Recently I was selected to represent Canada in the under 24 mixed and open dragon boat crews, which will be competing at the World Championships, August 19-23, on home soil water in Welland. It was an honour to have been selected considering the number of high calibre athletes trying out. The selection process started last July with 150 paddlers from across Canada participating at camps in Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver. After training sessions in July, September, and February, 75 paddlers were chosen to compete for spots at the final selection camp in May. This four day event was held in Pickering and consisted of fitness testing, outrigger time trials, video review, and a lot of intense dragon boat practices. While I am very proud of this accomplishment, I could never have done it alone.
In high school I was actively involved in volleyball, hockey, badminton, and ultimate, but upon coming to Waterloo, my involvement in sports decreased as I devoted more time to school work. I was introduced to the sport of dragon boat racing during my first co-op term as a research assistant in a lab at the University of Waterloo. One of the graduate students (Alexander Ip, NANO 2011, MSc CHEM 2013) had recently joined the Waterloo team and had caught the dragon boat bug. After a work term with his consistent nagging encouragement to join, I decided to try it out. I found the veteran team members to be very friendly and I welcomed the feeling I had missed during my first year of being pushed to my physical limits.
After two summers of paddling with the high performance team while on Nano Engineering school terms, I’ve come to realise that this involvement has actually improved my academic performance. I’ve befriended upper year students who have acted as mentors and offered sweet words of encouragement during hell week. The time commitment associated with the competitive team has forced me to adapt better time management skills. The physical activity has also helped to reduce stress; when on the water, the stresses of school and of life fade away, leaving only the sounds of paddles ripping through water and punching through spray. It’s a beautiful place, on the water, where pain, failure, and success are shared by all, where teammates become a family, where twenty paddlers move as one.
The University of Waterloo Dragon Boat Club has a strong connection with Waterloo Engineering. UWDBC was created in 2008 by two engineering students (Philip Wang, SYDE 2012 and George Wang, TRON 2012) and has since had engineering students as coaches, captains and paddlers. When I joined in 2012, there was one recreational and two competitive crews. That has quickly grown to include high performance, competitive, and recreational crews for students along with staff, faculty and alumni teams, and a breast cancer survivors crew. We hold dryland conditioning and pool technique practices during the Fall and Winter terms. In Spring terms we paddle at Laurel Creek, a short bus, bike, or drive north from campus. Every summer many students on co-op continue paddling with us, while working as far away as the Greater Toronto Area. The co-op program at Waterloo is a wonderful opportunity to make new connections, and you never know where they could lead you. Paddles up!
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