Opinions

On race day, it was 90 degrees, the sun blazingly bright with a nice comforting breeze. A steerer, a drummer and 12 paddlers were seated in a long colorful boat adorned with the head and tail of a dragon. We could hear the captains in the boats next to us giving pep talks. “Keep together,” one said. “Remember the techniques we learned,” said another. “Just don’t stop,” our coach jokingly said to us.

When the whistle sounded, all 12 of our paddles hit the water at once. We listened intently to the drum and moved our bodies forward and back to its beat. As we neared the finish line, we moved faster and let out a loud incomprehensible roar. Crossing the finish line, we relaxed our arms and listened for the results. We lost.

My family and I have made the hour-long trek to Flushing Meadows-Corona Park in Queens every year since I was six to watch the Hong Kong Dragon Boat Festival, a competition and cultural showcase. I always enjoyed watching the boat races and it was a chance to experience a part of China in New York City.

Although visiting the festival was an annual tradition, I had never looked into what dragon boating meant until I started participating in the competition. The race itself represents the frantic efforts to save a Chinese warrior poet, Qu Yuan, who committed suicide in protest of government corruption in 278 B.C. Since then, the races have been a symbol of friendly competition and teamwork.

I joined a team last year on a whim. I was working in an office and it was common for corporations to have their own dragon boating teams. I thought I should give it a try even though my friends found a scrawny freshman signing up for such an intense sport laughable. I went back this summer and I plan to do so every summer. There’s nothing better than struggling to move a three-ton boat against strong currents on scorching Sunday afternoons.

It was an easy sport to pick up, though winning was another story. In the five years we participated in the competition, my team always finished last by a wide margin of at least three seconds. But no one complained because there was no reason to be angry. We laughed off our failure and joked about beating the other teams next year who were clearly more prepared—and more buff—than we were.

Our coach gathered us together at the end of our race and congratulated us. He hoped we had taken something from the experience and that we would come back next year despite our foreseeable defeat. That was the lesson that stood out to me—don’t let a little failure stop you. You’ll get a challenging test once in a while and the pressures of life in general will get to you, but get past them. Learn to laugh them off and, like my coach often said, be a man (or a woman).

Our team only practiced four times during the summer but it was enough for us to become friends. In dragon boating, there is nothing more important than being close to the people you work with. You can be massive and strong, but if you don’t move with the people next to you, forces will literally collide and nobody will go anywhere.

It was precisely for that reason our coach had us play more games of football than running drills. He wanted us to know that making friends and working as a team were important in both sports and life. It sounds obvious, but in a competitive school, we lose sight of what really matters. We become so focused on furthering ourselves that we forget to help those who might be struggling. Our school places an emphasis on individual achievements, but we are a learning community. We’re going to be with each other for four years, so we might as well learn to work with each other.

The motto of the competition was “Hardwork, Teamwork, Network.” Aside from the bad spelling, it wouldn’t make such a bad motto for Stuy.