Dick Pegnetter, dean of Florida Gulf Coast University’s

College of Business, likes a good challenge. That’s why he left his post as

business dean at Colorado State University seven years ago to establish FGCU’s

business school.

That’s also why he’s a competitive canoeist. Since 1974,

Pegnetter, now 60, has been racing canoes, both solo and with partners.

Trophies—“about 40 or 50”—pop out in disorganized fashion all over his Bonita

Springs home. He’s raced the 70-mile General Clinton Canoe Regatta (the longest

single-day, flat-water canoe race in the world) in upstate New York three

times, and every year he competes in the Great Dock Canoe Race in Naples, a

short trek of only two to three miles on the Gordon River.

Canoe racing is a strikingly graceful sport done by paddlers

stroking 60 times a minute in perfect unison. Although kayaking is speedier and

more popular, canoe racers compete wherever there are rivers. Florida hosts a

third of all races in the country, and Pegnetter has introduced the sport to

FGCU, which now has canoes and a canoeing club. Pegnetter can hold his own in a

kayak, but as a country boy from Pennsylvania who floated down lazy rivers on

homemade wooden rafts as a youth, he’s sticking with the comfy and practical

canoe. Besides, he adds, “It’s easier to fish from a canoe.”

By Susan Burns