Growing Cortlandt Rowing Club Starting to Make Waves
In 2012, Cortlandt Councilman Frank Farrell was visiting Poughkeepsie and he noticed a rowing race taking place in the Hudson River. It suddenly struck him that rowing would be an ideal sport to introduce in Cortlandt, especially with the immediate access to the Hudson in Verplanck.
“I said to myself, ‘Why aren’t we doing this here?’” Farrell recently recalled in his longtime Liberty Press quarters in Verplanck. “We’re really just bringing back to the Hudson Valley a sport that was a very integral part of the area.”
Having just celebrated its second anniversary in May, the Cortlandt Community Rowing Association (CCRA) boasts approximately 60 members, ranging in age from nine years old to 70, and is the only rowing club from Wappinger Falls to Pelham.
Farrell, a U.S. Navy veteran with no rowing background, did much of the heavy lifting to get CCRA off the ground by purchasing equipment and getting his fellow town officials behind the endeavor. CCRA is now a registered non-profit organization with a board of directors that provides regular rowing and training opportunities, all conducted within U.S. Rowing guidelines.
“I’m really very pleased with the way it’s grown,” Farrell said. “The town has been extremely supportive and I’ve been lucky to find people who want to do it. It’s the kind of sport that can get so many people involved. It’s an opportunity. It can bring a lot of pleasure to people.”
One of the people that instantly jumped on board was Amy Rosenberg, who in September 2013 found out about a rowing machine event that was being held to gauge interest in the CCRA in Verplanck on the former seaplane base where the group now stores some of its equipment.
“This event was the first time I had been to Verplanck even though I had lived in the town for six years,” Rosenberg said. “Part of the reason I chose to buy a house in Cortlandt with my husband was its proximity to the Hudson River. I’ve always had a pull to being out on the water, but really have not been able to have it fully realized in my life until now with the Cortlandt Community Rowing.”
Rosenberg first volunteered as an art and communications director to get the word out about CCRA, advocated the creation of a youth program called “Little Vikings and co-teaches an indoor rowing class to music in the former Cortlandt Museum location on 7th Street that once served as Cortlandt’s Town Hall and a jail.
She also practices three or four times a week at 5:15 a.m. with a handful of Master rowers on Lake Meahagh. In the winter, some CCRA members practice on indoor rowing tanks at the West Point Military Academy.
“The future is very bright for CCRA,” Rosenberg said. “It is a very special group of people that have come together to work towards a shared vision of bringing a healthy distraction to the everyday stresses of life. Being on the water and concentrating on rowing the boat together clears a space in your mind and your life to experience a unique synchronicity.”
One of Farrell’s goals has been getting local high schools interested in CCRA. Some of the group’s youth members attend Hendrick Hudson, Croton and Yorktown. Farrell is hoping perhaps the attention on the powerhouse U.S. Women’s Rowing Team, which is expected to win the gold medal at the Rio Olympics, will inspire more young men and women to give CCRA a try.
“The beauty is there is a spot (on the boat) for every kid,” Farrell stressed. “All of these kids develop a certain sense of responsibility. They all have to row together. It’s an endurance sport. It’s one of the most grueling, physically demanding sports there is.”
Rosenberg said CCRA envisions holding regional regattas that will draw from other rowing clubs and offering new programs such as para-rowing adapted for differently-abled rowers and another tailored for breast cancer survivors.
CCRA President Dina Tompkins said the club is a member of the Hudson Valley Rowing League and has already participated in scholastic rowing to official U.S. Rowing races, traveling from Poughkeepsie to Philadelphia.
“Isabelle Anzani will be rowing with Skidmore College this September, Avery Tompkins, was a rower and is coaching our youth rowers, and Olivia Shaw will be a coxswain for The University of Chicago this September. We are very proud to say that because of this club they have found paths for their future,” Tompkins said.
“With the support system we have from Linda Puglisi, Frank Farrell, the Cortlandt Town Board, the rowers and their families this club will prosper and maybe in the future we might hear of someone who rowed with CCRA on beautiful Lake Meahagh trying out for the summer Olympics,” Tompkins added.
Further information on CCRA can be found at www.cortlandtrowing.com.
Rick has more than 40 years’ experience covering local news in Westchester and Putnam counties, running the gamut from politics and crime to sports and human interest. He has been an editor at Examiner Media since 2012. Read more from Rick’s editor-author bio here. Read Rick’s work here: https://www.theexaminernews.com/author/pezzullo_rick-writer/
