Keeler Frangooles
Job: Content Production Specialist
Primary Outdoor Sport: Kayaking
Favorite Beverage: Lemonade
Sunrise or Sunset: Sunset
Non-Outdoor Hobby: Watching Movies
Go-to River Snack: Sour Candy
Favorite Season: Summer
Movie Recommendation: 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple
Three Words to Describe You: Creative, Kind, & Passionate
“I got out of high school after Covid and was like, ‘I have no idea what I want to do with my life.’ The tourism program at OSU Cascades looked fun and I just went there and found kayaking through that. It was just one of the courses we took and then I found the paddle club. I just fell in love with it. I’ve been teaching people and doing the club a lot and that really helped me progress.
Before school, I did nothing. Maybe camping at a campsite with my parents. That’s pretty much all I did.
It was just one of the classes you had to take. Intermediate Kayaking. We had to do rock climbing, canoeing, and then kayaking. We did a couple river sections and it was really fun and I loved it.”
“I feel really lucky to have started with a group of people and progressed with the same group of people. I think kayaking people are strange. I feel like I like them because they’re strange. Maybe all sports people are like this, but they just want to talk about kayaking. I’ve paddled with some people so many times and have we had any conversations? No. Not really. But we’ve spent a lot of time together and we’ve put a lot of trust into each other and I think that’s a really cool thing. Maybe it’s a weird thing, but I think it’s cool.”
“It’s a complete obsession.
Everything I think about is kayaking. I open my phone, it’s kayaking. I’m driving around and I see a river, I’m thinking about kayaking. It’s been a total obsession for me for the past four years. It’s everything.
I don’t know how you describe it, but when you find something that just feels right and you find so much joy in it, even on the bad days you get out and feel better after.
It’s a good combination of pushing yourself and also being out in nature. What could be better than that?”
“I really love Class III half slicing. That might be my favorite part of kayaking, but I also really enjoy pushing myself onto harder rivers so I try to balance the two.
Half slicing is more like downriver freestyle. So stern squirts and maybe trying to throw loops in holes. Putting yourself in rivers where you can be comfortable having fun and not being worried about your safety as much. It’s like park skiing, but like easy park skiing where you’re not worried you’re going to smash yourself.”
“I feel like everybody’s had experiences that teach them to slow down their progression. I’ve definitely had that experience.
Me and my best friend were so psyched on kayaking. Probably our second year of kayaking, we got on a river that was way too flooded. It definitely could have been a really bad situation. He swam and his boat went to the side of the river. We were like, ‘We should get out.’ I don’t think we’d gotten to a rapid and we decided to hike out.
That really taught me a lot about how to approach a river. Once you drop in, you’re in it. So it’s really important to be knowledgeable about what river you’re going into.
After that experience, I try to treat every river like it’s a test, like an academic test. I study for it in every way that I can. I just scour the internet for all the information on it, consume as much media as I can, get second opinions from other people like if they they I’m at the skill level for that river. You want to set yourself up for success. So make sure you have a solid team that you trust.
That’s worked for me so far and I haven’t had any bad experiences after that.”
“I say this thing to myself in my head before I drop into every river. I say, ‘This could be really bad if I did nothing so all of it’s on me. And then, anything I do from that point on is good because I’m making an effort to not do nothing. So that’s my mindset dropping in.”
“I have a muscular disorder. It’s called CMT 1A and it basically causes your body to break down the muscles in your hands and your feet. So that’s always been in the back of my mind when I’ve been doing sports and I think it’s made it really challenging for me.
Being able to get to this high level in kayaking, I’m so proud of myself.
Obviously, I’ve put in a lot of work and I really love the sport so much, but also the community has been so good to me. One of the things that it affects is my balance, because I don’t have as much muscles in my feet, so having friends that support me on hard portages, simple stuff like that, means so much and it’s so amazing. It’s part of why I really am so connected to this sport.
Stuff can be hard, but just being able to push through that and get to a high level in this sport, it means so much.”
“The river is such a powerful force. You can’t go against it. So that motivates me to really be intentional about my strokes and where I’m going. To just be in the moment and work with nature.
I think that’s the thing that really draws me to kayaking. It’s not a muscle thing. It’s not a body type thing like different sports. You can be a really good climber with a specific body type or a really good soccer player with a body type. I think I’ve found lots of failure in other sports because of that.
I’m not the strongest person, but kayaking is sort of like a ballet with the water. You can work with it and harness the power of the river to strengthen yourself. I think that’s what really draws me to it.”
“I think having something to focus on and put your energy into is really good for you. And also a sport where you can find success for yourself by putting in effort is really good.
Just being on the river puts you in the moment. If I’m having a bad day or something is going on, when I’m on the river, I’m definitely not thinking about that. I’m thinking about what’s in front of me.
I think that’s good for you. I think everybody should seek that feeling.”
