Junior student at Academies earns certification in 3 sailing programs

Matt Smart, of Plymouth, shows his three U.S. Sailing certifications he earned at Culver Summer Camps this year. He is the first student to do so. Tribune Photo/AMANDA PETRUCELLI

AMANDA PETRUCELLI
Tribune Correspondent

PLYMOUTH -- Matt Smart is a parent's dream come true. He has the good grades, is an acolyte at church and a top sailor at Culver Academies.

Kathy and Jim Smart don't really take much of the credit for him.

"Matt's a conformist," Kathy said. "He pretty much does what he's supposed to do."

He's also made history. About to enter his junior year at the Academies, this Plymouth native is the first Culver student to earn certification in three U.S. Sailing programs -- small boat sailing, keelboat sailing and coastal navigation -- in six weeks' time.

Keelboat sailing certification was offered at Culver for the first time this year, with the addition of five new boats.

Technically, Matt could now chart a course for a 27-foot boat from Lake Michigan to the Florida Keys -- so long as he stayed in view of the coastline.

He said he hopes to own his own sailboat someday.

"It's an old conventional way to get around from one place to another," he said. "It's cheaper than motoring around because you're not wasting fuel."You can have massive amounts of room on these boats. ... It is quieter; all you've got is the waves and the wind."

Kathy said Matt became interested in the military and the Academies in second grade.

But she and Jim hadn't even thought about it until Nikki Rumpler, Matt's teacher at Webster Elementary, brought it up.

"The way he was in the classroom and as structured as he was as a student, she just felt that would be a program that would be so fitting for him," Kathy said.

That same year, a counselor from the Academies who attends Plymouth's St. Thomas Episcopal Church, where Matt is an acolyte, broached the topic with the Smarts."Now we have two people come up to me and say that we should consider the Academy for Matt," she said.

"We just kept watching him, and he's always been very responsible. He was kind of an adult as a little boy."

They began with the six-week Woodcrafts summer camp when Matt was about 9 years old, said Jim, manager of a communication warehouse in Bremen.

"I love my kids, and it's very tough to send them away for six weeks," he said. "But the growth that I've seen out of both of my children -- the accountability, the responsibility and leadership and maturing that they gain over those six weeks -- they would not get sitting in the house all summer."

Kathy has worked for the Culver Summer Camps and Schools for five years, earning a price break for her children's tuition.They're seeing results during the school year, too.

Matt has maintained at least a 3.4 grade-point average for his first two years at the Academies.

He also is a regimental adjutant and bugler. This meant, as a day student, Kathy had to drive him to Culver each morning at 5:30 a.m. to perform the reveille and pick him up after the 10:15 p.m. taps.

Now, Matt is boarding down there, the family joked.In addition to good grades and trumpet skills, Cadet Master Sgt. Matt is also on the varsity sailing team at the Academies and was the main mast captain this summer on the R.H. Ledbetter, the three-mast schooner sited on the shores of Lake Maxinkuckee,

Kathy said she thinks some people don't understand the hard work that goes into the summer camps in Culver.

Matt, for example, spent four hours each day for six weeks taking the sailboat certification classes.

Some of the work is in the classroom and some is out on the extensive Academies-owned fleet.

For one drill, the campers went to Lake Michigan and had to turn off their Global Positioning System and find their way back."I guess it's similar to a driver's license. It's sort of like a passport," Matt said of his certifications.

But you never had a five-hour exam at the License Branch.

Five hours, but just seven questions. That shows you how hard these certifications are.

With all the work going into his schooling, Matt hasn't yet taken his parents out on the lake.

"We've never sailed," Kathy said."We're hoping he'll take us out. It's my goal to get out on a sailboat with him before the end of the year."