1966 National Champions

IN a small inlet of the Atlantic Ocean near New Rochelle, N.Y., the elite of American canoe racing gathered recently to decided its national championships and to pick a team to represent the U.S. in the late summer world championships in East Berlin.

While the U.S. team is selected from among the senior competitors, the sponsoring American Canoe Association also holds national junior and juvenile races.  It hopes that from the younger set will come fresh, new talent to bolster a sport that, in this country, has suffered from disorganization, minimal popularity, and 30 years of European superiority in the Olympics.

In this setting in late July, a group of nine Culver athletes emerged as national junior champions in the sport of canoe racing, which, if viewed with less than wild enthusiasm at the national level, has suddenly become and exciting addition to the Academy's varsity athletic program.  The reason of the excitement is centered in one man: 47-year-old Kalman Blaho, first national canoe and kayak coach in the US History and a member of the Culver staff since January 1966.

Rated at best a second or third finisher at the New Rochelle, the Academy's nine-man war canoe - staffed by juniors and sophomores from the Winter School under Blaho's coaching - snaked past the favorite Yonkers, N.Y. squad to win the junior national title by a minuscule one and one-tenth seconds over a 500 meter course.  Then four boys from the same crew jumped into two-man cruising canoes and won unexpected second and third places in 5,000 meters.

The victory over Yonkers was a surprise for several reasons.  Yonkers had so convincingly beaten other teams in the war canoe in a divisional championship earlier on the Potomac that no one else was willing to take them on in the nationals.  And Yonkers took advantage - which Blaho did not - of a general ACA rule permitting it coach, 1948 Olympic Gold Medal winner Steve Macknowsky, an old hand at training youngsters how to paddle their canoes, to sit in the stern and serve as coxswain.

Culver Alumnus - Summer 1966