Area dragon boaters off to Club Crew Worlds

By Lethbridge Herald on July 15, 2022.

SUBMITTED PHOTO Local dragon boat paddlers qualifying for Crew Club World Championships, include from left, Chris Lowings, Karen Johnson, Suzanne Harris, Linda Gilbert and Romina Senneker.

Submitted by Colleen Valin

Dedication to their sport and commitment to months of intense training has earned five local athletes spots on Canadian teams headed to the world dragon boat championships in Sarasota, Fla.

Taber’s Romina Senneker, along with city residents Karen Johnson, Suzanne Harris, Linda Gilbert and Chris Lowings, all members of the Dragonboat Association of Southern Alberta (DASA), will paddle with teams from Edmonton or Pickering, Ont. during the International Dragon Boat Federation (IDBF) 13th Club Crew World Dragon Boat Championships July 18-24. Local paddlers will compete in master class divisions Seniors A, B, C based on age ranges from 44 to 60-plus.

For Senneker, earning a position with the Edmonton Dragonboat Racing Club (EDBRC) is a repeat performance, having competed with the team at the 2018 IDBF Club Crew Championships in Hungary. The Edmonton club qualified for the 2020 Club Crew worlds during the Canadian championships in 2019; however COVID lock-downs forced cancellation until this year.

“After three years of paddling downtime due to the pandemic, training and testing to make the team, was hard, hard work,” she said.  Employed full-time, although recently retired, meant getting back into high-level performance physical and mental shape, training solo from November to January, until virtual training earlier this year allowed her to join-in with other competitors. “Early morning and late night workouts, eventually weekend trips to Edmonton for training and testing drove me hard to be ‘race-ready’ when the team selection was made.

“The competition was intense with 23-women competing for 10-spots in the small boat category, so I was thrilled to be among the 13-people selected and again when the 20-paddler standard boat EDBRC team was named,” Senneker said.

After injuries and pre-commitments left seats open on Ontario’s Pickering Dragon Boat Club (PDBC), who had also earned a berth for the 2020 worlds during the Canadian championships in Regina, the foursome of Johnson, Harris, Gilbert and Lowings were invited as ‘distance athletes’ to fill the vacancies. The call, however, did not come until after months of intense solo and virtual training, , plus a strenuous week-long training camp in Tampa, Fla. this April; when their high-performance physical endurance and paddling technique equated to PDBC expectations.

“Pickering is a championship team and their training is at a much higher level than anything we had experienced previously,” stated Harris. “They rarely lose and they are in competition to win medals on the world stage – which they have proven repeatedly in Hong Kong, Italy, Hungary and Australia.” 

Johnson explained the connection with the Pickering team dates back several years when she and others attended pre-pandemic coaching clinics hosted by Scott Murray, currently Dragon Boat Canada president and the owner of Alkame, a Pickering-based business dedicated to all things dragon boat related. Travelling to Pickering to train under the watchful eye of Jim Farintosh, recognized as the ‘godfather’ of dragon boating in Canada, provided the opportunity for the relationship to further develop, along with the desire to share all the knowledge they gained to expand the sport of dragon boating in southern Alberta.

“When COVID struck, locking down in-person training, Scott pivoted to high-caliber stroke and technique virtual training, which I signed-up for, and then so did Suzanne, Linda and Chris,” she said, followed by months of dragon boat specific strength, endurance and yoga training with coaches in British Columbia, and Lethbridge – all virtual. 

For Gilbert, also a full-time employee, balancing work, life and training had its difficult moments, but with guidance from local coach Jimi Pierce she was able to develop an organized schedule to fit in everything, like weight workouts in the company gym at lunch and mobility training late at night. 

Lowings, a retired nurse, was determined to get into peak physical condition, “as the chance to train and compete with a world-class team representing Canada was just too good an opportunity to pass up,” she said. “And yes it was harder that most anything I’ve done before, but it’s been such a valuable experience.”

Johnson was quick to note when the pandemic restrictions were finally lifted and the worlds were going ahead, “the five of us who paddle under the DASA banner reaped the rewards from months of intense training and never compromising on our goal. We are ‘race ready’,”