Tasting the Sea : Underprivileged Youths From Santa Ana Learn to Row and Kayak in Newport Bay

Twelve-year-old Tam Vu likes to spend his afternoons playing with baseball cards or goofing off with friends. But recently, Vu and eight other students from an economically depressed Santa Ana neighborhood had a chance to spend the afternoon in the sun and water of Newport Bay.

“I like the kayaking the best,” the animated Vietnamese boy explained. “They call me flipper.”

His friends and kayaking instructor came up with the name after he dove off the long white surf ski-kayak for the fifth or sixth time.

Vu and the other boys and girls in the program are spending several hours a week on the water, in kayaks and rowing shells, learning the fundamentals of the two sports. The idea, says Newport Aquatics Center executive director Paul Prioleau, is to let underprivileged kids in on the joy of water sports and competition.

“(The center) is here to promote the sports and to provide public access to the bay,” Prioleau said. “The idea is that it will give them a little taste of what else is out there in life.

“Hopefully, they’ll go away with a little something that will stick in their mind. Life isn’t always what their neighborhood looks like,” he continued.

The Newport Aquatics Center, built in 1987, was partially funded by a grant from the Amateur Athletic Foundation for youth sports in Southern California. The private facility, located on North Star Beach in Newport Bay, received a grant of $115,000 to purchase racing shells and staff a youth swimming program.

The idea started with a Spurgeon Intermediate School math teacher, Marion Tarbox. Rowing on Sunday mornings with her sister, she thought that having a few of her students participating in something challenging and invigorating outdoors would help their self-esteem and maybe “turn a few around.”

For a variety of reasons, there are many kids in the school who are considered “at risk” for dropping out of school, she said. But getting them to feel better about themselves can often turn them on the right track in time to keep them interested in school.

“There are some kids who were falling through the cracks. That was my original push,” Tarbox said. Now there is a waiting list and children ask her every day if there is more space.

“A lot of the kids at our school had never been to the beach . . . on the ride home last time they talked about how nice (Newport Beach) was and how pretty. A lot of them didn’t seem to realize that there was a future for them,” she added.

And the fact that the lessons are taught by young men and women who have been successful in their educational and social goals provides additional role models for the youngsters.

“One of the things that I was looking for was men who could demonstrate maturity without being vulgar or aggressive,” she said.

According to Tarbox and fellow teacher Terri Foy, Spurgeon Intermediate is located in one of the roughest neighborhoods in Santa Ana. Foy said that fear, drugs and crime are a part of everyday life for many of the youngsters.

But on the quiet surf of Newport Bay, 34 of them are getting a brief respite. Under the tutelage of nationally ranked rowers and kayakers, each child gets two afternoons over the course of three weeks, playing in either kayaks or single person sculls--the technical name for the thin, light racing boats rowed with two oars.

Esther Andrade, 13, had been in a boat only once before, for a cruise around Newport Harbor. But with the help of Dru van Hengel and James Martinez--both of them are training for the 1992 Olympics--Esther took to the water quickly.

“I like the rowing better than the kayaks,” she explained. “With the rowing, you don’t get as wet.

“And it’s pretty. Last time we were here, a big fish jumped out of the water right in front of us,” Andrade said, giggling about it with her classmate, Lorena Gonzalez.

For Lorena, the kayaking was preferable.

“The first time I did it, I lost my voice for the next few days,” the 12-year-old said. “It was because I was screaming and laughing so much.”