May 21, 2006 – The JROTC Devil Rays from Ivanna Eudora Kean High School on St. Thomas were fierce competitors during this year's Royak Regatta, beating out six other teams Sunday to take first place in the event's junior division.
More exciting for the team, however, was the championship trophy it was awarded after winning the inter-island challenge – a face off between the Devil Rays and the JROTC Stingrays from the St. Croix Central High School.
The Stingrays won what is now known as the Annual Innovative Boy Scouts Royak Regatta on St. Croix, which was held last Saturday at the Divi Carina Bay Resort.
"It's a great feeling," said Jason Belle of the Devil Rays after winning the match. "Especially for me, because this is my last year in the regatta. I'm a senior, so after this, there's no more."
Belle said the team had been practicing aggressively for the past week, and had been training the members from Kean's other two teams for the event. "It's a tradition for the older members of the team to train the younger members," Belle said. "And this year the JROTC from Kean had three teams – the Devil Rays, the Jet Rays and the Golden Rays."
Belle's teammate Kevin Charles said they had worked out a strategy where one of the strongest rowers would take the first and last legs of the race. Charles said transitioning from one team member to the next was also an important part of the process and something that the teams had practiced.
"The way the race works is that one rower starts off, navigates the course around the buoys, comes back and gets out of the boat so that the next rower could do the same thing," he explained. "The key is to do that as fast as you can – especially when you're giving the boat to the next person. You don't want to waste time."
Looking at Kean's performance during the relay, however, it was apparent that the team knew exactly what it was doing, with rowers expertly slicing through the somewhat choppy waves of Magens Bay, carefully maneuvering around turns and completing transitions smoothly and with great speed.
The team kept up its energy in between the relay's preliminary trials – which would determine the relay's top four teams – by organizing team huddles and frequent cheers that echoed down the shoreline. "We're really having fun," said Devil Ray rower Kian Jno Baptiste after the team won the championship round, narrowly beating Boy Scout Troop 20 with a time of 5:30:11. "We're in it to win it," Jno Baptiste said.
Troop 20–whose time was 5:30:65 – took second place in the junior division.
"It was a really exciting race – really came down to the wire," said Matt Holmes, executive director of the V.I. Council of Boy Scouts. "It's really been wonderful – and this is my first time doing this, so I'm glad I'm having so much fun."
Steve Grabenauer, whose father Roy built the first Royak boat in 1970, said, "It's amazing what these scouts are doing. This is the only Royak Regatta that I know of, and we wanted to come down today and give them our support."
Grabenauer, who now owns Royak Marine, said he wishes more Boy Scout chapters would promote the concept of such a regatta. "It just looks like so much fun."
The regatta is a fundraiser for the Boy Scouts, which Holmes said grosses about $20,000 annually. "That's about what we raised this year between the two events, and it will all go toward paying for some of our programs," he said.
The third place trophy in the junior division when to Kean's Jet Rays.
Troop 20's co-ed team Crew 20 took first place in the youth division.
Races were also held Sunday for the adult division, where teams from Choice Communications, Hovensa and Innovative Communication Corp. won first, second and third places respectively.
The Choice team also took the inter-island title, after beating the Hovensa team from St. Croix.
The Prosser ICC Foundation and Innovative sponsored the event.
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