While many chose to raise money for the American Diabetes Association by participating in the Rochester Tour De Cure on June 10, members of the McQuaid Jesuit High School crew team came up with a unique way to raise money to support the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF) that was more fitting to their sport.
Along with six members of their rival crew team from Canisius High School, Loudon Blake, Andrew Dardaris, Tommy Davis, Steven DiFiore, Grant Gifford, Greg Klumpp and Cameron Pizzo decided to row across New York State via the Erie Canal, a journey that covered 340 miles and took eight days to complete.
Reid Yankowski, a junior at Canisius High School, first came up with the idea for the trip and the McQuaid rowers decided it sounded like a good cause and wanted to embrace the challenge. The McQuaid team rowed forty to fifty miles a day, which took them around eight hours.
According to the team, one of the most challenging aspects of the trip was having to stay in the same seat for such long stretches of time.
“It’s like when you’re driving in a car for a really long time and you start shifting in your seat because you’re uncomfortable, but you can’t do that in a boat,” Blake said.
The design of the seats also makes it uncomfortable to row for long stretches of time.
“The seats are made for a two hour practice or a twenty minute race at the most, and they’re not meant for eight hours of continual rowing,” Davis said.
The team coped with this by rotating who was rowing. Since only four people could row at a time, they swapped out two new rowers every four hours.
Other challenges the team faced were Lake Oneida and the heat. Due to waves that reached heights of up to two feet, the team spent four and a half hours on Lake Oneida.
Even more difficult was the inability to switch rowers out. The oppressive heat made the trip especially challenging, particularly with the heat wave at the latter end of the week.
The days of rowing were long and hard, making them all seem to blur into one long day according to Pizzo. Davis said the trip felt like one very, very bad summer camp.
The team pushed through, though, motivated by the cause they were supporting and the generosity of people they encountered. Throughout their journey, onlookers who heard their story decided to donate out of the blue, like one person who handed the team a fifty dollar bill without even leaving his name.
While many chose to raise money for the American Diabetes Association by participating in the Rochester Tour De Cure on June 10, members of the McQuaid Jesuit High School crew team came up with a unique way to raise money to support the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF) that was more fitting to their sport.
Along with six members of their rival crew team from Canisius High School, Loudon Blake, Andrew Dardaris, Tommy Davis, Steven DiFiore, Grant Gifford, Greg Klumpp and Cameron Pizzo decided to row across New York State via the Erie Canal, a journey that covered 340 miles and took eight days to complete.
Reid Yankowski, a junior at Canisius High School, first came up with the idea for the trip and the McQuaid rowers decided it sounded like a good cause and wanted to embrace the challenge. The McQuaid team rowed forty to fifty miles a day, which took them around eight hours.
According to the team, one of the most challenging aspects of the trip was having to stay in the same seat for such long stretches of time.
“It’s like when you’re driving in a car for a really long time and you start shifting in your seat because you’re uncomfortable, but you can’t do that in a boat,” Blake said.
The design of the seats also makes it uncomfortable to row for long stretches of time.
“The seats are made for a two hour practice or a twenty minute race at the most, and they’re not meant for eight hours of continual rowing,” Davis said.
The team coped with this by rotating who was rowing. Since only four people could row at a time, they swapped out two new rowers every four hours.
Other challenges the team faced were Lake Oneida and the heat. Due to waves that reached heights of up to two feet, the team spent four and a half hours on Lake Oneida.
Even more difficult was the inability to switch rowers out. The oppressive heat made the trip especially challenging, particularly with the heat wave at the latter end of the week.
The days of rowing were long and hard, making them all seem to blur into one long day according to Pizzo. Davis said the trip felt like one very, very bad summer camp.
The team pushed through, though, motivated by the cause they were supporting and the generosity of people they encountered. Throughout their journey, onlookers who heard their story decided to donate out of the blue, like one person who handed the team a fifty dollar bill without even leaving his name.
Another boat that the team passed along the Erie Canal decided to donate $250 after hearing about their cause. These acts of kindness are something that really stuck with the rowers.
“We heard a lot of ‘thank you’s’ for what were doing,” Pizzo said.
Altogether, the team was able to raise over $50,000. When asked if they would want to complete the journey again next year, the team said it would be fun to do it on another famous body of water.
They have already accomplished rowing across the Erie Canal and would want a new challenge. According to Blake, there’s even talk of a trip to Europe.
