Walter Chang!

Walter Chang is a friend from California. I coached his son at Junipero Serra High School and got to know the family pretty well. Walter's son Chris is now rowing for the Naval Academy and Walter came out this past weekend to see his son race at Eastern Sprints (great job, Chris!!) Walter came down to New Bedford to check out our club and he rode along in the launch for our youth practice. He met a few of the kids and got to see our operation.

Afterwards, we went to Cork to have a bite to eat and catch up. It was great to see him and hear about his other 2 children (his daughter will be attending Boston University in the fall) and how well his family is doing. He's always been a great supporter of rowing and is very involved.

After dinner, he headed back up to Boston where he was staying and I headed back to the office to get a few more things done. Surprisingly, Walter called me on the drive and offered to donate a used four to the club!!! He gave me a price range and told me to start looking for boats because he wanted to support us. How wonderful is THAT?!?!

I can't thank Walter enough. Having a four will help NBCR is so many ways. Our kids need to have the option of racing fours because they are all very different in size, ability, and power. Putting them all in an 8 isn't necessarily the best option and if we can separate them into fours, they can match better and hopefully perform better. Having a four will also help us when we don't quite have enough people to fill an 8 which is often the case for the evening adult program or our Learn-To-Row programs.

A HUGE thank you goes out to Walter Chang and his family for their amazing support of NBCR and for believing in me and what we're doing here. I personally will never forget this.