2004-04-26 Brian and Jessica at Rookie Racers

Brian Peters bought his daughter Jessica a Wenonah Minnesota II canoe from Ketter Canoeing for her 16^th birthday and found out about Monday Rookie night training from Kenn Ketter.  They moved here from Canada and had been here about a year.  Chuck Ryan paired Lee Jarpey with Jessica and paired me (Rick Lorenzen) with her father, Brian. It was a cold and windy Monday night with puffy white clouds floated over the river bridges.  Brian was 50 pounds heavier than me so I had him sit as far back as possible in the adjustable bow seat and I put a couple of rocks in the far back of the canoe to help level it before we took off from the sandy shore.  We paddled upstream to the first bridge and turned back downstream just before all the other canoes reached us so the pack was together.  I counted 11 canoes in all.

Brian said that he hadn’t been canoeing much.  He didn’t have any bad habits and was very coachable. He started having a nice looking stroke sooner than anyone else I had coached over the years.  I let him paddle on whatever side he wanted on the way downstream with the wind.  This allowed him to think about his paddle stroke technique.  I also cautioned him not to try to put any power on the paddle stroke until he had trained his muscles on how to do the stroke correctly.  The canoe was tippier when he paddled on the left side, but he was able to correct the problem when I told him to keep the canoe level.     

Jessica had been on many canoe trips and already had learned how to use her arms, instead of her torso and abdomen muscles, for power.  That makes it harder to learn how to paddle more efficiently because you have to unlearn some habits before you can reprogram your muscles to move differently.  Lee Jarpey was a good coach and Jessica definitely had a hard work ethic so they were able to keep their canoe moving well.  Jessica looked like she had the determination it would take to be a good racer, but even if she didn’t want to race, she could learn how to paddle her new Minnesota II canoe like a pro if she kept coming here to paddle with us.  Hopefully, her dad would race a few Hoigaards derby canoe races with her this summer. 

Lee and I could tell it would be a tough paddle for new people coming back upstream and upwind so we turned our canoes around at the 4 mile mark instead of going the entire 5 miles downstream to the last big green buoy above the Ford dam.  I started teaching Brian how to do the draw and push strokes and had him work on learning to ride the side wake of Lee and Jessica’s canoe.  The trip back took quite a while but the rest of the canoes were still not within sight when we got back to shore.  We invited them to the Lotus restaurant for hot tea and some more canoe talk.  Brian said he had to miss the next couple Monday nights, but that he would be back.  I told Jessica that she didn’t have to have her father along to come back.