Team River Runner Keeps Veterans Paddling Through Pandemic

Paddling puts you in a good headspace, as any avid boater can attest. For military veterans in particular, learning to paddle whitewater can be life-altering.

“I’ve had combat veterans say that it’s the first thing they did since combat that replicated combat,” said Joe Mornini, the executive director of Team River Runner, a national organization that teaches paddling skills and provides paddling experiences for military veterans. “It’s dangerous, you can train to get better at it, it’s continuous, and it’s relentless. And you can do it with a buddy.”

Brian Harri kayaker with Team River Runner Grand Canyon Outtasight Program photo by Seth Dahl — *Brian Harris kayaked the Grand Canyon with Team River Runner in 2018 as part of the Outtasight Program for blind veterans* *(photo by Seth Dahl, courtesy of Team River Runner)*

Mornini and co-founder Mike McCormick started TRR in 2004 with Tuesday night pool sessions for veterans at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. Since then, the program has added chapters across the U.S. whose leaders—along with organizing river trips and flatwater instruction—work with local entities to secure pools for instruction.

“Until the Covid pandemic hit, we never missed a pool session for 17 years,” said Mornini.

Team River Runner pool session — *Team River Runner conducted pool instruction every Tuesday night for 17 years before the pandemic hit* *(photo courtesy of Team River Runner)*

Mark McWilliams, leader of the Fort Collins, CO, chapter of TRR, said that losing access to the pool at Colorado State University because of Covid restrictions certainly curtailed activity last season, but he’s hoping to rebound this spring.

“We’ve been hammered with the onslaught of Covid-19 because there aren’t many other options,” said McWilliams. “The pool was closed all fall and it likely won’t be open this spring. How do you get someone who has never been in a kayak to put on a wet suit and go into the frigid waters of Horsetooth Reservoir? It’s not fun. But I’m hopeful that with warmer weather, we can use some of the warmer water at Boyd Lake.”

Despite the challenges, TRR got a lot of “butts in boats” in 2020, as the following video highlights.

Team River Runner participants maintained connections through 2020 despite restrictions on pool use for instruction

Although the pandemic has thrown TRR a curveball, the national organization and local chapters are applying an innovative mindset to the challenge of helping veterans get on the water, as they’ve been doing since 2014.

Team River Runner chapter at Diversify Whitewater event — *Team River Runner teamed up with Diversify Whitewater in 2020 to help with an instructional clinic at Boyd Lake in Northern Colorado* *(photo by James Morales, courtesy of Diversify Whitewater)*

Re-inventing paddling since 2004

Mornini and McCormick, avid kayakers who spent many evenings on a play wave in the Washington, D.C. area, were inspired to start Team River Runner after seeing photos in the Washington Post of disabled people coming back from military service, some in wheelchairs.

“I had always thought that someone who’s in a wheelchair should be kayaking because they’re already sitting,” said Mornini.

He had a conversation with an outfitter in Colorado that was exploring adaptive paddling. A connection at Walter Reed helped them get access to the therapy pool, where Mornini and McCormick started working with veterans on Tuesday evenings, teaching them to kayak and inventing ways for participants to overcome various disabilities.

*Team River Runner invented techniques and equipment to help veterans with physical disabilities learn to kayak* *(photo courtesy of Team River Runner)*

“We were inventing things that had never existed,” said Mornini. “Techniques or equipment that we would hand build for people who were missing limbs, or had lost their sight.”

McWilliams, a Navy veteran, said that Mornini was trying to give veterans an experience that would break up the monotony of institutional rehab for veterans that were coming back from military service broken and beat up.

“Joe said, ‘Well, this guy doesn’t have a limb or can’t see—whatever, I can get them into a kayak and teach them how to get out of their comfort zone and experience the river,’ ” said McWilliams.

Adapting the sport of paddling to veterans with disabilities was an iterative process that continues to this day.

Mornini would sometimes just wander through toy stores or hardware stores looking at the wares and imagining what might be useful.

“I would buy things and see if they would work with a particular adaptation that we needed,” said Mornini. “Because we were boaters, we knew what it was like to sit in a boat. What do you need to do in order to sit in a boat and paddle it if you’re missing a limb? We just tried to imagine what would work.”

*Instructors at Team River Runner chapters across the U.S. teach kayak paddling skills to veterans (photo courtesy of Team River Runner)*

That focus on invention is what led TRR to start their Outtasight program for blind paddlers, which culminated in a mind-boggling—and successful—TRR mission wherein several blind kayakers paddled the mighty Colorado through the Grand Canyon in 2018. One of the participants, Lonnie Bedwell, is the first kayaker to paddle the Grand Canyon, the Zambezi, and the Gauley rivers. (Check out his book about his first Grand Canyon run here.)

“We didn’t know whether a veteran who was blind could run whitewater in their own boat, but we were willing to try,” said Mornini.

*Kayakers who participated in Team River Runner’s Outtasight Program trip to the Grand Canyon trained for months beforehand* *(photo by Seth Dahl, courtesy of Team River Runner)*

The TRR crew first contemplated starting a program for blind paddlers while teaching a leadership course in Montana, where Mornini realized that the whitewater consisted of waves and pools—but not many rocks.

“So if someone was blind and swimming, they were less likely to whack a rock,” said Mornini. “If you have enough other skilled people around to help them if they need it, they’ll be just fine. We had a number of visually disabled or blind veterans who were interested in trying to paddle. And we thought, well, let’s try it and see how it works, because that’s how Team River Runner works.”

Mornini said that within a week of starting instruction, some visually impaired paddlers who were athletic and gung-ho could run straight-shot Class II or III whitewater—with big, wide, sweeping eddy turns—in a hardshell kayak. Some could do it in an inflatable kayak.

“And some would need to be in a raft,” said Mornini, “because you just need to see how their skill progresses.”

*Veterans share notes at a Team River Runner kayak session (photo courtesy of Team River Runner)*

The kayaking guides for the blind paddlers are highly skilled paddlers, but the learning went both ways.

“We learned how to guide from the blind paddlers,” said Mornini. “They taught us what was useful and what was not useful. We developed really concrete ways to guide a blind paddler on whitewater. And we learned how many guides it takes to keep someone safe and to be able to give them a bow rescue should they miss their roll.”

And of course, any paddler in a hardshell kayak had to have a solid roll to run the Grand. The visually impaired paddlers and their guides trained for months beforehand, and participated in several long-weekend trips on various whitewater sections around the country.

“This was a big deal,” said Mornini. “ We didn’t want anyone to get hurt. We wanted to show that with effort, someone who is seriously disabled—is totally blind—could run great big whitewater. And sure enough they can.

“It’s a life experience that I’ll never, ever forget—to see what they could accomplish.”

Team River Runner Outtasight Program Participants — *Team River Runner’s Outtasight Program participants (photo courtesy of Team River Runner)*

Re-tooling pandemic-era programs

The biggest challenge for TRR has historically been recruitment and retention, said McWilliams, who has led the Fort Collins chapter since 2016. And that struggle is even more pronounced with the current pandemic restrictions. Because restrictions continue to change, McWilliams says he’s planning a flexible approach to running chapter events in 2021.

“We have a core group that we’ll email and propose meeting up with for a Filter Plant run,” he said, referring to a section of the Cache la Poudre River near Fort Collins. He’s also got his eye on several regional events that his chapter could participate in, but not much confirmed yet.

These initiatives address the needs of current members, McWilliams said, but they don’t help bring in new participants.

“The hardest thing we face is bringing vets in the door,” he said.

Mornini said he agrees “a thousand percent” with McWilliam’s assessment and noted that a phenomenon like the pandemic highlights the importance of the national organization providing as much assistance as possible to the local chapters. Some of the 2020 pivots included offering live-streamed workout sessions for TRR members. TRR also launched Kayakers for Good, a veteran-to-veteran outreach program that further strengthened the connections among these paddlers.

*Kayak football with Team River Runner (photo courtesy of Team River Runner)*

Mornini encourages collaboration with other like-minded organizations as well. Team River Runner partnered with Diversify Whitewater, an organization formed in 2020 by military veteran Antoinette Toscano and Lily Durkee to expand paddling opportunities for Black, indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC).

“Nonprofits can sometimes be in their own silos, but we encourage collaboration with groups like Wounded Warriors, for example,” said Mornini. “We’re not trying to compete with anyone. There is plenty of work to be done. There are plenty of veterans struggling with invisible wounds or physical wounds, or both. So if a veteran from another organization wants to come paddle with us, let’s get those butts in boats.”

The most important outreach, Mornini said, is letting veterans know that there are veterans in the TRR program.

“Veterans tend to want to be around other veterans,” he said. “They have a unique way of communicating with each other and understanding each other. We want to get them to be the leaders and the outreach for us.”

*Crushing waves with Team River Runner (photo by Seth Dahl, courtesy of Team River Runner)*

Paddling is“lightning in a bottle”

In his 17 years of introducing veterans to paddling, Mornini has discovered that paddling gives veterans a unique combination of independence and camaraderie.

“There’s something therapeutic about being around other people but still having your own space. You’re in a social context, but you can still have your space if you need it,” said Mornini. “So yes, it’s very therapeutic. More than once I’ve had the recreational therapists at the VA say that it’s like lightning in a bottle.”

Want to support Team River Runner? Donate to Team River Runner here, or reach out to a local TRR chapter to find out how you can contribute.