by Dave Delgado
Guam - Guam recently sent a Dragon Boat Team to Korea to compete in the 2nd Annual Dragon Boat Regatta in Busan, Korea. The Team was made up of 22 paddlers with 18 of them being guardsmen. Team Guam was able to bring back 2 gold and 1silver from the competition despite not having too much time to rest between races. Our paddlers competed with pride and honor representing the Guam flag.
"Guam actually brought out a lot fun in the race not just too much seriousness; we were loud and brought them what they needed which was motivation. We just wanted to represent Guam and show them what Guam can do. It was a lot of motivation and communication on how they were going to do their strokes. There are a lot of different kinds of strokes. There are short strokes and then you have the long strokes. So they figured long and deep was going to help not burn out so fast but also push it out at the end. We were so focused and adrenaline was pumping that we didn't know that we won the race until I looked up and said I think we won," reps said.
With international competition under their belts the guardsmen will look to carry the momentum into September 17ths races held here on island. The team has been training for quite sometime looking to help build the sport and get more people involved. The time and effort put into their training program has paid off and will hopefully show against other federal agencies come race day.
"First of all we feel like we have the upper hand at this being that we've competed against so many teams like Australia, Korea, Philippines. I think that we really have a good chance. Dragon Boat is not that big here on island but we want to promote it and I think it will get bigger. We work hard and have been practicing together. We use this as a means to our physical fitness training and there's a lot into it with practicing but we are going to go out there and have fun," said the coach.
