South Side rowing club keeps its oars in the water, despite financial uncertainty

On a scorching weekday afternoon in Chicago, a group of teenagers from the South Side and their coach meet at Chicago's oldest boating club, in Lincoln Park, to practice single boat sculling. The students of the Chicago Training Center are getting ready for an upcoming competition on the same lagoon, and a chance for months of training to pay off. The center's free rowing instruction, tutoring and fitness testing have opened sculling, a staple of elite East Coast prep schools, to a diverse group of disadvantaged students from Bronzeville, Little Village and other South Side neighborhoods. Able Duran is a Little Village high school freshman and the first student to join the program in 2007. He attends every practice. A soccer coach first introduced the idea to him. "Since it was new to me, I wanted to try it," Duran says.

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