PADDLING PRINCESS

By Evan Mugford
Staff writer

October 08, 2008 03:36 am

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1Past students at The Governor's Academy and many current pupils at Bowdoin College in New Brunswick, Maine, may have as good a guess as anyone.

Gliding, surfing and searing her way through the salt waters of the United States is 19-year-old Alex McLain, a sophomore at Bowdoin who is not only the current three-time surf skiing Maine state champion, but also, technically, the fastest woman surf skier in the country.

The daughter of Roberta and Rod, McLain wasn't always smitten with surf skis — a 21-foot-long and 15-inch-wide ocean kayak. And despite both her parents' success in the sport (Rod was an Olympic kayaker who competed in the 1984 and 1988 Olympic games, and Roberta was set to enter the 1988 Olympic trials when she discovered she was pregnant), McLain didn't begin to test the waters until she was 15.

"Up until I was 14, me and my brother were just into competing with our own sports," said McLain, whose parents both work at The Governor's Academy; Roberta as the athletic director, Rod as a history teacher. "But when I turned 15, the first year I actually began to compete, my dad entered me into a small six-mile race, and I ended up getting third in the women's group.

"After that, I was hooked. It was such a nice feeling to know that I have something there that I could be really good at," said McLain, who splits her time living at Bowdoin, with her parents at Governor's, and a summer house in Maine. "So I kept training and working hard since."

A college student who is also a member of the lacrosse team and is crammed with biology labs may not always find time to get in the water and train. However, McLain manages to find the time.

"Between fall ball and speed and agility training, getting time to paddle is a little hard," McLain said. "After my labs, I try to paddle for a couple of hours before I go to lacrosse to scrimmage for another hour. It certainly helps that Bowdoin is a mile away from the Androscoggin River."

Being a New Englander doesn't exactly have the comforts Floridian or southern Californians may harbor, so McLain makes sure to stay in shape and never avoids the water for extended stretches.

"Because we're in New England, it can be pretty difficult to find some quality water-time in the winter," explained McLain, who made it clear that rowing and surf skiing are similar but altogether different due to surf skiing's focus on upper-body strength in comparison to rowing's full-body concentration. "So I spend that time lifting and maintaining strength. Around the time spring shows up, I'm able to get back out on the water much more frequently."

Regardless of the season, McLain always puts her time into training. In the summer, McLain and her father run two-a-day sessions, where McLain will wake up and go for a 20-minute run, eat breakfast, train on the water, rest, and then train again before dinner.

But the hard work is paying off.

McLain, the aforementioned reigning Maine State champion, was so dominant this year, that she was the very first competitor, male or female, to cross the finish line in a single boat. Also this summer, McLain won the New England Point Series Championship, the East Coast Championship in Connecticut, and placed second (39th overall) in the women's division at the U.S. Nationals (a 17-mile race) in San Francisco, Calif. McLain was edged by a South African surf skier who had just returned from Beijing, which in turn, made her the fastest American female competitor.

McLain was the youngest competitor and the only female from the East Coast. She was also the only female competitor that had not yet gone to the Olympics.

The memories are many for McLain, and placing them is almost impossible.

"Winning the Maine championship was a huge moment for me because it was my second year racing, and after winning states, it proved to myself that I'm actually capable of going far with this," said McLain, who is also an adept Olympic flat-water kayaker who hopes to make the U.S. team. "Getting second at Nationals was also very memorable, but having friends and teachers at school congratulating and encouraging me is also something that I'll always remember."

Her mother and father have been there for every paddle, and a certain determination has helped guide McLain through the shark-infested murk off San Francisco and through the numbing chop off of the Atlantic Ocean.

"We're very excited for her, but her passion is just incredible," Roberta said. "She's a workhorse. She absolutely impresses us with her work ethic. She's had to make sacrifices along the way, and she's done a great job of staying so committed."

With the world flat-water sprint championship trials looming next year, McLain will need to better her time by two minutes if she hopes to attend but she's eager, and remains anxious to see how far she can ride the wave.

"I just love to paddle," McLain said. "It's a way for me to represent myself."

What's surf skiing?

A surf ski is a long, narrow, lightweight kayak with an open (sit-on-top) cockpit, usually with a foot pedal controlled rudder. Typically 16- to 21-feet-long and only 16 to 20 inches wide, surf skis are extremely fast when paddled on flat water and the fastest paddled craft available over a long distance on ocean swells.