News
Dad Vail A No-Go For Navesink
Collegiate rowing regatta to stay in Philadelphia
By Ryan Fennell
RUMSON - The Dad Vail Regatta, one of collegiate crew's most prestigious events, which was slated to be held in Rumson on the Navesink River in May 2010 has reversed course and will return to Philadelphia where the regatta has traditionally been held.
The move came as a surprise to Rumson officials and residents.
"The reason they gave was that the fundraising we were undertaking was not going to be guaranteed," Rumson Mayor John Ekdahl said. According to Ekdahl the Dad Vail Committee told Rumson that it should attempt to raise approximately $250,000.
"They gave us our first deadline in late November of $100,000, which we met," said Ekdahl. "The other deadlines were in January and February and obviously hadn't even come up yet."
The first deadline was met through a donation of $100,000 from Rumson resident and Two River Times™ owner, Michael Gooch.
Gooch was disappointed by the news that the regatta would be staying in Philadelphia. "Naturally I am disappointed," said Gooch. "What I think happened is that the Dad Vail Committee did intend to bring the regatta to Rumson, but the Rumson town council went soft on the sponsorship commitment and made requests of the Dad Vail that on balance made renegotiation with Philadelphia an attractive alternative. This is just my opinion, nobody has said this to me, however I believe that vocal opponents of the regatta, in particular Edward Moran, President of Rumson EMS pressured the mayor and council and that contributed to the council's caution.
Those opponents achieved their goal of killing the regatta for Rumson and the Two River area. It is a shame but not the end of the world. I'm sure there will be other regattas."
In response to Gooch's charge, Moran cited a letter he wrote to the Two River Times™ criticizing the decision to bring the regatta to Rumson and the resulting response from Gooch's Beside the Point column in the December 18 through 25 edition of the Two River Times™. Moran said that the letter was not on behalf of the Rumson First Aid Squad and the subsequent column was, "an unnecessary shot at a volunteer organization whose goal is to provide emergency medical care to the residents of Rumson."
"The squad would have supported the regatta had it gone on," Moran said.
Anyway, Ekdahl believes that the Dad Vail Committee used the fundraising aspect of the event as a reason to pull out. "Our position was we're doing well here with fundraising. We've got three or four local major sponsors and two national sponsors. We think this is going to be very successful but $250,000 is an arbitrary number and we can't guarantee that," Ekdahl said. "It's called fundraising for a reason. It's not guaranteed. But, that was the official reason they gave."
"I think since they had agreed to come here they had to have some excuse for breaking up the deal so that's what they used," Ekdahl added.
Ekdahl also does not believe that Rumson was being used as leverage against the City of Philadelphia in an attempt to put the Dad Vail Committee in a better position to hold the event in Philadelphia.
"If they were using Rumson they would have put themselves in a better place, in a better position and they didn't."
Although Ekdahl was not in attendance at the news conference in Philadelphia announcing the reversal of course, he said he has knowledge of what transpired there.
According to Ekdahl the conference was brief and did not name any sponsors and never said what the city did in terms of charging the Dad Vail organization less than last year.
"Finally, Dad Vail had to write us a check back to our donor for $100,000 so they are not in a better place."
Ekdahl believes that the representatives of Dad Vail that were working closely with the Rumson mayor and council were sincere in their commitment to hold the race in Rumson.
"I truly believe the principals we were dealing with, namely Jim Hanna and Jack Galloway, are very principled people," Ekdahl said. "I believe they were sincere when they said they had chosen Rumson to host the 2010 regatta. They eventually got overruled by their board but the people we were dealing with were sincere."
The prospect of hosting the 2010 Dad Vail Regatta was met with both praise and criticism from residents and officials in Rumson and the surrounding area.
Ekdahl felt that the overwhelming response from the community was supportive of the event.
"It's been my observation over the years that regardless of what decisions you make for a town, you're always going to have maybe ten percent of the people out there that don't think it's a good idea," said Ekdahl. "I would call them naysayers.
They'll pick on any fine aspect of whatever the decision was, in this case an event, to criticize. It's just their nature. It's unfortunate. It would have been a great event for the entire Two Rivers area. In my opinion, none of the criticisms that were raised were valid."
Ekdahl cited two points that he was unable to convey to some of the critics of the event. The first was that no taxpayer money was going to be used to fund the event, however, Ekdahl said that he continued to hear from people that taxpayer money would be used. "I don't know how many times I made it clear that that was not the case. I couldn't make that point clear enough to some."
The other issue was the load limit placed on the Oceanic Bridge.
"Yes the bridge has a load limit," Ekdahl said. "The load limit is on the lift span. The bridge itself is fine. We could have put 10 or 12 thousand spectators out on the bridge with no problems."
"It was actually one of the things that attracted Dad Vail to the Navesink was the great viewing perspective the bridge gave you," Ekdahl added. According to Ekdahl there were some positives to take away from the experience. "The one positive aspect that came out of this whole event was the tremendous amount of support we received from surrounding towns and various entities from very large like Monmouth University to the smaller like the River Rats in Fair Haven. We had a tremendous amount of cooperation.
We had all the local mayors on board and we had a lot of our residents volunteer."
Ekdahl also said that he had already heard from several residents requesting that they be able to lodge some of the competitors in their homes during the regatta.
"We were going to run a more formalized program for that," said Ekdahl. "It was an attempt to make the event a total town experience and also get some of the competitors lodged cheaper and closer to the event. We had quite an outpouring of residents who had already asked about that before we formalized that process."
Although Rumson has lost its bid for the Dad Vail Regatta in 2010, the notion of hosting a rowing event on the Navesink has been brought to the forefront in the minds of many residents as well as borough officials.
"I think it's fair to say the overwhelming positive reaction we got from most residents could cause us to consider a smaller event in the future," Ekdahl said.
Ekdahl said that if a future event was considered it would be on the scale of a high school rowing event.
