Spending a winter training on the other side of the world while your friends enjoy summer seems an odd choice for many high schoolers.
But seven high school students from the United States are doing just that at the moment in Dunedin.
For 4 weeks, the students from California across to the eastern seaboard are taking part in an advanced rowing and leadership development camp, run through Sparks Rowing.
Rower Allegra Steege admitted a frigid Dunedin Harbour is a long way from summer in Long Beach California.
“Learning the kiwi secrets, because NZ is so good at rowing, also experiencing it in winter, like I live in California where it’s super warm – I’ve never rowed in the cold and so experiencing like winter rowing as well.”
Steege, along with her twin sister, Jade are spending their winter on the water, as they prepare for a final year of high school before moving on to college.
She said camps like Sparks are not unusual in the States for rowers to attend.
“During the summer usually we have time off. And lots of times, kids go and do camps to get better at rowing and gain new coaching.”
Having the watchful eyes of double Olympian, David Lindstrom in the coach’s boat has been a huge boost. There’s also the opportunity to train at a university and develop their techniques out on the water.
“Getting to see what it’s like to row with university girls, older, stronger, smarter girls is really cool.”
“In terms of technique and things like that, I’m learning different things about where to keep my knees, how to catch and learning different ideas about how you should try to keep the [stroke] rate higher and faster.”
However one foreign concept for the group has been the indoor training element.
“Doing technique on the erg [ergometer] is something I’d never really done. It was only technique on the water but now we’re trying to get better at our rowing on the erg too which is really huge because that will help with the water.”
For Steege, the chance to row and train alongside older varsity athletes has meant learning to adapt within the group.
“Being around new teammates, like when you are rowing through the season, you’re with the same group of people.”
“So seeing how you can gel with a new group of people, a new team and make new connections. Like now I have friends from New Jersey and Missouri, it’s crazy.”
The elite programme is the brainchild of Ryan Sparks, who rowed and coached at Otago in 2003 during a gap year from the United States.
He launched Sparks Rowing in 2010 with the camps.
New Zealand became the first international camp due to his friendship with Otago University Rowing Club Manager, Glen Sinclair.
“The big aim of the programme is to show them the Kiwi way of rowing,” he said.
“We continue training all year round right through the winter here with our students at Otago so they do a bit of rowing with our own athletes.”
And he’s hoping the experiences of this camp may prove an encouragement to some of the young American rowers, to consider returning to Otago when they go to university.
“We’ve had that, which is cool.”
The programme also helps foster and strengthen the club’s relationships with other rowing nations.
“While everyone is from the US this year, we have had athletes from Switzerland, England.”
“We have got relationships with other countries as well, Japanese, Chinese, the Russians – we used to go race in Russia, obviously that isn’t happening these days.”
Steege says the chance to experience a new culture and water was worth the trip halfway round the world.
“The waterway is stunning. One of the mornings, my favourite mornings we were going, it was dark when we first got out and throughout the course of the hour the sun started to rise – two rainbows came out, not one but two and it was so beautiful, and I don’t get to experience that at home.”
– By Jack Ward, made with the support of NZ On Air