August 12, 2004 Issue                                       

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©2006 The Chestnut Hill Local

Local dragon boat team wins national title

The Philadelphia Youth Dragon Boat Team captured the national title in Iowa this weekend. The team, coached by Erik Werner, won the Open and the Mixed divisions, winning seven out of eight races in the 250M and 500M distances.

The team will represent the United States at the World Championships to be held in 2005 in Germany.

Philadelphia swept the event winning all of the divisions, including the Open Premier, Open Mixed, Women’s, Senior Women’s, Senior Open and Senior Mixed.

The team, comprised of many local 12- to 18-year-old young men and women, competes in 40-foot long canoes and trains on the Schuylkill River below the Strawberry Mansion Bridge.

The 40 young athletes on the roster hail from all over the city and its surrounding suburbs, including Lafayette Hill and Ardmore. They represent Simon Gratz, Germantown, Central, Benjamin Franklin, Dobbins, La Salle College, Roman Catholic, Archbishop Carroll and Friends Select high schools, among others.

The team is 3-1 this season, having won their first race in Washington DC and winning last weekend in Parsippany, N.J. They garnered second place in Flushing Marina, Queens, N.Y., a race in which one team abstained from the final in protest of a boat or lane that was thought to be a fatal handicap.

The team looks forward to some cutthroat racing in NYC Liberty and NYC Flushing Meadows in the next few weekends.

Later in August, the team may try a race in Princeton.

Last year, the Youth team took first place in Philadelphia’s Fall Festival. The race, a fundraiser for cancer research, had 82 teams registered and no youth division. This year’s race has 100 teams registered. There is no youth division and all of the teams will race in the same pool.

Having completed the first half of their goal by winning the Nationals, the team now will prepare for Germany, 2005.