Braden River High graduate sets sail on big dreams at Naval Academy

A story about Tara's Paige Krumwiede explains why our military will have a shining star in the not-too-distance future.

The first female graduate of Braden River High (2014) to attend a service academy, Krumwiede was attending the Naval Academy Summer Seminar, kind of a precollege boot camp, before entering the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis.

This was strict on a level to which most of us are unfamiliar. When lights go out, we're talking a major transgression if you flip on a flashlight. Don't even think about the punishment if your cell phone squeezes out a couple of beeps. Life is tough enough going into a service academy without breaking any of the rules.

So there was Krumwiede, laying on her bed, trying to figure ways to learn something new.

In this case, it was sailing.

She knew offshore sailing was a varsity sport at the academy, and she figured it was perfect for her to learn leadership skills that would be so valuable in her future military career. The problem was that she knew very little about the sport.

What she did know was that the blinds in her room emitted just enough light that would allow her to make out the words in a book.  

"Those moonlight blinds were the only chance I had," she said. "It was very secretive." 

Straining to read each night, she learned enough to make the sailing team as a freshman, and eventually to skipper her Navy 44-footer with her crew of eight to a victory in the 2018 Traditional Onion Patch Series which is based on a boat's performance in the New York Yacht Club Annual Regatta, the Newport Bermuda Race and the Royal Bermuda Yacht Club Anniversary Regatta. It ran June 9-22.

"Being a skipper has taught me how to thrive in a man's world," she said. "(At the academy) my class is 27% women."

Winning the Onion Patch Series was quite the accomplishment for a skipper who only had become interested in the sport a few years earlier.

It did help that Krumwiede always has been comfortable on the water. At 2 years old, her parents introduced her to water skiing and she competed most of her young life with the Ski-A-Rees of Sarasota, whether that meant barefoot skiing or as part of a pyramid. Her father, Steve Krumwiede, was a champion waterski athlete as were both her mother, Linda Mason, and her stepfather, Kirk Mason. All were influential in teaching her the discipline and passion necessary to be a top athlete.

Eventually, though, Krumwiede's interests began to change. She enrolled as a freshman at Braden River High and met Lt. Col. Jay Bradin, who is the school's senior Army instructor. She joined the Junior Reserve Officers Training Corps (JROTC).

"I knew I wanted to serve, and I knew I wanted to be an officer," she said. "He pushed me to explore those options."

Bradin knew she was a cut above.

"Paige is one of those people who everyone likes as soon as they meet her," Bradin said. "We identified her as a future cadet battalion commander her freshman year. When she was a senior, she commanded all the cadets at Braden River. She had developed a reputation for strong academics, leadership and athleticism. Her personality was perfect for what a service academy delivers."

Although Krumwiede worked hard to earn a service academy appointment, she was turned down. Instead, she was offered entry into the Naval Academy Prep School, which she accepted. She didn't understand at the time how important that decision would be.

The prep school was located in Newport, R.I., considered one of the top sailing destinations in the world. Her only connection to sailboats to that point had been waterskiing around this area, zipping past those on sailboats who "freaked out" when she performed stunts or got a little too close.

In Newport, though, she had been assigned a host family, which included Navy Capt. Michael Ray, who took her sailing.

"It was such a strong racing culture there and it caught my attention," she said. "I had been watching it from a distance and I liked it."

It led her to pursue sailing at the academy, which accepted her after a year of prep school, and when she first received opportunities to skipper a boat, she decided to go all out.  

"Sailing taught me to take chances," she said. "I wanted to push the boat hard. We would go out and get our butt whipped against people who had been sailing all their lives. But it was trial and error. I immersed myself in learning the game. We would take beatings and then stand back up."

She enjoyed the fact she was responsible for the safety and performance of her crew. She loved learning to be a tactician, playing the game of sailing chess where she needed to plan three moves ahead while figuring out what her opponent's strategy might be. All of which she expects to be important during her military career.

During the 170-boat Newport Bermuda Ocean Race, a 635-mile haul, her boat finished 11th overall. Not bad for reading in the dark.

Now it's forward to her senior season at the Naval Academy and hopefully a 20-year military career as a Navy pilot. Yes, despite her love of the water, she wants to master a new frontier, the air.

Hopefully she can read about aircraft in the daylight.