Bryson City continues to produce some of the world’s top paddling talent.
For the past several years Evy Leibfarth has put the region on the map, winning bronze at last year’s Paris Olympics in Women’s Canoe Slalom Singles. Now, Leibfarth’s protégé and fellow Bryson City native is making her own name at the sport’s highest level.
“I’ve been on the U.S. team for two years now, but I competed for the U.S. team to try to make it before I was old enough to actually qualify, and I made it both years before I was eligible to qualify,” said Swain County High School junior Carden Oetting of the American Canoe Association Junior National Team, which features less than a dozen of the nation’s top paddlers aged 18 and under. “I think my first-ever time on the national stage was in 2021. … I think I was 12.”
From an incredibly young age, Oetting has been one of the sport’s brightest rising stars, gaining notice from JNT coaches before she even started high school. Already with years of experience, she’s had a leg up on the competition.
“I’ve been paddling [since] I was six, so 11 years,” she said. “My parents were raft guides, and so I kind of always grew up around the river. And then they got me [into] kayaking clinics, and so I went and I started paddling in kayaking clinics, and I fell in love with it.”
At the Nantahala Outdoor Center, Oetting has spent her life on some of the region’s most sought-after whitewater, guided by her parents’ knowledge of the river. There, she gained notice from the country’s most prominent paddling family, catapulting her career to the national level.
“I was lucky enough that one of the girls that trains – I was training partners with her more when I was younger, but also now – Evy Leibfarth, who just won the bronze medal in the Olympics, her dad is her coach and they live around here,” said Oetting. “And so I was able to, when I was out paddling, they saw me and I started getting better and better, and then we asked if we could train with them and they let me train with them. And then Lee Leibfarth became my coach, and he’s been coaching me ever since. He’s a national team coach, and so that helped with my advancement up into the national level.”
With help from the Leibfarths, Oetting has spent the past few years traveling the world, seeking out its most prestigious paddling competitions. As a member of the JNT, she competes in all three major women’s events.
“I compete in kayak slalom, which is sitting down with a two-bladed paddle, and then I also do canoe [slalom], which is where you’re on your knees with a one-bladed paddle,” she said. “You start at the beginning and there’s green gates and red gates, and the green gates you have to pass through downstream and the red gates you have to go through upstream. You get a two-second penalty if you touch a gate, and you get a 50-second penalty if you miss a gate, and basically the fastest person down wins. … And then I also do kayak cross, which is where … you go off a ramp and it usually drops about seven feet into the water, and you race with four other competitors down the same course, and it’s a contact sport.”
In canoe/kayak slalom, athletes race for roughly 90 seconds down courses ranging from 150-400 meters, navigating between 18-25 gates including six or eight upstream; kayak cross features just four to six green gates, two red gates and a “roll zone,” where athletes submerge themselves in a 360-degree roll. In all three events, she now ranks among the world’s best.
“I’ve competed in junior worlds for the past two years,” said Oetting of the International Canoe Federation Junior World Championships. “For those, you have to make the junior U.S. team in order to qualify … and then from there, you travel to Europe. We all train as a team over in Europe wherever the location will be and then we’ll compete, and it’s usually about a week-long event of all of our different classes. … It’s so cool to just get to travel for my sport – I’m very lucky for that opportunity.”
In Liptovský Mikuláš, Slovakia, last summer, Oetting battled her toughest-ever opponents, competing in canoe slalom but falling short of the finals. At this year’s championships in Foix, France, she earned her best finishes to date.
“Probably this past race at Junior Worlds,” she said of her proudest finish to date. “It was my first-ever international final that I qualified for in a U18 category. That’s basically the top 12, and the feeling of just qualifying and knowing that I’d done it – because that was one of my goals throughout this entire year, was pushing for that top 12 – and just making that top 12 knowing that no matter what happened, the next race I had after that I was a top-12 U18 woman in the world was just such an amazing moment.”
With strong runs in the preliminary and semifinal rounds, Oetting advanced to the championship round in both kayak and canoe slalom. There, she nearly medaled in just her second international final.
“Finals in kayak, I came in ninth,” she said. “I think I had a [gate] touch, and I just didn’t feel like me during my run. I was pushing, but it just didn’t feel like me, but I still was so happy that I came in ninth.”
“And then for canoe I ended up coming in fourth, which was also such a crazy experience. I had an unfortunate touch on Gate 1 that people still make fun of me for and we laugh about it, but I think that’ll push me harder to stay cleaner on my next runs because … the girl that came in third also had a touch, but had I not had that touch and she had had that touch I would have come in third, which was upsetting, obviously. But to think coming out of junior worlds I [would be] fourth and ninth, that was more than I could have ever hoped for going into it, so I was very happy.”
As one of the world’s best junior athletes in two different events, Oetting now seeks to join Leibfarth on the Senior National “A” Team, for which Oetting is already listed as an alternate in kayak cross. While paddling is primarily a summer sport, she said she has no plans of slowing down.
“No, I don’t get to take any time off usually,” she said. “Sometimes I’ll do like weeks on and weeks off in the winter just to rest my muscles and make sure I’m not getting sick and staying healthy, but throughout those weeks I’m still doing gym and staying active. My next race that I’m training for is nationals, which is in October on the week of the 18th … in Charlotte, North Carolina. … There’ll be another race around April that I’ll have to compete for and again make top three, and hopefully next year I’m able to make the senior team, which is a whole other round of races at a different location in the U.S.”