Hazelwood summer camp teaches life lessons along with rowing on the Mon River

Hazelwood rises above the Monongahela River’s banks. Most of its residents, including its youngsters, have little contact with it, including water sports.

The Center of Life summer camp program has challenged that with a rowing program for its 11- to 14-year-old participants through a partnership with Central Catholic High School’s crew team, led by alumnus and Syracuse graduate Anicet Mundundu.

Three mornings a week during July the students head to the Central Diesel Power Co. launch near Hazelwood Green, take their seats on a barge boat and row to instructions from Mundundu, who gets help from several Central Catholic crew team members each session. Jay Hammond, an attorney with Babst Calland who coaches the Central Catholic crew team and is president of Central Diesel, a nonprofit that supports rowing at the private school according to its GuideStar profile, coordinated the program with Center of Life.

Danielle Chaykowsky, Center of Life director of educational programs, said initial discussions about adding rowing began during the pandemic. It came to fruition this year, starting with one outing in late October.

The students enjoyed it, Center of Life Education Programs Manager Sarah Crawshaw said, although at first, “They were so scared of being on the water. Truly terrified.”

Between the weather and time the program requires, summer just fits the initiative, Crawshaw said. “We [have more time] and can really work with them in a rowing program.”

They do want students to try new experiences like this, both Chaykowsky and Crawshaw said. Plus water sports – even swimming regularly – can be out of reach for young people in urban neighborhoods. They don’t have the money or easy access to pools and water sports. A good number don’t know how to swim.

Sadik Roberts, Center of Life’s marketing and communications manager, said Greenfield and Schenley pools are the closest for these students, but they have to take multiple buses to get to them. “This experience is truly rewarding,” he added.

So for two hours each session and weather permitting, the students pick up their oars, strap on buoyancy belts, line up two across on the Central Catholic barge boat and venture out onto the river. If they all can’t fit, a second smaller craft is added. Sixteen is the maximum for this portion of the summer camp, with the students mostly heading to seventh and eighth grade in the fall; one sixth grader is in this year’s group.

This past Tuesday Mundundu had them head downstream because of the wind, and they moved the boat to his call. “Blade in the water,” he told them. “Push it like a pushup.”

A summer camp counselor joined the students on the boat eagerly, and other staff and a few students taking a break from rowing watched them glide first from one side to another across the Mon, then head straight downriver. “Most often we head around the bend toward Hazelwood,” one of the counselors said. “One of our goals is to get to the Glenwood Bridge.”

On this morning when construction crews had Second Avenue down to one lane near that bridge, they’d most likely beat motorists there.

The students get callouses on their hands from working the oars, Crawshaw said, as well as muscle aches and pains. So sometimes they take a rest, as Christopher Madeja-Hammond did on Tuesday.

He does like rowing and enjoys being on the boat with his summer camp friends. The 12-year-old from Hazelwood likes to swim “but not in this river.”

Christopher plans to keep rowing, but he explains the callouses on his hands are not from rowing but rather from playing the violin, which he has done for three years. Soon he’ll take his place again on the left side of the boat, his preferred spot.

The best part? “All of us rowing, keeping balance, working together,” he said. His fellow students, who collectively gather in the camp’s Movie Room, are already friends who have been attending the summer camp for years, many since they were in kindergarten.

Hammond said the driver for the partnership is the mission of Almono Partners LP, a consortium of foundations that raised money to purchase the Hazelwood Green property, to reactivate and re-energize the riverfront there. Central Diesel has a contract with it and erected a modular boathouse and makes use of an existing building there to store crew items and house an ergometer rowing machine. The Hazelwood students can use that machine, just like the Central Catholic students.

Having Mundundu coach the Hazelwood students assisted by current Central Catholic crew members is part of the school’s mission, he added. That means providing education and opportunities to children of all backgrounds and needs.

The partnership with Center of Life turned around very quickly, Hammond said, leading to the fall rowing event and planning for the summer camp.

The Hazelwood students mainly row on the team’s barge boat, named for Brendan Foley IV, a student at the high school and a rowing team member who was killed in a 1996 accident.  His parents and the booster organization hold a fundraiser every year to help the team, Irish Night – Row on for Brendan, that has raised more than $600,000 for that boat and other team needs.  

“One of the things tricky about rowing in Pittsburgh, rivers are volatile, especially in the spring when there is a lot of flow, a lot of water coming down,” Hammond said. “We try to go out in the safest boats we have for the kids that we can.”

Center of Life CEO Tim Smith recalled in a news release about the program that summer camp attendees enjoyed and thrived in rowing programs as far back 2003. Some of those participants ended up working at the nonprofit.

“This is a wonderful opportunity for our kids to learn a new skill, to get out onto Hazelwood Green and the water, and experience the river that runs so closely past the Hazelwood neighborhood,” he said in the news release. “It took a lot of courage for many of these kids to venture onto the river in an open boat, as access to water sports has not been something that most Hazelwood kids have had. This is a great opportunity for our campers to learn a new sport, to overcome their fears and have a great time while receiving excellent training.”

This summer program gives the students a chance to try a sport they may never have heard of before, and one that “can open up some paths as it did for me,” Mundundu said. He rowed for Central Catholic all four years, graduating in 2017, and  a rowing scholarship helped him attend Syracuse. He participated on crew there his freshman and sophomore years, but the pandemic and personal issues cut short that experience. He started helping Hammond coach at Central this past March, which led him to the Hazelwood summer camp. Mundundu said he is new to coaching, and “It sounded like a great opportunity. I’m a lot like these kids.”

Learning to row is simple in concept, he said, but in execution it is much more difficult. So he started off with basic techniques, letting the students grasp those, then they moved on to timing. “You have to be in time with people on the boat,” the Shadyside resident said. “If you’re not in time, it will not go well. It takes some time to build up that connection between athletes, to be on time, to be in sync. These kids are really coming along. They get tired. We give them a bit of break, and sure enough they figure it out.”

He tells the students they will work hard as he did. “You are going to feel like Superman. But you feel like you fought Superman,” Mundundu explained. “At the end of day you will be exhausted. Everything will be sore, especially your legs and back.”

He had the students lift some light weights, too, which some of them had never done, another lesson.

“If they stick to trying something, they will find something they really like. I also want them to broaden their horizons. … At the end of the day you can get some scholarship money and go to college,” Mundundu said. “You can gain a lot of self-confidence from [rowing], become self-reliant, meet your fears head on.”

The students can also find inspiration in Central Catholic’s rowing success. Hammond pointed out that his team did very well this year in a local competition, and the largest group in school history qualified for the U.S. Rowing Youth National Championships in June in Sarasota, Florida. He said the team’s first boat made it into the top 12, second boat into the top 16, and freshmen boats into the top 21 and 25.

Getting outside of Spartan Community Center where the summer camp is based, formerly St. Stephen’s Hall, that only has air-conditioning in its cafeteria space just helps the 70 to 80 children, ranging from those heading to kindergarten up to eighth grade. It runs from 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Keeping them moving and not sitting behind desks and at tables for long stretches of time is important, leaders emphasized.

So the students go to the Kaboom or Lytle Land Park playground, Burgwin Park, and the Lewis Playground on Second Avenue regularly. Burgoyne has a big field behind it, and Lewis has a basketball court, too. Every Friday all the students take a field trip, if they meet attendance requirements, which include Allegheny County pool visits.

Partnerships like those with Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy and Carnegie Mellon University keep the students engaged and exposed to new experiences, too. Planning begins in January, Chaykowsky said, and the summer program always includes a mix of ongoing and new partners.

New this summer is the Aspiring Leaders Teen Academy, a workforce pilot program that employs 14- and 15-year-olds to work as junior camp counselors with the younger children. They get paid, much like their counterparts in the Center of Life’s KRUNK Movement. Chaykowsky said if the pilot is successful, it will continue in the fall and help the students not only earn money but also start to figure out what they want to do after high school – attend college or a trade school or head to work. “We want to make sure they’re prepared [for what is ahead],” she said.

That Tuesday, the conservancy conducted an arts project with the younger children with objects they found in nature. Kids of Steel, a running training program of P3R to keep children moving, was also on site. At some point the students will be taken to the Frick Environmental Center for a session there.

Every Thursday the entire group heads to CMU for a robotics activity with its Robotics Institute staff and to make use of a gymnasium and the stadium track and green space.

First, Crawshaw and Chaykowsky said, the weekly trips expose them to a college way ahead of other children who might first step onto a college campus when they are 17 and deciding where to apply. The children like to say, “ ‘We’re going to college today,’ ” Crawshaw said. They also find out “this great college is 10 minutes from where they live. It validates what they have been told about schools.”

Second, the older students who like to run enjoy the CMU track, and the younger students have a blast running around the stadium’s adjacent green space.

Back at the Hazelwood facility the staff carefully lays out a trail for students who want to run a mile around it, but they have to be mindful of street traffic. Running on the CMU track “is a whole different experience for them. They see how easy it is to run a mile,” Crawshaw said.

Watching the younger and older children enjoy the CMU buildings and amenities is “such a joy to see,” she continued. 

CMU has become more and more involved in Hazelwood, and the university will soon have its Robotics Innovation Center in Hazelwood Green, a complement to its Mill 19 advanced manufacturing facility, operational. Its topping off ceremony – a major construction milestone – happened on Friday.

Chaykowsky said this ceremony reminds them of Center of Life’s plans to locate a new facility at the edge of Hazelwood Green. Right now that effort is in the preliminary stages, with hopes of breaking ground in the first quarter of 2025.

Additional partners in the Center of Life summer camp include Alcosan, Common Threads, Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh – Hazelwood Branch, Tickets for Kids, Commonwealth Charter Academy, Junior Bop with Center of Life Jazz staff, Junior KRUNK, and Propel Hazelwood.