Congratulations to the HNC Dragon Boat team for their third place finish in the Nanjing city competition this past June! Our student blogger, Andrew, looks back and shares his experience as a member of the team.
HNC students participated in this year’s Dragon Boat Race in Nanjing. My team members and I have been training for almost two months getting ready for the competition. Every week we worked out in group plyometrics workouts and weight lifting workouts, and practiced on Mo Chou Lake with our coach.
Finally on June 9 we competed against over 20 other teams from Nanjing and… we came in THIRD!
Outside of those that were rowing in the competition, this event really included so much of the HNC. Some students formed their own cheerleading squad and danced in a competition before the actual dragon boat race. Students and professors came out for the race and cheered us on all day with lots of new HNC paraphernalia, including HNC flags.
Many of the people from Nanjing who came out to watch the dragon boat race were quite surprised at our success and were really excited to talk with us. A local news station interviewed us and some of our responses even made it into a Nanjing newspaper.
The day of the race, everyone got to the lake bright and early around 7:15 am. Despite some setbacks (especially one where one team decided to ram our boat and cut us off mid race) all of our hard work paid off and after four races, we were ecstatic to find that we had made it to the finals. We raced in a final marathon style race, which was 1000m and a final normal race, which was 300m.
In the final 300m race we raced three other teams and came in third. It was so much fun for everyone and I know, especially for all those who rowed, it is an experience we will never forget.
In addition to dragon boat, the HNC also had its end-of-semester barbeque. It was a great way to begin winding down at the end of the semester with good barbecue, games, and live band performances from the HNC’s band (the Chuar-zards).
Written by Andrew Retallick
