Concordia Dragon Boat Building Strength by the Books

A New Guidebook Provides Concordia Dragon Boat Club Knowledge Needed To Excel

SportsKelsey Litwin — Published September 19, 2016

Trung Zacchia and his dragon boat team, True Grit, had just paddled their way to second place at Quebec Cup, a competition based out of Montreal’s 22 Dragon clubs at Parc Jean-Drapeau.

The Concordia engineering student is one of the 20-odd members of the newly founded Concordia Dragon Boat Club, the university’s latest venture into the sport. This team, unlike past dragon boat clubs that Concordia has seen, are here to compete—they plan to develop a physically strong, cohesive team of both rookies and experienced paddlers alike.

One of CDNC biggest assests, Trung Zacchia explained, is that they have “so much experience in this community. Collectively, we have about 30 years of experience.”

He stated that it’s his involvement in the community that has enabled them to build and foster relationships with professionals in the sport.

“[True Grit is] the best men’s team in the club that we paddle in,” said Trung Zacchia. “Because of that, a lot of the coaches really recognized us.”

Former Dragon Boat Canada team member Michael Wu is one of the elite level coaches that the CDBC has brought on to shape their team for the next competition season. Wu, a kinesiologist, represented the country on the international stage in 2009 and 2013 in the sport, and has been coaching for the past ten years.

Part of Wu’s mandate is to help the team develop their guidebook for proper training techniques.

“The Concordia Dragon Boat Club this year is taking a big step up,” said Wu. “This year is the first time that the club has decided to take a step more towards a competitive sport level.“

“Time,” joked Trung Zacchia, “is not on our side.” The dragon boat training guidebook that the CDBC is creating in collaboration with True Grit will ideally provide new and old recruits alike with an optimized rubric, enabling them to maximize their strengths as quickly as possible.

“That’s the whole point of the guidebook, to lay things out for everybody,” explained Wu. “Here are some guidelines of what kind of strength standards they should be accomplishing, what kind of cardio standards they should be accomplishing. Here’s the kind of training that you should do that will help you towards that.”

The guide, set to be published on Friday, Sept. 23, will also provide resources for students on how to balance sport and school as well as other mental tips and tricks for athletes. According to Wu, it will
encompass “all the knowledge that we have available to help anybody who joins the club.”

To be more inclusive, the CDBC are ensuring that the guidebook is open source—that anyone else in the dragon boat community can add their expertise. For example, Trung Zacchia described, they want to make sure that both female and male perspectives are included. That way, each member of the club can train appropriately, in a way that best suits their needs.

Trung Zacchia and Wu both stressed that the club is not exclusive to experienced paddlers.

“To give you an idea of what the team looked like for this summer, we were in a boat of 24 [paddlers],” Trung Zacchia explained. “In the team of 24, half was [made up of] really experienced rowers, the other half were novices. We don’t discriminate against anyone’s abilities.”

Unlike other competitive sports, dragon boat can be introduced at later ages. Trung Zacchia took part for the first time with his CEGEP team at Marianopolis. Wu took up the sport at 18 years old.

“The great thing about dragon boat is that it’s what’s known as a late-entry sport, meaning this is a sport that people are able to pick up and excel in even if they start at a relatively older age,” explained Wu.

“Whereas other sports, if you hadn’t started as a kid, chances are you will never reach international-caliber competitions. Dragon boat is the type of sport that you can pick it up in university and […] still have the opportunity to race at world championships.”

Further, Wu suggested that getting involved in the CDBC is a step in the right direction for building a healthy lifestyle.

“Dragon boat acted as a very good medium through which [athletes I’ve coached] picked up a lot of healthy habits,” Wu said. “If it weren’t for dragon boat, they would have probably never have started a sport, would have never have gone to the gym, or not as early as they did now.”