Finding escape on the water

By 12:45 Saturday afternoon, Scott Brown's wheelchair was on the dock, empty. And he was out on the Schuylkill, strapped into a rowing shell, headed upstream for the start of the race.

That's his favorite thing about rowing - the independence and freedom he feels when he leaves his chair behind.

"I'm back on my own again," he said he often thinks as he dips the oars into the water and begins to pull hard.

Saturday's Bayada Regatta - the nation's oldest and largest "adaptive" rowing competition for people with disabilities - was also a comeback of sorts for Brown, 43, of Collingdale.

A five-time world champion, he lost at the 2008 Beijing Paralympics. Exhausted after the rigors of training, he decided to take a break.

But his buddies were sneaky. First they lured him into coaching, telling him he'd be good at it. Then they told him he'd be better able to coach if he was on the water.

One thing led to another, and in one of the highlight races Saturday, there he was, with teammate Jacqui Kapinowski of Asbury Park, N.J., vying against three other teams in the 1,000-meter "torso and arms" race.

As they stroked away from the starting line, announcer Christopher Blackwall declared the event "a hot field." The rowers were all good.

"Look at these guys go to it!" Blackwall hollered. "A close, close race!"

The first regatta was held 29 years ago. The Philadelphia Rowing Program for the Disabled had decided to add an element of competition to its rowing, and it went looking for a sponsor.

Enter Mark Baiada, who in 1975 founded Bayada Nurses Inc., an independently owned home-health-care agency in Moorestown. The name is the phonetic version of his last name - easier to spell.

He had wanted to help people, and here was another opportunity. Baiada was impressed by the group's "spirit to compete and achieve. It inspired me."

One of those early rowers was Isabel Bohn, now 73, who was at Saturday's race as director of the Pennsylvania Center for Adapted Sports.

As a young girl in Munich, Germany, she lost a leg in a trolley accident. She moved to Philadelphia in 1967 and at 42 - married with four children - decided to learn to ski. Then she caught the rowing bug, getting out on the river five days a week. She put away the oars three years ago and took up kayaking instead.

The Bayada Regatta has grown steadily. It attracts more than 60 rowers from 11 clubs as far away as San Diego.

Some rowers have multiple sclerosis or cerebral palsy. Some are blind. A sighted rower in a shell ahead of each contestant communicates directions through a headset.

Bayada, the business, also has grown, employing 13,000 nurses, home health aides, and therapists in more than 170 offices in 18 states. So many Bayada staffers and others volunteer to help at the regatta that it is almost hard to keep track of them.

Oddly enough, it has never rained on a Bayada Regatta.

Brandon Culp, 28, of Wyncote, did not do as well as he had hoped Saturday. His timing was off; he stroked too fast.

But he was all smiles anyway. After all, he had been on the water.

A car accident six years ago left Culp a quadriplegic who has limited use of his arms. He tried rowing as a way to keep in shape during the off-season of wheelchair rugby.

He competes in the "arms and shoulders" category. His support crew straps his hands to the oars.

"When you're out there in the boat, you forget your legs don't work," said Culp, a mechanical engineer for Brenner Aerostructures L.L.C., of Bensalem. "It's like you're back to normal again."

A car accident also claimed Brown's legs. It was 1987, and he was "young and extremely stupid."

A physical therapist suggested he try wheelchair basketball. Never the athletic type, he wasn't interested.

When persuaded to try rowing, he was hooked.

Now Brown, an out-of-work human-resources professional, calls rowing - and, more important, the people in the rowing group - his "rehab after rehab." Traditional rehab teaches practical life skills. "But there's a whole lot more to life than cooking dinner and standing up," he said.

As the rowing shells streaked downriver, it was neck and neck between the Brown-Kapinowski team and the Louisville, Ky., team of Oksana Masters and Augusto Perez.

"Here comes Oksana!" the announcer cried out.

And then, "Scott is responding!"

The race was too close for the announcer to call from the banks.

But out on the river, Brown knew.

Louisville had completed the race in 3 minutes, 58 seconds. Brown and Kapinowski crossed the finish line 12 seconds later.

But Kapinowski, a wheelchair marathoner and curler, has been rowing for only nine weeks.

As their shell edged against the dock, Brown grinned and, no doubt, delighted those who had wanted so badly to get him back out on the water. Here was an intimation that he was not finished yet.

"One more month of training," he said, "and there was no way they would have won!"