 Welcome to the Sports Playbook where we discuss solutions to issues that impact sports. I'm your host, Angela Hazelett, and today I'm joined by my co-host, Beth Piles. Today's guest is Winky Day, a former Dragon Boat Racer and now a coach of Blind Paradragon Boat Racing Team. Today we're going to discuss Dragon Boat Racing paddling the way. Welcome Winky. Thank you. This is Winky. How are you today? We're doing great. We're doing great. I'm really excited to share with our guests a little bit more about Dragon Boat Racing and you have quite a bit of an experience in this sport. Tell me a little bit about Dragon Boat Racing and your experience as both a paddler and a coach. Okay. I began Dragon Boating after being introduced at a festival event through my work, part of the diversity program and it only took one race and I was hooked. It's part of a bit by the dragon, what we call, or I get addicted to paddling. It's either the adrenaline or it affected your neurological system to the point where you just can't stop. You want to tell us a little bit about what Dragon Boat Racing is? Okay. Dragon Boat Racing actually can be back to over 2000 years ago. It was originated in China and the Chinese politician or poet had taken his own life and there's a legend where the fishermen in the area quickly ran to the shore and began beating drums and splashing their paddles on the water to stop the fish and the evil spirits from consuming his body. They didn't want their beloved politician to be eaten by the fish and they continued the sport in honor of him and every festival they do an eye dotting ceremony in his honor. Now it is a race and it is sprint racing and where you, the Chinese, every lunar year they do this and race all the teams, it's a team building experience. It can be historically thought of for agricultural purposes where you could get the teams together and then they would do the planting season for the rice and it could also now be used as corporate incentives for businesses to build their teams to get programs done. It's interesting a lot of history that's kind of been revived into more of a modern day type of sport. That is very interesting indeed. Yes, it's very interesting to be part of it. So you specifically coach a blind or visually impaired group of athletes who do the Paradragon boat racing. Are there any athletes that are in the boat that are sighted? They have different levels or different variations of the team work or framework for the Paradragon division. They have what they call a PD-1 in which would be Paradragon-1 if all the members are in some way impaired. Now they don't have to have the same impairment, it can be anything from hearing loss or eyesight loss or a finger even or even PTSD, neurological problems. And then there is a PD-2 division and that describes where you have mixed, unimpaired and impaired paddlers and it's usually 10 and 10 in a standard boat. If it's a small boat it would be then 5 and 5 and then there is the PD-3 which would be all the same impairment. And so that's really the key difference between Paradragon and Dragon boat racing is the level of the kind of the point system and the combination of impairments that are occupying a particular boat. The communication is really important during races. So talk to me about how do you communicate particularly it's got to have a lot of wind and noise. A drum beat to kind of keep the boat moving and I'm sure there's a lot of shouting going on during these races. They talk to me about communication and how you are effective at communicating with people for both performance and for safety purposes. Well in the beginning when we begin training these folks or what we call newbies you have to I deal with just strictly the blind paddlers but we try to get them to do the same thing the same time and to do that we have to introduce them to the paddle how they feel they have to feel it and you have to explain the different parts of the paddle so that they understand that and then you have to put them in and vote and explain their seating arrangement that they have a sided steerer and a sided drummer and that they give the commands for them to participate in the race. We also train many many many times before we take them out on end to a race because they have to know the calls for movements and any kind of a racing situation you have different sections that you use in a race like we have start and and then we have the body of the race and then we have a finish and they get to learn all of those it takes several years to develop a very good a premier level paddler which we have successfully done with a few of our members but every year you get a changeover because new people come in so it's probably makes it probably makes it a little challenging when you have new people coming in and you're teaching them the sports maybe maybe some like you've gotten involved in the sport later in life and that communication piece is is really critical you mentioned doing a lot of training beforehand before they compete but even during training sessions are there other boats on the water that you're looking out for that may sort of complicate the training session a little bit I'm imagining it's not a closed course correct no no you have boat wake you have wind you have challenges with the with the 12 and you have to explain to them or they can even feel it that I mean they can feel a lot especially the more more often that they're out there they they understand what's happening but it's just to know that they're in a boat first of all they're where they have to have their feet planted and how they angle their blade into the water how they get to their hands wet you know knowing where the the blade and where the the spoon or the bill of the blade ends and where the shaft begins and and how they hold their hands at different sections of the of the training I usually we usually go through the catch and then we give them the pull position pull positions we run them through all of those and the exit because if they don't exit at the right time then they're going to throw the the entire boat off so it's it's very tactile are there different strategies when you're coaching a team with such a wide emotional and physical spectrum ranging between the ages of 12 and 80 I'm assuming there's got to be some challenges in there always um youth tend to be less less focused as the elder elder folks but um even even um getting them to to it's just more of a repetitive motion that you have to drill in it's a lot of drills but they'll they'll catch on and the more they do it they they grow into it are there any specific challenges or techniques associated when steering the actual dragon boat itself steering it there's challenges when when you have other boats um next to you or or if they they're coming towards you you have to avoid them but then you don't want to be out of your lane so you have to stay in your lane sorry in 2011 there were two dragon boats that capsized during a race and after they were trying to rescue the racers from the water the police boat also capsized due to all of the panicking racers trying to climb a board at once what are some safety measures that are in place to protect the athletes in case any accidents or capsizing happens well actually all of the paddlers must wear pfds especially when it comes to to the um impaired and pfds you're talking about personal flotation devices the the life jackets that they have to wear is part of the safety measures it's a safety measure yes personal flotation devices are required at any festival um it's just what happens is that somebody panics um usually there's other boat chase boats that come along but we teach them to stay with the boat these boats will stay afloat and and and we tell them they are to stay with the boat and not to and wait for the the crew to to rescue pull them out we actually do um some training within um local pools where we get them especially when people don't know how to swim or never been in water even some of them so we get them accustomed to floating in a pfd first of all and then we have where we have um people on the side of the side to pull them out by their pfds so they understand um how to react and we do a lot of where they they stay they huddle together so that they don't get float away they stay with the boat so that they can be rescued properly that's pretty incredible that someone who may not be comfortable in the water or even know how to swim is willing to get on a boat particularly if they're visually impaired or or does that make it easier if if they have an impairment maybe uh are they less frightened of the water at that point what has been your experience people who don't have a strong swimming background becoming a paddler they usually we don't have that many cap sizes or or problems with with um the in these races because as a professionalism there is involved um of course there there will be accidents especially if there's there's weather related incident um problems that happen like currents change um you can you can start out at flat in the morning and then the afternoon you've got swells so and letting them know to don't stop paddling is one of the keys is because that's when you become unstable um but if you keep everybody keeps their weight to their side of the boat it should stay out and they can put place their paddles and in such a way that that it will ballast the boat we call it brace the boat it puts their blades flat on top of the water there's a lot of terms that they have to learn and how to hold their paddles they need to know how to to draw or like to pull the boat one way or help out if you if somebody slipped if your steers slipped out at least you'd have somebody giving you a call how to get them to maneuver the boat to a shoreline or someplace where they that they could be um get someone else to help them I would imagine you probably have to consider weight on each side of the boat is that part a factor in how you strategize organizing the athletes and arranging them on the boat yes we do we do have to we must that's part of the safety also is is having the right ballast in the boat and we have certain sections that we we can't we um have to put put the weight adjustments for for the strongest paddlers and some of the um lighter weight people that so that that just keeps it even on both sides and front to back but when you're practicing do the athletes move around a different position and you do kind of try to audition them in different places and get them some experience they get auditioned throughout the season it's more um we don't usually and actually in a smaller boat you want the weight up front because there's more of a bow and and more of a standard boat you would probably you would um want it more towards more weight towards the center and um or the back of the boat slightly it's just um there's certain degrees and we have we have a calculator that we use to um adjust for that so there's math involved i'm hearing you say you have to do some math as part of your coaching expertise always i said i i get angry sometimes because when we set up a a practice i and they've signed up to to come out i know what their weights are general ideas and i put them in a seat and if they don't they don't show up i have to rearrange the uh the boat to to accommodate it quite literally the balancing act of of everything there and let's talk about that a little bit when people are they sign up to come and and to train but these are volunteers right they're doing it because they enjoy it and so you sort of have to be flexible and go with the flow as far as their schedules how how does that factor into how you're able to train and and prepare yourself adequately for competition well it's a it's a balancing act we yeah we have to um be be fluid because you have to to get them out on the water and make sure that they understand what they need to do and do their work um we we often they often have problems in earlier years because of transportation wasn't as easy as it is now now they have lists and and you have cell phones whereas before it wasn't always like that we had to use phone trees to make sure everybody was coming and calling them and and scheduling it um now it's it's done through apps where we have them sign up and and if they can notify us by a certain time we can either um say um rearrange the lineup or or give give um cancel out the whole whole practice because we don't have enough people to come even out so we have to have at least um eight people I think in a standard boat to take one out um and probably at least um four or five no six in the stand in the smaller boat because it's it's easier it's more more uh tendency to be a little more tippy I should say than a standard boat yeah and you would need your drummer and your steer so those would be kind of critical yeah we always I mean we always have those set those are set those are our sighted people those are our volunteers and um we we schedule it for the same usually the same day of the week or night evenings we do evenings and weekends usually on Saturdays and Sundays and at least one day during the week so paddle boats are pretty large how do you go about getting your boat to and from practices and races well um well most um festivals promoters they have the boats they're available for you so you don't have to take the boats but we do take the equipment um some of us some of our paddlers have their own paddles they've they've gotten accustomed to using different carbon fiber versus the old stout old wooden type they also have we have their own some of them buy their own um personal floatation devices because at these festivals you've got all of these clip-ons that aren't really the just the right size for you so they they go out and get their own you can use paddling gloves that helps um to to avoid getting blisters or calluses if you paddle a lot and they they um they get we arrange to either carpool some of our folks or at times we have to run a bus to go someplace and or arrange airfare which requires quite a bit of planning yeah even the transportation of those athletes to to practice can be challenging if they're they're visually impaired they won't be able to drive themselves to practice so is transportation to and from training an issue they um currently just having um like so they use public transportation we have to have a site that that's pretty much um accessible to a a um subway system or that they have metropolitan bus services that takes them to to a particular location and then we have volunteers that um go pick them up um currently a lot of them have been coming more self-sufficient and can find know how to count their steps or or um where to turn where they're located so that they can get down to where we're located to our um paddling dock that's great um I wonder do you ever have issues with the weather like how do the weather conditions affect the safety of your races and your practices do you guys have a special way of monitoring that well if it rains you're going to get wet as long as there's not um lightning and thunder now if there's any thunder or lightning while we're um it becomes like that we have to get off the water immediately and we usually will wait until you have to wait at least a half an hour between um thunder thunder or lightning that you have to wait until you you can get back out on the water but we don't like to miss we don't like to miss many many practices yeah do you guys have a special uh service that you use to monitor the weather or like for big races and things are there specific people there in case of any type of bad weather they they they monitor the radar systems coming across the um internet uh they use NOAA a lot of times and the marine forecast forecast with radar um you have to be careful have to watch the tide sometimes um if it gets too high you can't take them out because or there's a lot of current or something like that we don't it makes it difficult to steer so we unless we have an a established crew you don't want to take newbies out in that kind of situation so we um we have it set up we are in our app that if you sign up and there's there's a bad storm coming like that last week there was a tornado warning so we had to cancel or postpone it for the next night so um we let them know at least um by by an hour or two before the the practice begins because some of them have to start out an hour or two beforehand so we have to let them know in advance yeah it might be sufficient for for like a training exercise but what about in a competition where people have to be there early get on the water early maybe be staged and ready to go i would imagine it would be pretty complicated to call everybody back in off the water what are the protocols if weather kind of comes up and unexpectedly disrupts the the competition it is still the half hour rule that they go with um but they do um and nationals we were in Tampa which is the lightning capital of the world i think yes they that they would call you off the why if they they know i mean they're really hooked into the to the um that the um weather systems that come across there so they know if it's coming and that they'll stop the the races and then hold it until they know that it's clear because a lot of those those storms blow through and there's they don't stay there but it depends on it varies from area to area and it's just a um club ruling or a or like i said the festival um festival promoters they have to make these decisions um a lot of times they'll they'll take if it is a race and and they have to cancel after the second heat they'll take an average out what everybody's times were and award the winners from those they're they're their first couple heat not always cut and dry but it's the best you know if they know that they have a timeline they can't continue on the next day or something like that absolutely so winky i'm curious sport has a long history behind it but i'm curious what you see as the future for dragon boat racing para dragon racing what what do you see for the future any kind of emerging trends or developments in the sport that we should be aware of well they have um they have considered they have their own um championship races and then they have world championship races um and it really depends on if they did want to continue to to um try to bring groups larger groups like having a standard boat versus a small boat or having two clubs having uh boats teams or team members on boats a standard and a a small boat rather than just go to like a 12 man boat instead of trying to do 20 and or both 20 and a 10 man boat so if anything i think that they will probably um make a a a specific size and go with that if it gets really big fortunately it's not i mean it's all over the world but i don't think that um everybody's ready to give up you know their their specialty some people do better in small boats and some people do better in the large boat or maybe some efficiency or common ground and i mean imagine that'd be uh easier to coordinate in the long run well winky thank you so much for your insight into dragon boat racing paddling the way we thank you for your time today well you're most welcome and uh i wish i said i wish i had a specific answer for everything but it get i mean it's it's kind of um where you it's constantly changing um and and your team changes because your your your ages and and and uh backgrounds come come into effect um we have become a more competitive team whereas we start out just a accessible team in our club so it's really nice it makes it for an interesting sport when there is a lot of diversity of people participating so thank you for your time and and thanks to my co-host Beth Piles today thanks for being here and thank you to our viewers for joining us today we will see you next time on the sports playbook