{"id":70114,"date":"2021-04-06T14:37:47","date_gmt":"2021-04-06T18:37:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sailingworld.com\/?p=70114"},"modified":"2023-05-06T23:08:06","modified_gmt":"2023-05-07T03:08:06","slug":"the-long-beat-to-diversity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sailingworld.com\/racing\/the-long-beat-to-diversity\/","title":{"rendered":"The Long Beat to Diversity"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\"Two <\/div>\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\n
\n The passion for sailing knows no boundaries, but in the United States, the social boundaries were once built high. If we don\u2019t change that, the loss is ours.<\/span>\n Max Thomsen<\/span>\n\n\t\t\t\t <\/figcaption>\n <\/section>\n\t\t\n\n\n\n

Events in 2020 laid bare a host of \u00adsocietal shortcomings. Inspiration says we must take action. In the next minute, the cynic in me shouts out that suddenly every institution from Harvard to your local YC to Gus\u2019 Gas and Bait Shop now has a DE&I committee. Some, but I hope not all, will fritter away to mere talk. But in case you missed it, DE&I stands for diversity, equity and inclusion. Diversity means that everybody gets invited to the dance. Equity means that everybody gets to dance. Inclusion means that everybody has a good time. There has never been a better time to talk about this. Ordinarily, it would be outside the view of a racing-sailing magazine to broach these topics, but the fact is, the country we live in is jangled. We\u2019re poised for a reset.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n

\u201cUS Sailing has 1,700 member organizations,\u201d president Cory Sertl says. \u201cIn this moment, they\u2019re coming to us for advice, and bringing with them a willingness and desire to diversify their memberships. That\u2019s true whether they\u2019re a prestigious yacht club, a community sailing center or an \u00adoff-the-beach just-do-it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n

But how? How to go from good intentions to effective action. Writing this column was an education as I phone-walked my way through operations that are already fully engaged. They have lessons to teach. Take Karen Harris in Chicago, for example: Her 125-year-old Jackson Park Yacht Club on the South Side of the city is sited in a target-rich environment, if you\u2019re talking DE&I opportunity. The surrounding community houses a large population of minority families, and the facility is suited to teaching beginners; it even works day by day for hosting caregivers who cannot afford to travel back and forth twice, to drop off and pick up (two bus fares for grandma versus four).<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n

The only ingredients missing when Harris became commodore were initiative and commitment. She brought those. Harris says: \u201cThe club\u2019s junior program was defunct, so we started from scratch and ran a conventional program the first year. In 2018, we became a 501c3, acquired grant money, and launched outreach.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n

In summer programs that attract some 250 kids, there is scholarship funding for those who need it, and the demographic skews slightly toward minorities. So too does the staff, \u201cbut you have to literally grow that staff,\u201d Harris says. \u201cOur instructor-in-training program is for kids 13 to 15 who are mature, talented and play well with others. We waive their fees, and they shadow the certified instructors as an extra pair of hands until they\u2019re ready for Level 1 training. When they pass the tests, I have another instructor I can hire.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n

To date, that effort has produced three Level 1 instructor\/role models. Harris says: \u201cI hired them all, and we have another four in the pipeline. It\u2019s only a matter of time before I can\u2019t hire all the minority instructors we turn out. I want to see them fanning out and working all over the place.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n

\n\nEven when they tell their teachers (as teachers often tell us), \u201cThat was the best day ever,\u201d they might not find their way back.\n\n<\/p>\n<\/cite><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n\n

Go ahead, Karen. Make me jealous. One of the truisms of community sailing is that each location is unique. At San Francisco\u2019s Treasure Island Sailing Center, where I serve on a DE&I working group, we have direct access to every fourth and fifth grader in the San Francisco Unified School District, but they do not have direct access to us. That is, every fourth and fifth grader is bused to TISC for a day of experiential learning, a little time in a boat and, for many, a first-time opportunity to trail a finger in the water or scrunch a toe in wet sand. Then they\u2019re back to their lives on the other side of a very big bridge and, in many cases, to the other-other side of a large, complicated city. Even when they tell their teachers (as teachers often tell us), \u201cThat was the best day ever,\u201d they might not find their way back. There is no straight path for them to grow into middle school instructors-in-training. In the summer, TISC attracts a diverse population of 300 kids. Some of them return after finding us through SFUSD (San Francisco Unified School District), but they have not, historically, become our certified junior instructors. We\u2019re working on that. We want a cadre of Black, Latinx and Asian instructors for their value as role models\u2014to bring the next group along\u2014but also for their own sakes. Too many kids don\u2019t know, and their parents don\u2019t know, that there is a path to teenage jobs in the fresh air, developing responsibility, management skills and emotional intelligence\u2014a path that opens doors. Perhaps I mentioned, we\u2019re working on it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n

Back on the shores of Lake Michigan, Harris has this to add about her working reality: \u201cChicago has 2 million people, but 800,000 of them have never even seen the lake. We get kids who think it\u2019s the ocean, and they\u2019re afraid of sharks. For that and for all the steps that follow, we have a clinical sports psychologist on-site to deal with anxieties, tensions and \u00adconflict resolution.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n

So we see that good intentions are not enough. In New York at the Hudson River Sailing Center, many of the employees are also former students. The program looks for schools within bike-riding distance and selects middle school populations from schools with the highest percentage of kids who depend upon funded lunches. US Sailing vice president Rich Jepsen calls it \u201ca social justice program as much as a \u00adsailing program,\u201d and Hudson River\u2019s Maeve Gately agrees [Correction: Ms. Maeve states for the record, \u201cWe are a youth development program\u2014though we work with students of color, that does not make us a social justice organization. The distinction is important.\u201d\u2014Ed].<\/i><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe close the achievement gap by \u00adproviding a transformative experience,\u201d Gately says. \u201cYounger students build boats in the winter, which is a hands-on \u00adgeometry lesson. In the spring, they launch and invite their parents to celebrate the accomplishment. We teach the math and science of sailing, meaning we teach math and science. Also engine maintenance, sail repair, bookkeeping. In our last class, 98 percent of the kids went on to college. Some continue as sailors, and we like that, but it\u2019s not our metric of success. Sailing is our platform for developing life skills.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n

Up to this point, I\u2019ve been writing about pathways for minorities and the underprivileged, but that\u2019s only one dimension of the big picture. Sertle says: \u201cBringing women into the sport, and advancing them as coaches, is important. Developing metrics for measuring progress is important\u00ad\u2014and getting adaptive sailing back into the Paralympics.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n

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\n\t\t\t\t\t\"Three <\/div>\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\n
\n City kids are no longer city-bound when they\u2019re on the water. Nothing else delivers such an immediate and completely \u201cmagical\u201d transformation.\u201d<\/span>\n Max Thomsen<\/span>\n\n\t\t\t\t <\/figcaption>\n <\/section>\n\t\t\n\n\n\n

George Washington University\u2019s sailing team captain John DeRuff points to growth opportunities among \u201cLGBTQ kids who participate in sports at a lower rate than straight kids,\u201d drop out more often, and hide the feelings and fears that drive those decisions while burying their potential as leaders. In a world less screwed up, I could name names, but I\u2019ll stop with that name, because DeRuff came out as a leader in a time when college sailing now has TIDE, which is The Inclusivity, Diversity and Equity taskforce.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n

In Jepsen\u2019s long view, \u201cDE&I matters were on our radar for a while. US Sailing finally formed a DE&I committee two years ago at the behest of the US Olympic Paralympic Committee, then everything ramped up with the social-justice crises of 2020.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n

Add to that, I wrote about the Siebel Sailors Program this past spring, when it was ready to go large, right before we all got 2020\u2032d and well before the streets were convulsed with protests. Funded by tech entrepreneur Tom Siebel in partnership with US Sailing, the program supports community sailing hubs in cities across the US, providing boats and coaching\u2014high-level coaching which, for beginners, is rare.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n

Siebel program manager Blair Overman relates that during the pandemic, activity levels across the country varied from medium to sparse, but the time has not gone to waste. In the launch, there have been surprises for instructors who are used to kids who have never sailed but not to kids who have never waded in water to their knees. They\u2019ve had to adjust. Many programs have been forced to crank up even greater creativity in how to get kids to their facilities. And the hallmark of the Siebel Sailors\u2019 evolving curriculum\u2014food\u2014is validated. \u201cEvery time the kids come,\u201d Overman says, \u201cfood is reinforcing, even to a kid who isn\u2019t really, really hungry, but we get kids who are really, really hungry. Until they\u2019re fueled, you can\u2019t expect them to put up a best effort.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe emphasize basic needs,\u201d Overman continues. \u201cWe emphasize a welcoming, comfortable environment. We emphasize empowering students by giving them choices in at least one activity each day, something they can make their own. But executing on that? It\u2019s hard. It has to be intentional, and it has to happen every<\/i> day<\/i>. We saw some coaches doing this instinctively, and they were getting the best results, so over the winter we invested time in training all of our coaches to their habits.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n

The Siebel Sailors Program distributes its benefits through community sailing programs in every region of the country, and expansion is the mantra: reaching more kids. \u201cYou have to know that it can scale,\u201d Siebel says. \u201cMy hope is that in 10 years, this will be transformative. Sailing is magical.\u201d Magical, the man means, in changing lives in positive ways.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n

My report. From a few strongholds in the land of believers.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you want to known how healthy sailing will be in a generation fron now, look to how well we do at growing diversity. The country is changing. Sailing lags.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":34393,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"BS_author_type":"BS_author_is_guest","BS_guest_author_name":"Kimball Livingston","BS_guest_author_url":"","hydra_display_date":"20210406","hydra_display_updated":false,"_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":"159","_yoast_wpseo_metadesc":"If you want to known how healthy sailing will be in a generation fron now, look to how well we do at growing diversity. The country is changing. Sailing lags.","_yoast_wpseo_title":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","arc_story_id":"TGILLFEIY5B2VGAW2EDZ43GW7Q","arc_website_url":"story\/racing\/the-long-beat-to-diversity\/","custom_permalink":"","arc_subtype":"right-sidebar","arc_exclude_from_feeds":false,"sponsored":false,"sponsored_label":"Sponsored Content","sponsored_display_label":false,"sponsored_image":0,"post_right_rail":true,"post_right_rail_ad_1":true,"post_right_rail_ad_2":true,"post_right_rail_ad_3":false,"post_right_rail_ad_4":false,"post_right_rail_recirc":true,"fixed_anchor_ad":true,"post_top_ad":true,"post_off_ramp":true,"post_taboola":false,"labels":false,"apple_news_api_created_at":"","apple_news_api_id":"","apple_news_api_modified_at":"","apple_news_api_revision":"","apple_news_api_share_url":"","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":false,"apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_sponsored":false,"apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":"\"\"","apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[159],"tags":[174,1707,177],"class_list":["post-70114","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-racing","tag-how-to","tag-print-2021-spring","tag-racing"],"acf":[],"apple_news_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sailingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70114","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sailingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sailingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sailingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sailingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70114"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.sailingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70114\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sailingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34393"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sailingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sailingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sailingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}