Although the climate in Ithaca may be too unpredictable for a lot of doors pastime at some point of the wintry weather and early spring, Ithaca College students will nonetheless be able to get their fill of intense water sports way to the Department of Recreation and Leisure Studies. The department is web-hosting the World Tour Paddling Film Festival at 7 p.m. on March 30 in the Park Auditorium. The World Tour Paddling Film Festival will showcase brief films that are normal and most important paddling sports activities. This includes canoeing, kayaking, whitewater rafting, and stand-up paddleboarding.
In these 12 months, the Paddling Film Festival committee decided on 26 films to be covered in the festival, hosted at over one hundred locations throughout the US, Canada, and Europe from February to November. Both professionals and amateurs make and publish films for attention. Jennifer Miller, a teacher in the Department of Recreation and Leisure Studies, has been worried about the international of paddle sports for many years. She owns a paddling company in Ithaca called Paddle-N-More, which aims to increase paddle–game participation in the Finger Lakes area.
Freshman Lexi Ryan is an Ithaca native and has worked with Miller at Paddle-N-More for the past two summers. She believes that the film festival will help further this assignment as well. “The festival has been a part of my subculture for several years now,” Miller said. “It’s simply fun to observe movies of others performing wonderful things in paddle sports. As a paddle-recreation professional, I am all approximately making what I do handy to others who may additionally experience they are not able to.”
She changed into licensed this past summer season to train paddleboarding and stocks Miller’s ardor for spreading awareness of the sport. “Paddling is a very underrepresented field, and it’s miles a large enjoyment activity, particularly around Cayuga Lake,” Ryan stated. “We suppose it’s essential that humans see that paddling is obtainable, and it’s a real commercial enterprise and a real sport. There’s a big enterprise for paddle sports.”
The arrangements for the festival were included in Program Planning, a course that Miller teaches inside the recreation and amusement research branch. She stated the festival offers her students a palms-on experience to sell and coordinate an event related to their future careers. “My last intention is to help build abilities in our destiny exercise and leisure professionals by exposing them to different factors of our profession that they may now not necessarily get from the study room,” Miller said. “The college students worked on developing a promotional strategy that included hanging up flyers, posting on social media, sending out email invitations, and different techniques.”
Junior Jillian Boylan, a member of the Program Planning elegance, said she believes the competition can effectively impact the activity and amusement studies branch as a whole. “Ithaca is quite outdoorsy, so I think there’s lots of interest,” Boylan said. “Very many college students don’t recognize the RLS department, so we hope that by putting on this film festival and speaking a little bit about the branch, more college students will come and perhaps be a part of our department with a prime or minor,” Ryan said she believes the pageant will offer an enriching revel in for students beyond the pastime and entertainment research branch as nicely.
“In the [Roy H. Park School of Communications], because there’s plenty of movie college students and documentary college students, it’s huge,” she stated. “The Park School often doesn’t show sports documentaries or motion stuff like this, so we’ve marketed it particularly to that group of college students. Plus, many humans suppose whitewater kayaking is the best element ever. When we display what films will be on the pageant, humans say, ‘I want to peer that.’
The festival’s ticket sales proceeds will cross closer to offset the costs from the American Canoe Association Adaptive Paddlesports Training. This became a workshop that informed contributors on integrating humans with disabilities into paddling pastime activities. The education was held at the college on March 23 and 24 and attended by Miller and several students inside the pastime and entertainment research branch.
