It’s not just about kicking back

Alex Coolman

They floated like content sea lions, orange life jackets buoying their

small bodies in the Back Bay water.

Brandon Clumpner and Elliott Martin, both 9, were bobbing through

their final day of Paddle Camp, a weeklong Newport Aquatic Center program

that brings to young folk the pleasures of kayaking, canoeing and, of

course, floating around and doing nothing.

Wading back to shore, the young men turned their attention to the

other events on their agenda for the day.

“Eating,” Brandon noted, figured prominently in their plans.

For many of the kids who attend Paddle Camp, getting the chance to

goof around in the water is a major draw. The array of activities that

are available there, from trips to the Fun Zone to lounging at the Dunes,

are ideally suited to creating the sort of blissful relaxation that

seemed to possess Brandon and Elliott.

But Billy Whitford, Aquatic Center executive director, said Paddle

Camp isn’t only about kicking back. To a remarkable degree, he noted, the

camp serves as a sort of incubator for the talented paddlers of Newport

Beach.

“It’s an opportunity for us to look at the kids at a grass-roots

recruiting level,” Whitford said. “A lot of the kids get excited about

[paddling] and they come back and get in our competitive programs.”

So, even though young folk like Brandon and Elliot tend to start off

by lounging around, they occasionally end up like 11-year-old Katie Holly.

Katie, who acts as a junior counselor at the camp, has been

participating in the program for about 3 years.

“She didn’t start here thinking, ‘This is what I want to do when I

grow up,”’ said her mother, Costa Mesa resident Nancy Holly.

But Katie discovered something: She’s very good at paddling, and she

enjoys it tremendously.

When she looks at her future now, she sees paddling playing a major

part.

“It’s one of my favorite sports,” she said. “You get to go places and

you don’t have to be serious all the time. But you can practice if you

want to.”

Katie wants to. She can dig floating around in a life jacket for the

sheer pleasure of it, but she says she has her sights set on a

professional or Olympic paddling career.

Paddle Camp, for her, is about a lot more than floating around.

“It’s my home,” she said.