Nicole Week 8

         Hey everyone its Nicole here again, it has been a great first week here in session three all of the new arriving keeners are great paddlers and great friends already! It is hard to believe that two sessions have already passed by, it feels like just yesterday i was getting out of my car in the keenerville driveway and bringing my bags into Yakistan! Tonight was speech night and Anna our keener mom gave me the speech topic of what it was like being a keener all summer compared to just for one session, and this really got me thinking.
Many people ask me why i chose to spend my whole summer up here at the keener program and the truth is i could not think of a better way to spend my summer. As i was thinking up my speech i came with a two comparisons one was with the coaching staff, having the world class kayakers for our coaches such as Steven Wright, Tyler Curtis, Joel Kowalski and many more is like if you ever had the chance to have a one on one practice with Sidney Crosby a once in a life time opportunity! Our coaches care about us and want to see us improve, they cheer at our failures because we have learned and are even louder at our successes!

Group Seven Week Photo. Hard to believe how fast
the summer goes! 

         The second comparison that i came up with was for the friendships and relationships we grow here, Keeners is a family away from home, i have seen countless graduates of the keener program out on the river as excited to see the keeners they came to know in these short three weeks as i would be to see my own family. Here we truly feels like a home away from home. We as keeners are the luckiest people in the world, we have the immense privilege of wearing our black keener sweater or t shirt and saying that we were a part of the keener program. I am sure that all of us take pride in the fact that we are in this world class program and in conclusion i would like to thank my parents for allowing me to come to this program and I would also like to thank Anna and all of the other keeners for making keenerville seem like home.