Drew Roeder was bored.
It was the summer before his freshman year of high school, and some friends told him about a sailing camp at Traverse City Area Community Sailing, or TACS.
So he asked his parents to sign him up. A couple of days later, he was hooked.
“I was obsessed with it, and I haven’t stopped sailing since that day,” Drew told me.
Four years later, the 2026 Traverse City Central High School graduate is now out east at the University of Rhode Island, where he’ll continue sailing competitively, but not before one last summer on home water, racing against some of the best sailors in the country.
Drew and four other young sailors from Traverse City found themselves in the middle of some pretty serious competition right here on West Grand Traverse Bay.
Their team, Blue Red and Grey, was among the 46 boats competing in the Melges 24 U.S. Nationals last month.
For someone who knows very little about sailboat racing (like me, for instance), watching the boats from shore was impressive enough. Forty-six boats zipping around West Bay was quite the sight.
Being on one of them in the mix is obviously something else entirely.
“It’s pretty crazy,” Drew said. “You’re in such a big body of water, and you’re never away from any boats.”
Drew was the skipper, or the person steering, of a boat owned by local sailor Bill Babel.
His four crew mates, Lucas Rodenroth, Camille Coffin, Grace VanStratt, and Isley Moshier all learned to sail at TACS, the nonprofit on Boardman Lake that has introduced generations of local kids to the sport.
And while it’s not unusual to have that many TACS alumni competing at a national event, Ben Ferris, TACS’ longtime camp director, said it’s very unusual to have them all on the same boat.
Bill made his boat available to the young sailors, and along with the Grand Traverse Yacht Club Foundation, helped with registration, fees and logistics that made the opportunity possible.
Once they were on the water, everyone had a job.
Drew steered. The rest of the crew watched the wind, tracked the competition, trimmed the sails and helped decide where the boat should go.
“The whole goal is to avoid chaos by letting someone own the boat, each part of the race,” Drew said. “They make it so I don’t have to think at all.”
That’s probably a good thing when you’re racing 24-foot sailboats at close quarters against 45 other boats.
Drew didn’t start sailing as a little kid. He was a young teenager when he first showed up at TACS, older than most beginners.
He started in Lasers (a smaller boat), joined the high school sailing team as a freshman and kept going.
He traveled around the country to race. He became a TACS instructor himself, and along the way, sailing became about more than learning how to handle a boat.
Drew fell in love with learning new skills, getting better, the excitement of traveling to new places and, perhaps most importantly, the experience of competing alongside a team of people he enjoyed being around.
That’s what eventually made the decision to continue sailing in college an easy one.
Now he’s in Kingston, Rhode Island, where he’s competing this fall on the Rams’ sailing team.
Ben has watched a lot of young sailors make that progression during his 20 summers at TACS.
He said many of the program’s graduates go on to sail on collegiate teams, often with help from the high school sailing program that bridges the gap between TACS and college competition.
But Ben said the value of sailing goes well beyond producing good racers.
“You’re figuring things out, you’re always thinking, you’re always problem solving,” he said.
Sailing builds confidence and independence because eventually you’re responsible for what happens when you’re out on the water.
That certainly seems to describe Drew.
Ben remembers him as an inquisitive young sailor who was constantly asking questions, embracing challenges and looking for more opportunities.
“He created this future for himself,” Ben told me. “We were just one of the tools.”
I like that.
Because TACS has always seemed to me like one of those Traverse City rites of passage — it’s just what our kids do. They learn to sail on Boardman Lake.
Most of them probably don’t think much about where that first lesson might lead.
For Drew, it led from a summer when he was bored to high school racing, various regattas across the country, a national championship on home water and now college sailing in Rhode Island.
And the journey is still moving.
As Drew gears up for his fall season out east, our local high school sailing teams are getting back on the water, too.
TACS continues to introduce a new generation of kids to sailing, giving them a place to start and, if they choose, a path to keep going.
That’s what I like about this story.
A kid can show up on Boardman Lake because his friends are doing it. He can learn how to sail, join a team, get a little better each year and eventually find himself on a boat with 45 others, racing for a national championship on West Bay.
Boardman Lake was where Drew started. The national stage was just one of the places that sailing took him.
Cheers to more adventures and good luck in Rhode Island, Drew.
And thanks for all you do for our kids, TACS.