The Importance Of The Skills Learned at Keeners: By Joseph Lavigne

 The importance of the skills learned at keeners and why they make you do scary things. 

     At keeners, Stephen as well as the other coach, make you do some pretty scary things. These things may include swimming some huge rapids, swimming into body recirculating holes, and rescuing your friends from being body recirculated. These things may seem intimidating, but they wont kill you, and are key to growing as a paddler and being able to insure that you, and your friends are that much safer on the river. Being able to remain calm and make efforts to escape a sticky feature is very important if you are running creeky rivers or things that have steep holes with flat backwash. Being able to swim in whitewater effectively is also a skill that is extremely important. This skill in particular makes you more safe on the river and by doing that, your friends may not have to do risky things to get you out of a hard place. Being able to throw a rope to someone in a sticky situation or being able to live bait them out is another very important skill. If your friend is getting tumbled in an unpleasant hole and unable to get out on their own, you will need to implement one of these to prevent the situation from getting worse. But at keeners they have you practice these things in safe environments where you are unlikely to actually be stuck for too long. That is the magic of the Ottawa river.