I am fairly new here at Valley Mill,(two yrs on staff) but I run the adult kayak school; Valley Mill Kayak School, and also manage the retail side; Valley Mill Boats. Valley Mill also has a day camp for kids ages 5-and up. The camp is owned by Evelyn McEwan (Tom McEwan's sister) and is also run by Bruce Uthus (Evelyn's son, and Tom's nephew).
Valley Mill started as a camp for kids in 1956. Since then Valley Mill has introduced thousands of kids to the sport of kayaking just through the camp alone. The kayak school grew out of the camp,about 40 years ago and was run by Tom McEwan for many
years, until he decided to go out on his own, ultimately starting his own school; Liquid Adventures.
Of course, Tom is an icon in this sport, and many of the kids/paddlers he coached while here, went on to accomplish great things in our sport, including MANY national championships, and even Olympic medals! Joe Jacobi, Jamie McEwan,Geoff Calhoun( sorry I left out a lot of people -the list is VERY long) and many others came through Valley Mill.Tom was a huge integral part of Valley Mill's success in slalom, to say the least, back then, and to this day.
The camp kayaking program is now run by Bruce Uthus. Recently his kids took 1st place in the national championships this year, so the excellance continues.....
On the adult kayak school side of things (which I run)we are glad to serve the community in a variety of ways.
The vast majority of our students, by far, are adult beginners...Yes, beginners, not intermediates!!!! I think this goes for any kayak school. Once they learn to fly, the birds rarely come back to the nest.2008 was the biggest year VMKS has had, as far as beginners being introduced to the sport. That came from a concerted marketing effort, and some luck I guess.
We are a Jackson Super-School (trolls- come and get it). What that means is that we teach Eric Jacksons learning progression; from teaching beginners the roll, all the way up through advanced playboating. We also only use Jackson Kayaks in
our school fleet.
Our beginner program has a three course progression, with each class being 3hrs in length.
We also offer our Social Club session at least once a week that is open to the community (free for those with their own kayak/gear). The social club is free for our package students, and costs $20 for non-package students who are renting our
gear for the session. This concept has been around for a long while! It was started as a way to get the community together to paddle, and socialize afterwards. Janna Krause came up with the idea, locally, back when EJ was teaching for Adventure
Schools (remember them?). After the on-water session, we go to Hunter's Inn for a bite to eat, and a beer.
We do offer intermediate/advanced courses as well.
We started a freestyle/playboating session we call the Chute Out Training clinic, or COT for short. It's a weekly 2hr training session coached by our playboating instructors. This idea was originated by our instructor Jim Hubshman, and was very
popular this year, with 10-12 students on average at every week's session. The cast is only $20, and the COT is open to anyone with a playboat, and a desire to learn/have fun on the river.
VMKS also offers guided trips on the usual list of rivers; Gauley, Yough, N.Branch, Ottawa, etc.
We offer many "intermediate" level classes:
- Advanced Rolling (Know Your Roll)4hrs
- Strokes and Concepts-2hrs
- River Running Concepts-4hrs
- Play the River(river running/playboating) -4hrs
- and we offer a Risk Management/River Safety lesson-6hrs
VMKS has always offered these intermediate lessons, but for some reason we are labeled a "playboating" school.It could be we received this label because we started the Maryland Chute Out some years ago. VMKS instructor David Macintosh came up with the idea, in the late 80's (James- help me out here) of starting a monthly grassroots rodeo (yes, I said rodeo) series of friendly competition for all skill levels,open to everyone, with raffled prizes at the end of the comp for all the folks who signed up. It goes on to this day, and it's still free, and still fun. James Sneeringer does an awesome job of running the Chute Out for us, and we can't thank him enough for all his effort. (on that note, James-2009 results?)
I hope this long-winded post answers some questions about Valley Mill's history, and programs we offer. I hope I have not offended anyone in the process, if I did, I apologize sincerely.
IF anyone has any questions, feel free to post a reply, or email me directly: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Happy Paddling and Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
Jim Buley
Manager, Valley Mill Boats
Director, Valley Mill Kayak School
www.valleymillboats.com
www.valleymillkayak.com
(301)840-7388
