Senior Miles Cross-Whitter headed to Nova Scotia

Laura Rude, Staff Reporter
Originally published June 14, 2016

Next year, in the waters along the eastern Canadian maritime provinces of Nova Scotia, there will be senior Miles Cross-Whitter. Cross-Whitter is headed to Nova Scotia to participate in kayaking and college, a large water sports destination. And he hopes to immerse himself in this community with people following his same passions.

“I moved to Seattle in 2007 and my first neighbors had a son who was kayaking at the Seattle Canoe and Kayak Club. My parents wanted me to get out and do something so I just went kayaking with him,” Cross-Whitter said. That following summer Cross-Whitter began paddling, then participated in his first regatta that fall. He began to enjoy it and got competitive as his career in kayaking took off.

“I enjoy the competitive aspect of it, and when I get into something, I really like to see it through. I get to travel around and meet cool people in other countries” Cross-Whitter said. “I like the individual idea of it and being able to focus on my own thing. But kayaking can also be a team thing because there are two people boats and four people boats which I like occasionally, but mostly I like working on my own”.

Although his future is promising, it was not always a smooth ride to get where he is today, “I’ve had a lot of hard experiences. I went to a regatta in 2013 in the Czech Republic, came dead last in a lot of my races–it was really a shock to me. I started to think about quitting the sport entirely, but then I decided to try and come back from that and reconcile,” Cross-Whiter said.

Cross-Whitter has been accepted to Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. He was extremely intrigued by the large paddling community there, with nine clubs in the area. Hundreds of good paddlers, potential Olympians and even a bronze medalist came and continue to come from these clubs.

Cross-Whitter hopes to join a club called Maskwa Canoe Club, near Dalhousie, which is full of these talented individuals. He hopes to be trained by people with the possibility of going to the Olympics, and learn how to get to that level.

At Dalhousie, Cross-Whitter hopes to major in math or statistics. “ Dalhousie has a very good math and science program,” Cross-Whitter said. He had looked at the University of Toronto, UBC, and UW. But the atmosphere of Dalhousie was very appealing and just logicly a better place for the things he would be doing.

“I’ve met some cool people here at Ballard and people are very supportive of my sport and always interested. I never really had time to enter into any school sports here because I have been so dedicated to paddling, but I certainly would have. I like the community of sports and the mentality that it promotes and think that this school has it,” Cross-Whitter said. “I think moving so far away will be hard the first year, but it is just something you have to get used to.”

His ambition is very strong and gives him a promising and bright future.  “From probably my first year paddling, I would see the Olympics coming out to do their races, and from then on it has always been a big dream of mine to make it one day,” Cross-Whitter said.