* The Editor's Tufts Jumbo Sailing Team classmate, Nevin Sayre,
has long promoted the need to grow youth sailing and broadening the
scope of those youth programs. Nevin not only understands the
competitive side of sailing, he understands that competition isn't what
sailing is all about.
So it is no shock to him that the sport
in the U.S. is struggling to turn youth sailors into life sailors,
because the focus in most junior programs is to turn youth sailors into
youth racers. From his position with BIC Sports, Nevin provides his
observations in the second half of this two part series:
Sailing could learn a lot from the
history of the snow industry. There was a time when archaic long skis
were strapped on to a kid's boots and he/she was shown primarily one
option. If they made it through basic training, most kids were
introduced to gates and racing was the one game to play. Snow sports at
that time were on the fringe. Then came a revolutionary new era in
the mountain industry, inspired by
snowboarding, technology, innovation, and new materials. A combination
of modern equipment, new formats, and style made snow sports (boarding
and modern skiing alike) attractive to kids. The gear and culture was
COOL and junior programs started to offer new alternatives for free
riding, freestyle, etc for the kids who weren't inspired by the same one
format their parents were weaned on.
And you know what? There was still
probably the same number of racers, but snow sports became attractive to
"other kids", and participation numbers went through the roof! Would
the explosion of snow sports have happened if kids were introduced to
skiing with gear from 50 years ago and racing gates was the only focus
of every junior program?
So why is sailing so popular in, say, a
country like France? One of the reasons has got to be that kids in
France are as likely to learn to sail on a windsurfer or multihull or
skiff as they are in an old school dinghy. Kids are given modern gear
and can choose alternative formats that they find attractive. More kids
become passionate about sailing.
The U.S. has been particularly slow in
changing its one-dimensional thinking, but it is encouraging to see more
junior programs are finding new alternatives that strike a chord with
the "other kids". More and more programs now offer windsurfing and
recreational "Reachers" programs with low emphasis on race results and a
stronger focus on sailing a variety of different modern boats. Instead
of going around buoys until the kids are dizzy, on a given day they
might borrow a big boat, try windsurfing, practice freestyle sailing, or
"adventure sail" to a different harbor for ice cream. They are getting a
wide range of valuable sailing skills, and, like at the mountain, the
experience is more about hanging with their buds - doing the sport with
each other and not always against each other. -- Read more about Nevin's interview on Scuttlebutt here.
