Faculty Member Paddles to Success During Dragon Boat Race
Last summer, Clif Harald, an Instructor for CU Boulder’s Outdoor Recreation Economy program, took to the open water with the Nichi-Bei-Go Dragon Boat team during the Colorado Dragon Boat Festival.
Dragon boat racing is a sport carried out between teams consisting of twenty paddlers sitting alongside one another, a cox and a drummer. Competitors work together to paddle the boat from a standing start through the course and finish line in an attempt to finish in the fastest time.
The Colorado Dragon Boat Festival is an annual event that has been held since 2001, celebrating Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander cultures in Colorado and beyond. Held in the Sloan's Lake suburb of Denver, the festival offers music, dance, food and crafts and features 50 dragon boat teams racing over two days. In recent years, the Colorado Dragon Boat Festival hosted upwards of 200,000 people, making it the largest dragon boat festival in the country.
Upon reflection, Harald noted, “This was our team's most competitive year yet - we placed in every race we ran. More rewarding to most of us, though, was how the 22 people in our boat all came together over the summer to race as one boat. Many on the team hadn't met before this summer. There were women and men, non-native English speakers, some older (70s), some younger (tweens), and all bringing varying levels of fitness.”
After months of practice, his team took to the water as a unified, well-synchronized team that was ready to take on a full weekend of racing – safe to say, their efforts paid off!
For those interested in learning more about the sport, Harald highly recommends checking out dragon boat activities in their community and joining a team.