MARK ETHERIDGE: US rower brings empowering, team building lessons to SA

Rowing is just one of many smaller SA sports that perpetually find themselves pulling out all the stops ... merely to survive, let alone thrive.

It is also a sport that has often been viewed as the exclusive domain of the stereotyped “wealthy and white” sports persona.

But this week’s visit to Cape Town by the US’s Arshay Cooper will certainly help capsize those conceptions.

Chicago-born Cooper made history by captaining the first all-black US high school rowing crew and has gone on to write the book A Most Beautiful Thing, describing how rowing proved the “oar” that helped pull himself out of a life of poverty and crime.

Now living in New York he runs a nonprofit fund under the same name.

In Cape Town for only five days, Cooper’s first port of call was the fledgling rowing club at the University of Western Cape (UWC) where former University of Cape Town (UCT) cox Michael Ortlepp heads up the rowing club.

Later in the day Cooper gave a presentation at the Royal Cape Yacht Club, which also has an academy that is making sailing more accessible for the township youth.

“I grew up on the west side of Chicago, one of the most violent suburbs you’ll find. My dad wasn’t around, my mom was an addict, my older brothers were involved with gang life.

“Gunshots and sirens were part of daily life and stepping over pools of blood from violence was part of daily life.”

The 41-year-old could have been speaking about so many SA township areas, but Cooper insists that even in dire poverty “there’s talent everywhere, it’s the opportunities [and the access to them] that are nowhere to be found, especially for kids of colour”.

A pupil at Manley High School, Cooper says it was notorious as the second most violent school in Chicago. “One day there was a presentation at our school, an all-black school, a rowing boat was standing there and this white lady wanted to know if I’d like to join a crew. She showed me a TV monitor with Olympic rowers, but to be honest I couldn’t identify with it, no-one looked like me.”

But the following day’s offer of a free pizza to any new member proved too hard to resist and Cooper was on board.

“My first time on the water was so scary, I nearly cried,” he said on Wednesday evening. “But after about five times I fell in love with the water, when I was in the boat it became a type of meditation and it’s hard to describe the quiet and peace out on the water with the beautiful Chicago skyline in the background and no sirens and gunshots.

“At times there were rowers from different gangs and different neighbourhoods in the same boat, and they soon became aware that if they wanted to get safely across the water they’d have to pull together as one.”

Debbie Owen, head of the Lawhill Maritime Centre at Simon’s Town School, was instrumental in Cooper coming to SA.

“It all started when one of our Cape Coastal Rowing coaches brought me a copy of Arshay’s book and there are so many similarities between Arshay’s background and our students and the youth of SA in general,” she says.

It took 18 months of communication between her and Cooper before he finally found the time to come to Africa.

“Having met him personally I’m even more convinced that he, his book and his movie have the power to change minds and perceptions way more than many of our leaders here can.

“What makes rowing special is [as Arshay says] the meditative nature of being out on the water and away from the noise. More and more of our children need that quiet space. What’s so important is that in someone like Arshay they have a hero who they can relate to. So many of our children have grown up with so much trauma and are exposed to so much noise. They deserve more peace and quiet.”

Filter down

Back to Ortlepp, though, and he says UWC was looking for a rowing coach, “but I soon realised that it wasn’t a pure coaching job but more a case of building a club.

“We have very little working equipment. We have three broken Ergo machines that Rowing SA are looking at helping us replace this year and Western Cape Rowing’s Ken Gliddon has been a huge supporter of the club, getting us boats to loan on an ad hoc basis.

“At the moment we have one functional eights boat, which UCT used to race in back in 2001. RowSA’s main sponsor, Rand Merchant Bank, has been great with helping fund rowing development and I’m hopeful that some of that will filter down to us.”

Being the owner of a busy Ndabeni business during the day, Ortlepp has to make time for his passion of rowing and coaching.

He says Cooper’s visit to the group of about 20 UWC rowers was a groundbreaking one. “It was very informal and he just sat down and talked heart-to-heart and one could see the impact his words had.

“Here was a guy who the diverse group of students could relate to, a person of colour, being able to make something of himself in the sport of rowing.

“It was obvious there was a feeling of trust and identity and the interaction between Arshay and the group was touching and resonating. Even the girls had something to relate to ... two of the Delta Air Lines staff, who were part of Arshay’s group, sat down and talked about everything under the sun and shared their news and mindsets across two continents.”

Cooper says: “I think that in the US and Africa, ball sports are overpopulated. There are so many other sports out there like fencing and sailing that black children can also excel in, it’s just a case of resources.”

And it’s a question of working together: “I’ve always said, using rowing terminology, that one person can’t do the work for eight but eight can do the work of one.

“In the last year we’ve introduced 2,000 children of colour to rowing, we can do that in SA too.”

And a final lesson he learnt from rowing. “On one occasion I went into the boathouse and stepped over some trash on the way to picking up my oar and was very quickly told by the coach not to step over it — and that one leaves the boathouse in better shape than one found it.

“I use that motto in everyday life now. Don’t step over the situation. Leave it better, whether it be your sport, your school, your community, your country ... than when you found it — for the next generation.”

When Cooper heads back home on Sunday he’ll most certainly have left the mindsets and dreams of many underprivileged South Africans in a better place.