Fourteen visually impaired teenagers from both Rosmini Secondary School and St. Joseph’s Centre for the Visually Impaired took part in a rowing intro afternoon at Dublin Municipal Rowing Centre this week. The aim of the afternoon was to introduce them to indoor rowing as well as rowing on the water and to show the participants as well as their teachers and carers that rowing is an activity that caters for those with visual impairments.The students ranged from being completely without sight to some with partial sight. A number of the group had a visual impairment combined with a learning difficulty. For the group, with the exception of one student from Rosmini, this was their first experience of rowing. Rosmini student Aron O’Dowd, who won a bronze medal at the World Indoor Rowing Championships, is the perfect illustration of this and he spent the afternoon teaching his peers the skills he has learned.
All those who took part in the day thoroughly enjoyed it, and even the four teachers and carers who came along got out on the water for their first time! With the amount of interest from the day I believe there is great potential for Rosmini and St. Joseph’s to develop a link with the sport, whether that be taking up a regular slot at Municipal Rowing Centre or entering teams in the adaptive events at the 2010 Irish Indoor Rowing Championships.
The try it out day also highlighted the use of ErgChatter, a free download from Concept2 which allows the data on the performance monitor (PM3 or PM4) to be spoken aloud through a laptop or PC. It is very simple to use as all it requires is a printer cable that connects performance monitor to one’s laptop or computer. ErgChatter allows the user to choose what data they want to have read out, and at what intervals. It also allows users to set up specific training sessions.
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