A school rowing project based at Salford Quay’s Agecroft Rowing Club has been awarded Project of the Year by British Rowing.
The Greater Manchester Youth Rowing programme already welcomes five schools and aims to provide rowing access to inner city schools, seeing considerable success.
Caleb Vonk, 22, coach for the programme, said: “I think it gives them a good opportunity to harness the excess energy they have during the school day.
“Often some of the kids we work with are the troublemakers at school, it helps them to harness energy into a sport, makes them much more productive in their school life, and everyday life, because they feel like they’re doing a lot more.
“They’re getting a lot more motivation when they come here. It really helps them excel at all aspects of life.”
Many coaches have seen students completely change thanks to rowing. Mr Vonk gave an example of one pupil who when he first joined “never listened,” and was “always goofing around with one of his mates”.
“Now he’s the fifth best in this programme. He’s actually going down to London later this year to compete at the National Indoor Competitions for his year group. He’s come on massively. He’s really energetic. He leads the group, he’s on it. He doesn’t argue, he doesn’t complain. He’s really come a long way from where he started.”
Club Captain of Agecroft Rowing Club, James Harris, said: “The overall goal is to give young people the opportunity to try rowing for a year. If they like it & want to carry on, we will support them to do so.”
He added “Warrington had two of their first group compete at Henley Royal Regatta last summer before they left school, one of whom had a scholarship for a US university. We would like to be able to offer the same opportunities to our schools
“We wanted to focus on those with the greatest need, so all our young people are on the Pupil Premium Programme.”
The Greater Manchester Youth Rowing project makes up one of four programmes across the North West helping school students get into rowing comprising of Warrington RC, Northwich RC, Agecroft RC (Greater Manchester) and Liverpool Victoria RC (Merseyside)
The scheme that began as the Warrington Youth Rowing Programme has allowed kids from all walks of life to get involved in the sport.
Mr. Vonk said: “These schools normally wouldn’t have the opportunity to do a sport like rowing. We do get a mix of kids, some are really well-behaved, some are very energetic and don’t always listen. But after a while they really start to come together, work as a cohesive unit, which is nice to see.
“When the programme started at Warrington it was to bring these kids from schools who had never had the chance to row, never would have had the opportunity to row and sort of bring them into the sport and show them what it is and how they could excel at it.”
Many of the students find themselves invested in the sport not long after starting with Mr Vonk.
He added: “It’s nothing like football or rugby or netball, all these sports the kids are used to. It’s something almost new and exotic, something they can be proud of because they know none of their peers are doing it. It’s something they can show off.
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As well as making the sport accessible to all, the project has brought talent ID to a demographic that is often overlooked.
Mr Vonk said: “We’ve had a couple of kids being tested by the GP Start programme coach and he said they’re coming along fine. We have recommended a couple of them join Agecroft, we’ve talked to Agecroft about it and they are very willing for some of these kids to come forward because they’ve showed great enthusiasm, a great skill in the sport, which is really good to see them continue it past this programme.”
Beyond the upper echelons of the sport, Mr Vonk emphasised how important it is to “invest in the youth” as “it’s really vital, for every sport.”
He added: “This programme is all about increasing kids’ knowledge of the sport as well as helping them achieve goals they want later in life. It’s really good to see these kids come through, wanting to keep up with the sport.”
Mr Vonk explained how rewarding the experience was as a coach.
He said: “It’s really fun to take these kids who don’t know a lot about the sport and show them the joy that is in it. It’s really rewarding to see them grow as people, as well as rowers. I just really enjoy it. They’re a good laugh. I just love watching them get out on the water and do a sport that I love.”
Starting from March this year another large school will be joining the programme.
Mr Harris said: “It means a huge amount to win the award, to recognise all the hard work at Agecroft and at Warrington Youth Rowing in getting this off the ground in such a short space of time.”
A comprehensive list of the British Rowing awards can be found here.
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