May 17, 2009 — For the second straight year, the Pathfinders from St. Thomas Seventh Day Adventist School made a clean sweep of the annual Innovative Boy Scouts Royak Regatta, taking wins Sunday in both the senior and junior youth divisions.
Last year the group also claimed the territorial championship title, which won't be in contention until St. Croix's race wraps up at the end of the month.
Boy Scout Troop/Crew 156 out of All Saints Cathedral School took second in the junior youth division, while the second Boy Scout Troop 20 team out of J. Antonio Jarvis School came in third. In the senior youth division, the first Troop 20 team came in second, while Ivanna Eudora Kean High School's JROTC battalion finished third.
Competition in the water was intense from the start, with both kids and parents yelling for their teams at the top of their lungs. Participants were even cutting off other royaks in the water, hitting them from the back and causing them to either flip over or spin off in the wrong direction.
"Well, one of the other girls was in the way and there are no roads in the water, so I had to cut my own path," said Kia-T'Nique Thomas from Crew 156. "You got to do what you got to do."
Hampered by the recent bad weather, the team members came out to Magens Bay Beach Sunday with only one day of practice under their belts.
"Even so, we're still doing good," Alexander Querrard said. "We could be doing better with our transitions, but everything's still good."
But Troop 20's team said early on that they were "in it to win it."
"We were out here on Saturday and we were practicing all day until our backs ached and our arms ached," said Shanay Fleming, part of the Troop 20 crew, or co-ed contingent. "Then we went home, ate, slept and came out here to do as best as we could."
Competition between the students is part of what makes the race so exciting, said Nathan Clark, senior district executive of the V.I. Boy Scouts Council.
"The waves are a little rough today, and that's made them work a little harder, but at the Royak Regatta, we're not afraid at to face any challenges," he said. "And the kids are always ecstatic. For the last two weeks, they've been strategizing, they've been planning like they're running a triathlon event. They've even been making secret codes during practice, so, they're definitely out here to win. But it's all in good fun."
No adult teams signed up to participate this year, so individual races were held between the adults on the beach.
"The adults here are wimpy," Clark joked. "Because they're letting kids show them up, so the adults definitely have to come out next year."
The council hopes to bring in about $10,000 from the event, which would go toward Boy Scout camping opportunities, training for adult leader volunteers and helping the scouts graduate scuba, sailing and ecology programs, Clark said.
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