Onaway Pro Race back for its eighth year
by Peter Jakey, Managing Editor
For the eighth year in a row premier canoe racers from Michigan and surrounding states will converge on Tower and Kleber Ponds for a couple of weekend races. The ?Onaway Pro Race,? as it is called, will be Saturday and Sunday. It had been previously conducted during the Mother?s Day weekend, but organizers moved it one week later this year.
Saturday?s one-man canoe race begins at 5:30 p.m. at Kleber Dam, with a course consisting of a loop around the pond. The winning time has been typically about 45 minutes.
The two-man race is Sunday at 10:30 a.m., starting at the Tower Pond boat launch behind the newly renovated Tower Park. The course hasn?t changed from previous years. Racers will navigate two ponds, a section of the Black River, and portage four times. Portage means to lift the canoe out of the water and carry it to another area. It is a grueling part of the Onaway Pro Race, with the longest portage being a 200-yard jaunt.
?THE RIVER is lower than it?s been in all the other races ? there has been very little rain this spring,? said organizer/racer Steve Watson. ?It will force the paddlers to be careful with their paddles as they go upstream on the river section, plus it?s weedier in Kleber Pond.?
Even in the current recession, the numbers are expected to be close to the same as in previous years: 20 to 30 for Saturday; 30 to 35 for Sunday. ?The economy has negatively impacted the race each of the last three or four years,? said Watson. ?We’ve had long-standing sponsors cut their monetary support each year and a number of sponsors have cut sponsorship completely. When times are tough, choices have to be made.? Watson added local business people still strongly support the race.
?ONE OF the things that help out our race immensely is the fact that over the last three years (this year included),? said Watson, ?the race has been a fundraiser for the junior class at Onaway High School (OHS).
He said when the businesses provide money for the race they’re really accomplishing a number of feats. ?They’re
They raised more than $1,300 last year that helped pay for those events. Timory Wilcox and Lynsey Lyle have been the driving force behind securing the sponsorships this year. ?I’ve already told some of the other juniors that when they have prom next year, they need to thanks these two girls.?
Last year Andy Triebold (from Concord) won the C-1 race and the C-2 race was won by Triebold and Matt Meersman (Indiana).