Students Tap Power of Rowing on the Harlem River | NYTimes.com

BY Corey Kilgannon

Photo Credit: Ozier Muhammed | The New York Times

“I’M bored,” announced Shlomo Orenstein, 14, a seventh grader from Brooklyn, as he lay on a floating dock on the Harlem River on Thursday, picking splinters out of the wooden planks with his idle hands.

Moments later, his mood had changed considerably. He was seated in a sleek racing scull, those same hands wrapped tightly around a pair of carbon-fiber oars. He was rowing hard, sending the scull through the water.

He and a dozen other students from the Child School/Legacy High School on Roosevelt Island were at the Peter Jay Sharp Boathouse, an oddly old-fashioned building on the Harlem River, accessible by a gangplank and a string of floating docks.

The students were put to work carrying long racing shells to the water. They gathered around coaches from the New York Rowing Association, a nonprofit group that runs rowing clubs, teams and programs and that is based in the boathouse. This program exposes students from the city’s schools to an activity often associated with Ivy League universities.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/22/nyregion/students-tap-power-of-rowing-on-the-harlem-river.html?

Photo Credit: Ozier Muhammed | The New York Times

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