Sweets of the East, West Virginia’s all-female rafting team, to represent Team USA in Chile this October

NICHOLAS COUNTY, W.Va. (WVNS) — Sweets of the East , the only East Coast whitewater rafting team, is setting their sights on another title after winning 2nd in the US National Rafting Championship in West Virginia earlier this year.

WVNS Meteorologist Bradley Wells caught up with the all-female team in Nicholas County Friday getting in on some practice runs down the Gauley River.

Class 5 rapids, which are “extreme and nearly impossible to navigate rapids,” are at the top of the rapids classification. This is also what awaits Sweets of the East, an all-women’s rafting team from Fayetteville, in Chile for the Pan-American Championship Whitewater Raft Racing Competition.

Margaret Cadmus, a member of the Sweets of the East rafting team, said, “I’m looking forward to learning from a lot of the other amazing teams from the other countries that will be there. There are some of the best teams in the Americas, and I think we can learn a lot from them.”

Chile isn’t the only place in the world with class 5 whitewater rapids. Our own Gauley River in Nicholas County hosts some of the most challenging rapids in the world. The Gauley River is fed by water from Summersville Lake, and for seven weeks a year, millions of gallons of lake water are released, creating some challenging runs. Sweets of the East took advantage of Friday for a little practice.

“It’s a difficult thing to try and rank on is skillset level because even race paddling is still you need a lot of the same skill sets that we use daily and as a hobby community and as a sport community,” team member Jenna Weatherford said. “But we’re all also either past guides or current river guides, and that’s where you get a lot of your skill breakdowns and boater skills. There’s a lot of different things that go into different aspects of what we do.”

The humble team with a real down-to-earth attitude is excited to represent not only their home state of West Virginia, but the U.S. on the world rafting stage. They hope their journey inspires other rafting teams to join the sport.

“I feel like growing up in the rafting community and in the Whitewater, industry is, you know, it’s difficult to be a woman, especially as an all-women’s team,” team member Maya Mills said. “You know, it’s just us. It’s just the four of us. We have to put our skills and our knowledge to use. We’ll never be able to muscle through the rapids so we have to find ways to finesse. And when you put four women who have that ability together, especially on a team of this level, I feel like that’s a very beautiful thing.”

The trip to Chile is expensive and the race will test every ounce of the skills they learned as river guides in West Virginia. The team is currently working on practicing for the competition and fundraising efforts to cover the costs of travel and equipment shipping.

They say they’ll have their journey on their Facebook page with dates and locations of fundraisers. They hope to share their competition from Chile via their social media platforms too and encourage everyone to follow along and cheer on Team USA. The team hopes to share the streaming links for the competition once they are made available by the World Rafting Federation .

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