RUNNING ON FRI- SCRIPT COULD BE SUBJECT TO CHANGE

NARR: (under AMBI of the boat house)

It’s 3.30pm on a Tuesday afternoon, the sky is overcast and large raindrops are just starting to fall. Inside the Peter Jay Sharpe Boathouse on the Harlem River a group of boys are taking a quad boat out of the stacks.

(AMBI- boys getting boat out with Genie)

Trevor Michelson, WIll Novak, Sebastian Ryan and Thomas Solowski carry one of the long, thin boats to the river. It weighs 114 lbs. Making sure the boat is removed safely, without hitting anything or anyone takes some careful coordination. High School senior Trevor Michelson is shouting instructions to the rest of the crew.

(AMBI: TM shouting instructions to other rowers: “RIGHT, ALL HANDS UP, Tom, S, WILL ON THE BOAT”)

AMBI: (Guys getting boat out and putting it in the river.)

NARR: The men’s quad boat has trained together all season. Although they are from different schools all over the city, rowing is what they have in common.

AX: Trevor

The guys in my quad are my best friends. It’s competitive and it’s really tough sport I mean you have to actually inflict pain on yourself to go fast. It’s something about if you are going to be working in a boat with someone and you have to guarantee that they are going to be pulling as hard as you can, and putting themselves through the same pain that you are, I guess that you just turn out to be good friends with them.

NARR:

The guys are about to start a two-hour training session. The boat pulls away from the jetty on 200th street. AMBI: Guys rowing off.

As they move down the river, the yellow and green wooden boathouse recedes into the distance.

The rain is now falling heavily and the water is rough. The team will have to use all of their strength to push themselves over the lumps and bumps on the choppy Harlem River.

NARR: (AMBI of guys rowing)

The guys are sculling. That means that they row with two oars each. Each rower turns the flat white heads of their oars upwards until they slice into the water. Trevor sits at the stern of the boat. That’s the back. When he gives his command Will, Sebastian and Thomas, PUSH their torsos back. Their hands are tightly wrapped round the oars, which they pull back as far as they will go. Then they push them forward in quick, repetitive movements. The boat disperses the water in a V shape and cruises down the river in a smooth, languid line.

AMBI (ANDREW shouting instructions- Andrew on launch: it could be a little bit sharper)

Their trainer, Andrew Bird, he’s watching their practice session from a launch on the river. Andrew had plans after he left school to become a professional rower, but he got an injury and instead trained the British national youth team. He then moved to the U.S.

The men’s quad need to toughen up if they are to meet Andrew’s high standards. He even calls them soft.

AX: Andrew

They’re not quite willing to hang themselves out there that extra couple of percent.

NARR:

The guys have to deal with challenging conditions. The Harlem river is tidal, which means it has a strong current. It's also polluted. Plastic bags, garbage and even tires float past the rowers during the training session.

NARR:

But for Trevor, Sebastian, Will and Tom, rowing dictates everything in their lives.

AX: Trevor, Seb and Tom

None of us can be around smoke at all, because even second hand smoke is going to mess up your lungs. So we don’t smoke, we don’t do drugs it’s true. We only drink, you know, not that much. You go to that one party every now and then. But it’s a rowing party though. It’s kind of like we treat our bodies the best we can.

NARR:

But they do have social lives and most of the boys’ team have girfriends'. Maintaining a relationship isn’t that simple. Trevor says his girlfriend would get mad when he’d skip seeing her for rowing practice. But he had to explain to her not to take it personally.

AX: Trevor

I kinda told her I don’t want to choose between you and rowing because rowing will always go first. Rowing is a full time commitment. It’s like a full time job. And not only is it what we do, its our life.

NARR:

Trevor’s team-mate Tom goes out with Lily Gurman. She's 16 and rows in the womens’ boat with Hannah Solis-Cohen, Issabelle Gaughtier and Maddie Armstrong. They wear identical black and red windbreakers.

AMBI: Girls joking before launching the boat.

NARR:

Like the boys, the girls' have also found that rowing is hard on their bodies. Maddie lifts up her hands. There are big red blisters where her fingers reach her palm.

AX: Maddie

If you feel rowers’ hands they’re really calloused. They need to be because they are holding on really tightly to the oars. So, I mean what do we have, we have calluses on our hands, what else, oh, oh, slide bite on the back of our calves, because of the slide. (Hannah- I took off three layers of skin the other day.)

NARR:

Even when they are at training sessions the girls still have time to talk about the serious stuff- like who fancies who in the rowing club. They mention one boy named Adam.

AX: Hannah, Isabel, Maddie, Lily- then Andrew joins in.

This guy Adam is like very interesting, by the way. (Me: why?) He was a very strange fellow. He was really awesome at rowing and then he left the boathouse. He’s not attractive; he always had stuff coming out of his nose.

Andrew: we better get on in a minute

Girls: we’re talking about boathouse romances, he knows nothing about this.

Andrew: Right, OK. To be honest I don’t want to know, other than when Sebastian shows up with marks all over his neck or whatever hilarious incident that was. Um, right as soon as Maddie gets here can we not screw around.

NARR:

Andrew is impressed with the girls’ team’s performance.But he works them pretty hard.

AMBI-Andrew

So we’re going to start with the dipping, then 20 strokes full legs, go straight to feathering …got to be able to count to a big 20.

NARR:

Hannah rows in the middle of the boat. She has long dark hair and keeps her bangs out of her eyes with a small pink clip. By the end of the session her hair is wet and wind-swept and plastered flat against her head.

Back in the boathouse there’s no time to sort out your hair. The boys and girls sit in a circle for abs practice. They life their legs up straight so they are balancing in a V shape. Sebastian throws a heavy medicine ball to Will, who uses all the strength in his abdomen to catch the ball without putting his feet on the ground. Will then throws the ball to Hannah who lurches to her left side to catch it.

AMBI: ABS exercises under NARR.

NARR:

The rowing association also trains girls and boys who have never done this before. They are called novices and won’t compete for a while. Shayla Shevez is one of them. She's 16 and goes to Bronx Science High School. Shayla lives by the river and always thought about rowing, but before she could get into the boat, she had to lose a lot of weight. She says the hard work is worth it.

AX: Shayla

My Mum thinks it’s amazing.

Me: Why?

S: because she can’t comprehend why I would want to be on the water, she’s afraid of boats.

NARR:

For novices like Shayla, the association is her only opportunity to row. Rowing is traditionally associated with private schools both here and in the UK because it's expensive. The New York Rowing Association offers full scholarships to kids, and Andrew says this can be a positive experience for those kids who are good enough.

AX: Andrew

For example the girl who’s in the strokes seat, in this further end of the boat, she’s from one of the housing projects across the street. You know, a sort of poorer family, um; she’s here on a scholarship. But funnily enough she started to do quite well and that’s enabled her to get a link into a college and to then basically get a scholarship that’s going to help pay for her to get to college. Whereas I think before she started this she didn’t even have any aspirations to go to college in the first place.

PAUSE: 2 seconds.

NARR: (Under AMBI of regatta- cheering)

The students that reap the rewards from rowing also pay a price. Their weekends are spent travelling and competing at regattas like this one on a hot dry Sunday morning in Collingswood New Jersey. More than 50 high school rowing teams are competing for the Cooper cup.

(AMBI from regatta)

The girls and boys team from the New York Rowing Association woke up at 3.45am to make the trip to Collingswood.

AMBI: Boys team.

So far things are going well. The boys and girls team have made it through the heats and now have to wait for the final.

They have five hours between races where they stock up on food and water and try to keep out of the sun. (AMBI music under the tent.)

The boys and girls team sit together under a tent they put up on the river bank. Trevor, Tom, Sebastian and Issabelle are sitting in a circle choosing songs on Sebastian’s laptop. Hannah and Maddie are washing their hair under the tap by the river bank.

NARR:

At last the boys team leave to get their boat ready for the final. Before that, as he always does before a race, Trevor gets his crew in a huddle and makes a speech.

AX:

We’re going to settle for ten strokes, then power ten. Bring it down the bain, and bring that rating to 20 strokes. No regrets, leave it all on the F***ing water.

NARR:

The boys are pumped, but they carry the boat to the water in silence (AMBI footsteps) Trevor looks straight ahead, he’s totally focussed. Their main rivals, a team called Malvern from Pennsylvania, place their boat beside NYRA’s. Sebastian, Trevor, Will and Tom get in the boat and row to the start.

Some of the other rowers from have gathered by some bleachers on the river bank to cheer on their mens team. The race is 2000 meters and the bleachers are close to the finish line. When the boys boat comes into focus the other kids go wild.

AMBI:

Cheering of race.

NARR:

It was a close finish, but unfortunately the boys missed third place by 300th’s of a second. Trevor can’t believe it.

AX:

When you win you kind of get soft, but when you lose by point three you get mad.

AX:

But things are still looking up for the boys team.

Trevor: It’s crazy how much we’ve impropved from the heat to the final, it’s crazy that we were beating malvern, oh man it was a tough race. It’s crazy how great that race was. I almost wish I wasn’t in the boat so I could have watched it.

NARR:

They’ll be other regattas and other cups for NYRA to win. But this might be the last season they are all together. Trevor will go to Wessleyen college later this year, Issabelle will go to college next year, Maddie, Lily and Tom and Sebastian will leave the year after.

For now though they don’t want to think about the future- the future is the next race.

Kathleen Brooks, Columbia Radio News.