Taking it away to China: Durham College professor to compete at dragon boat championship
Rick Kerr, (far right in white shirt), professor with the School of Communication, Language & General Studies practises with members of the Pickering Dragon Boat Club.
It takes team work, superior conditioning and a competitive spirit to win a dragon boat race.
Just ask Rick Kerr, a professor with the School of Communication, Language & General Studies at Durham College, who's no stranger to winning. Kerr is as a member of the Pickering Dragon Boat Club Grandmaster men's team who won the Canadian National Dragon Boat Championships in Montreal, Quebec earlier this year.
Winning the race comes down to consistently hitting the catch at the same time. It's all about being focused and having the proper technique. "Sometimes winning comes down to less than a foot of difference between you and the next boat," said the 57-year-old. "You have to be focused. Twenty team members synchronizing their strokes to hit and exit the water at the same time 135 to 150 times in a 500 metre race is no small feat."
That's exactly the challenge that drew Kerr to dragon boat racing. While at the Stratford Festival in Stratford, Ontario eight years ago, Kerr was fascinated by its dragon boat festival. After returning home to Oshawa, Ontario, Kerr put a team together from Durham College and entered the Dragon Flies Dragon Boat Festival in Port Perry, Ontario.
"We weren't particularly adept at dragon boat racing," said Kerr. "Winning the last race was kind of like paring the 18th hole - you want to keep going."
When he couldn't find a team to practise with, he went down to the dock at Camp Samac in Oshawa. He sat on it and practised paddling all through the summer and continued to practise at the Civic Auditorium Complex in Oshawa through the winter of 2007.
In 2008, Kerr and his team of students from the School of Justice & Emergency Services won a gold medal in the Port Perry race, clocking the fastest time out of 54 teams. Kerr was hooked. He knew he had to keep racing.
Through a friend's connections, Kerr paddled on the CTV Corporate Recreation Team in the summer of 2008 at the Toronto International Dragon Boat Race Festival in Toronto, Ontario. At the end of the season, he met members of the Pickering Dragon Boat Team who invited him to paddle with their club.
"Finding 20 people just like me, who want to work hard, compete hard and play hard is a rare thing," said Kerr of his teammates. "I fit right in."
Kerr is on the water training two to three times a week and attends a two-day training camp every month to keep in shape for races. He loves the physical work and conditioning that racing provides.
The hard work has paid off as all three of the Pickering club's teams qualified for the World Club Team Championships in Macau, China in July 2010, where they will defend their titles from the 2008 competition in Malaysia, Asia.
Paddles up, take it away!
Share