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Chelsea Group Helps City Kids Sail to a Better Life and College

By DNAinfo Staff on July 22, 2010 10:41am

By Olivia Scheck

DNAinfo Reporter/Producer

CHELSEA — Sailing may not be a common pursuit for students of Manhattan’s poorest public schools, but it could be a golden ticket to America’s top prep schools and colleges.

Bill Bahen had this in mind two years ago, when he founded Hudson River Community Sailing (HRCS), a Chelsea nonprofit that teaches sailing to economically disadvantaged kids from throughout the city.

Sailing helps build life-skills like communication, teamwork and leadership – "The boat won’t move without those things," Program Director Alex Baum explained – which are also what elite universities seek in prospective students.

Harvard, Yale and Brown, whose sailing teams rank among the top 10 in the nation, all recruit high-school sailors.

Participants in the Hudson River Community Sailing Summer Leadership Program sailing a J24 along the Hudson.
Participants in the Hudson River Community Sailing Summer Leadership Program sailing a J24 along the Hudson.
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DNAinfo/Olivia Scheck

Typically, the recruits come from well-to-do families who have the money for boats, lessons and yacht club memberships.

That’s precisely what Bahen and his colleagues hope to change.

"It’s only been reserved to rich, wealthy white people because they’ve been able to afford it," Baum, 24, a former captain of the Fordham sailing team, told DNAinfo.

"We’re really trying to open it up to more people, make it more inclusive so that more people can use it as a stepping stone."

In just two years, Baum said, HRCS has already had several promising sailors.

"We had this one kid in our afterschool program, where we kept saying, ‘If we had found this kid three years ago, he would be an Olympic sailor right now,’" Baum said. "He already is an amazing sailor and he’s only been sailing for 10 weeks off and on."

In its classrooms, HRCS’s afterschool program uses sailing concepts to teach trigonometry. On the water, students learn the sport first hand. HRCS also hosts weeklong summer camps for "financially at-risk" middle-schoolers and summer internships for students who excel in the afterschool program.

But Bahen says that if HRCS is to begin turning out truly competitive sailors, the school needs to start teaching kids at younger ages, and develop a more rigorous training program.

That effort starts next fall, when HRCS will begin a year-round afterschool program for 5th and 6th graders. In addition to sailing and math instruction, students will receive tutoring in other academic subjects, personal mentoring and test preperation as they move toward high school graduation.

Bahen, 40, the HRCS's executive director, also plans to open up a second facility, featuring a fleet of dinghies (the boats used in most adolescent regattas) at Dyckman Marina by 2012.

The new spot, planned for 205th Street in Inwood, will be reserved for student training, while the current dock, near 26th Street, also offeres memberships to the general public. Fees for those memberships cover nearly half of the organization's funding, Bahen said.

Bahen, who grew up sailing in Salisbury, MD, said the new Inwood facility will expand HRCS's reach into students' lives.

The Hudson River Community Sailing fleet of J24's.
The Hudson River Community Sailing fleet of J24's.
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DNAinfo/Olivia Scheck

"The first day that we get a kid into a better school because he’s participated…in our program, it’s gonna be a really wonderful day," Bahen said. "And it’s not too far off."

Bahen said he looked to CitySquash, a Bronx-based nonprofit that teaches squash and provides other enrichment services, as a model.

Since its 2002 founding, CitySquash students have won 39 national urban squash titles and $4.1 million in financial aid to attend elite prep schools, according to their website.

Bahen hopes the group will have similar statistics to report six years from now.

"Our end goal is to do exactly what they’re doing – getting them into Choate…or getting them into good local high schools here," he said. "We prep ‘em out, they can get there."