LYNN — If you’re interested in learning all about how to row your boat, the North Shore Maritime Center is waiting for you.
Beginning next month, the center will offer rowing programs to anyone who lives on the North Shore. The center recognizes the need for new opportunities in the community, and has tapped into the momentum created by other community rowing programs to provide access to water-based athletic and educational activities.
The North Shore Maritime Center is a nonprofit organization founded earlier this year by William Goldenheim. It is dedicated to increasing access to rowing, other water sports and maritime education, serving the communities of the North Shore of Boston.
Starting with rowing — including learn-to-row days and camps, private and semi-private lessons and youth and adult programming — North Shore Maritime Center is the first community organization dedicated specifically to teaching the sport in Lynn.
Rowing is one of the fastest growing sports in the United States and across the globe, says Goldenheim. It is also the second-largest college scholarship sport for women in the NCAA. As the mission of Community Rowing in Brighton states, “rowing changes lives.”
One of the original sports in the first modern Olympics, rowing has established itself as a sport often inaccessible to many due to logistics, cost and access to water, among other factors, Goldenheim said. Community rowing and boating programs have had great success across the country and a recent emphasis on diversity, equity and inclusion in the sport has been a rising tide that lifts all ships, he said.
Programming for youth and adults will begin next month in Lynn. For more information about the program, how you can get involved or to make a donation, please visit the center’s website, www.northshoremaritimecenter.org, or email William Goldenheim at [email protected].