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City rowing program changing lives, taking stock

When Daekwon Smith is out rowing on the Schuylkill, a world that weighs heavily on his 17-year-old shoulders lifts off and vanishes.

Daekwon Smith (left) and teammate Gabriel McGuoirk. ( STEVEN M. FALK / Staff Photographer)
Daekwon Smith (left) and teammate Gabriel McGuoirk. ( STEVEN M. FALK / Staff Photographer)Read moreSTEVEN M. FALK / Staff Photographer

When Daekwon Smith is out rowing on the Schuylkill, a world that weighs heavily on his 17-year-old shoulders lifts off and vanishes.

Anger. Disappointment. Conflict. Financial worries. All take flight.

"Once I'm on the river, nothing else matters. I don't have my phone. I'm not around people I have problems with. I'm not getting updates from my family on what's going on or what's wrong. All I have to worry about is the next stroke. That's it. That's the greatest part."

The Benjamin Franklin High School senior discovered rowing 18 months ago after he got into a fight and was urged to pick a sports program to channel the anger he had bottled up after his grandmother's death.

He chose Philadelphia City Rowing (PCR), a nonprofit whose mission is to help at-risk city youths develop the discipline they need for scholastic and athletic achievement.

"There's been 1,001 times, even yesterday, when you're frustrated about yourself or your technique or life, and you come to practice and you can't lash out on your teammates. You can't lash out on your coach. You can't lash out on someone you're competing against. You have to find a balance. OK, I'm angry, but this is how I'm going to deal with this. Because if you're in the middle of the river, you can't just freak out."

As Philadelphia this weekend hosts the Stotesbury Cup Regatta, the biggest high school rowing competition in the world, PCR can take stock: In the last five years, the program has more than doubled to 85 students from 25 Philadelphia public and charter high schools. Every student who has stuck with the rigorous five- to six-day-a-week program - and the majority do - has graduated and gone on to college, according to its director, Terry Dougherty.

"We collect their report cards every single marking period," Dougherty said. "If they get anything below a C, we try to get them tutoring."

A middle school outreach has 35 children from 18 city schools. Teaching children to swim is its goal, since many city children can't.

"That's our biggest obstacle," Dougherty said.

PCR is the latest in about three decades of effort to open up the river to school district children, many of whom live in nearby neighborhoods but have little access to a sport in which Philadelphia has played a dominant role for more than 150 years.

Although the district had a rowing league in the early 1900s and Central High often beat collegiate crews, it largely abandoned the sport around World War I. Instead, rowing, which requires access to a boathouse and costly equipment, became popular at many Catholic high schools after gold medalist John B. Kelly Sr. in the 1920s began recruiting them to train as future Olympians.

In recent decades, suburban high schools have seen an explosion of rowers, especially girls buoyed by Title IX requirements for equality in sports programs.

But only four city schools will be among the 200 or so racing this weekend. Central, Masterman and Science Leadership Academy have crews made up of PCR students. Boys Latin, which PCR coaches in the fall, also will compete. Daekwon, who rows a double, can't enter because Benjamin Franklin has no other oarsman.

Few of the learn-to-row programs launched over the years by some members of the Boathouse Row community got much traction until Tony Schneider put his dream into action. A real estate investor and developer with the Glenville Group, Schneider was infected by his daughter's enthusiasm for crew at the Shipley School. Joining the Vesper Boat Club, he was stunned to find himself sharing the dock with elite national rowers.

"Their dream became my dream," he explained. In his mid-50s, never an athlete, he began competing in masters races locally and nationally.

Schneider, who has long held an interest in helping to fund such programs as Writers Matter and the city's Mural Arts Program, saw an opportunity to marry his two passions: his love of the sport and his concern for city youth. Rowing, he had discovered, demanded fitness, focus, commitment, teamwork, time management - all underpinnings of academic success.

In 2010, working with elite rowers Libby Peters and Catherine Reddick, he brought together the school district, which had some boats in storage, and Parks and Recreation, which owns the land along Boathouse Row, to build a small boat yard next to Lloyd Hall. Clubs and regattas also lent support.

Dougherty now runs the program with a small paid staff and a pool of volunteers.

"Winning medals in races is something we would love to do," explained Schneider, PCR's board chair and major donor. "But it's a by-product of helping kids change their lives, of kids understanding that they have to commit themselves to something. And they do, because a lot of the kids are lost."

That's how Daekwon felt in the fall of 2013. But then he felt found.

At PCR, where he calls Dougherty "Momma T.," he has new friends from all over the city. "I feel like I've grown socially," he said recently after a sweaty workout on PCR rowing machines. "There are so many different personalities on our team, so many different mind-sets. . . . I just had to learn to adapt with how people are, for who they are, and go on about it."

Mentally, "I find myself able to push through things easier simply because our coaches build you up so no matter what you're doing, you can't give up. So I have translated that into other efforts in my life."

Unlike generations of men in his family, he's heading to college - community college first, because he's largely footing the bill.

More city students, including his 11-year-old brother, could benefit, he believes, if rowing and Boathouse Row didn't seem so remote.

As Schneider discovered, when one family member gets involved, others follow, a fact demonstrated in the boathouses, which are filled with trophies bearing the same family names.

"It's kind of a trickle-down effect," said Daekwon. "The generation ahead of us, like our parents, uncles, aunts, didn't have the exposure. The only way for anything to grow is for more people to get involved because if the same people keep rowing, it's only going to keep that cycle going."