A safe place to learn: Basics of kayaking taught at city pool
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With the significant number of lakes and swift-running streams in the vicinity, Warren County is the perfect location to practice and enjoy the sport, as evidenced by the influx of world-class kayakers to the Rock Island area in particular, including world champion kayaker, and kayak designer, Eric Jackson, who has taken up permanent residence and started a business there.
That’s why Christy Eschenbacher, who is an outdoor recreation major at MTSU and the head lifeguard at the Gilley Pool, decided classes in the sport might go over well here. Eschenbacher is an enthusiast herself and says kayaking is a great sport for a lot of reasons.
“It’s fun, if you love the water especially,” she said. “It gets your adrenaline going. You can do rivers or just calm flat-water stuff, or you can go into more intense things, like the Hiawassee and then the Ocoee when you get good enough.”
Since Eschenbacher felt there would be some interest locally, she approached Parks and Recreation director Carlene Brown about starting some classes.
“I’ve been working with Carlene for four years,” Eschenbacher said, “and I decided I’d bug her and see if I couldn’t get her to get this class going for me, and she agreed to do it. And MTSU is letting me borrow their kayaks.”
The first classes were held this past Tuesday and Wednesday, and were limited to six students each.
“In order to be able to teach them and spend time with them,” Eschenbacher said, “you have to have a small class.”
Whether or not there will be other classes in the future hasn’t been decided yet, according to Eschenbacher.
“It depends,” she said. “Right now this is all we have scheduled, because we weren’t really sure how well it would go over. It’s just kind of a trial run thing.”
By all accounts, the classes have been a hit, with at least one of the students anyway. Justin Woodlee, the 10-year-old son of Candace and David Woodlee has been interested in learning the sport since trying it out at the Clyde C. York 4-H Club camp in Cumberland County.
“It was fun,” Justin said. “It was really fun. I learned how to flip the kayak. I learned how to row. I really liked it.”
Mom Candace said Justin has been interested for some time.
“My daughter Amanda had a friend in high school that did kayaking,” she said, “and he thought that would be a neat thing to do and he’s been interested for a couple of years, so I decided to let him try it out over there the other night to kind of get a feel for what it would be like to kayak.”
Apparently the classes had the expected results.
“Oh he loved it,” Candace said. “That’s been on his Christmas wish list for a couple of years, so I thought I’d let him try it out first. He had tried it at 4-H camp, but they had some really large kayaks up there, and so these were more adjusted to his size, and they taught him to roll it and things like that.”
Mom seemed pleased with her son’s progress, so there may be a good chance Justin will see a rather large package under the tree this year.
And Warren County may have another kayaker making his way along its waterways, thanks to the efforts of McMinnville Parks and Recreation.