Dragon Boat Paddling Resources

After talking with Olympian Kamini Jain, head coach of the FCRCC High Performance Dragon Boat Program, I learned that she considers outrigger paddling to be one of the key factors in her team's success. Boat awareness and "Feel" for the water are concepts that come with experience and OC-1s help gain this experience more quickly, because you alone are responsible for all movement. OC-1s also allow individuals to experience their own contribution directly in a way that paddling along with 19 others cannot. Individual contribution is not measurable in any meaningful way in a dragon boat, and therefore lost as a coaching and feedback option. Additionally, many fewer people are needed in order to go out in an OC-1, adding significantly to the on-water time of many paddlers. But what I see as the most important factor, are friendly head-to-head competitions that OC-1s bring out in the club.

Friendly head-to-head competition and time trials have multiple facets for team building:

• It allows all team members to encourage all participants as they paddle for their times. Bystanders (team members) are drawn in to the competitive nature of the event, and encourage additional achievement. This fosters positive experiences for all participants, regardless of individual achievement. It allows team members to encourage further achievement in others, pushing them beyond their current abilities or boundaries.

• It becomes an additional shared experience for the team, like a team outing or BBQ, but with an edge that brings out the paddler's competitive nature, reinforcing one of the reasons many participate in the sport.

• In a sport dominated by women in the US, it provides men the feedback they expect in sports. It plays to the male desire for individual achievement and recognition. This is not to play down the desire of many women for the same thing, it simply points to the lack of individualization in the sport of dragon boating in general. While I argue that this is lack is good overall, recognizing individual achievement is a key factor in retention and advancement within sport. Likewise, this can be used as another tool in drawing more men into the sport.

• Most importantly, it establishes team rankings in a positive way. This positions the next "target" for those so inclined. It also is an invaluable tool for coaches to learn more about the individual paddlers on the team by providing additional assessment tools. Coaching dragon boating is not like coaching most other team sports. Most team sports have individual assessments with the coaches on a regular basis. Most have assigned positions and each player is assessable on an individual basis in their position. Many dragon boat clubs do assign "positions," but assessing these individually is limited to visual technique inspection, with little practical contribution or achievement assessment without additional tools. Keeping an ongoing head-to-head or time trial ranking provides this contribution/achievement assessment. It shows how an individual's contribution or capability as progressed or regressed, which is an invaluable coaching tool. Working with team members to set SMART goals for these individual time trials brings an additional dimension. Individual goals set and achieved in a team sport helps the team.

All in all adding dimension to a clubs paddling helps in many ways. Fostering friendly competition is my favorite outcome.

- Scott