Not a Dress Rehearsal: The Upstream Swim

Where Owen Ward grew up, in the suburbs west of Boston, the current ran one direction.

"You're a lawyer, you're a doctor, you're in finance, and that's the way," he says. "From a very young age I said, that way sounds like it sucks. I don't think I'll fit it very well."

He was right. Today Ward is the founder of Flow State Fly Fishing, an Orvis-endorsed guide working the trout rivers of the White River Valley in Vermont, a fly designer whose clients have fished his hand-tied patterns for 600 straight guided trips, and a conservationist who spends his free weeks removing dams. It is not the life he was supposed to want.

"Swimming against the current was certainly a feeling," he says. "It's still a feeling."

The Note on the Wall

In eighth grade, Ward's world tilted. His mother was going through a serious health battle, and the ground under the family shifted with it. School stopped going well. He was, by his own account, another face in the crowd, a kid who needed a reset.

Through all of it, his mother left Post-it notes around the house. They said the same thing: This is not a dress rehearsal.

"That has just kind of played in my mind for years," he says.

The reset came in the form of Brewster. He did not arrive with an impressive transcript. He arrived because people decided the transcript was not the whole story. "There were a lot of people sticking a lot of necks out to help get me into Brewster," he says. He remembers Fred Garnsey, then a lacrosse coach and admissions counselor, telling him: I know your story. I know you. Let's pull you in here.

"That was huge."

The Kid Who Fished Back Bay

Ward had caught his first fish on the fly just weeks before arriving in Wolfeboro, in August 2012, on the Snake River in Wyoming, in the shadow of his namesake, Mount Owen. He was wearing a Brewster shirt.

At Brewster, the fishing and the turnaround became the same story. The school's earned-privilege program gave students freedom in exchange for good citizenship, and Ward wanted one freedom above all: leaving campus to fish Back Bay every evening. "I always strived to make JBS status so I could fish every night," he says. "I went from being a straight C+ average student to all honors, APs, magna cum laude. Brewster really was an absolute catalyst of life change for me, and it all found its way back towards fishing."

The adults kept showing up, too. He tied his first flies with faculty member Byron Martin. A freshwater ecology course showed him the science inside the thing he already loved, and when course selections came around senior year, teacher Michelle Raffalowski pulled him toward AP Biology over his own doubts. He remembers the exchange simply. There was still a fear of failure, and she said simply, Don't be ridiculous. I got you.

A decade later, those classes are still in the boat with him. Guiding, the way Ward practices it, is applied science. It involves reading water temperature, insect hatches, fish behavior, and adjusting the approach with every drift. "What we're doing out here is collecting data with every cast," he says. "It's been helpful to have caring science teachers and actual methodologies to approach fishing, so it's not just fishing."

The Upstream Swim

The current kept pulling the expected direction, and Ward kept declining. He was recruited to play lacrosse at Kenyon College and walked away from the sport after freshman year, having decided he had reached his pinnacle and would rather spend the time fishing. He earned his degree in environmental studies, moved to Vermont, and lined up a state job doing shoreline and water quality assessment. Then the pandemic arrived the same week as his hiring paperwork, and a statewide freeze erased the job before it started.

After his initial plans fell through, Woodstock is what happened instead, and it turned out to be exactly the right water. A job posting for a guiding position at the Woodstock Inn and Resort became five years of full-time guiding, three of them as head guide, learning the craft and the business trip by trip. Ward describes those years as the ramp that launched everything after, and the relationship never ended. He still guides for the Inn as a contractor today. The final nudge came from his own clients, some of whom had taken more than twenty trips with him. "At a certain point they were kind of like, I'd love to just go with you."

Flow State Fly Fishing was born. The imposter syndrome that shadows anyone who leaves the script, he admits, is "kind of hard to kick out." But conversations in his boat remind him why he made the right choice.

Many of Ward's clients are people who followed the traditional current with successful careers, comfortable retirements, and everything done the right way. More than once, one of them has sat in his drift boat, watched him work, and admitted regret.

"They cry in front of me," he says, "saying, I didn't know this was an option."

"That has been a huge push to keep doing what I'm doing," he says. "This still feeds my soul. I'm fine with the status of life that I live. This is the right course. And you don't get to do this again."

Passing It Down

His mother came through her health battle years ago, but her six words never stopped working on him. These days, Ward is the one doing the passing down. He spends a week each summer volunteering at a youth trout camp, teaching kids the thing that once turned his own life around.

"If we don't care about this stuff, nobody else is going to," he says. "Knowing that I can help pass this down is a huge privilege."

His advice for Brewster students sounds a lot like his mother's. "You're in such a ripe place in life to still be a dreamer, and there's a lot of people that are incredibly invested in your success. Please don't squander that while you have it. Take your leaps, follow your dreams. You may not have it down the road."

As for his thoughts on being open to a new experience?

"When people give you a second chance, make the most of it."

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This story is featured in the Fall 2026 edition of Brewster, The Magazine. Read more stories, explore campus news, and catch up with the Brewster community in the full issue.