 “It was the best feeling in the world,” says Andre Earle, captain of the Confucius Institute (CI) at The UWI St. Augustine’s Dragon Boat racing team. Andre and his teammates have good reason to celebrate after their first place finish in B division of the Ambassador’s Cup.
The race was part of the Chinese Arrival Dragon Boat Festival held in mid-October in Chagville, Chaguaramas to commemorate the history and culture of Trinbagonians of Chinese descent. The UWI team defeated all competition in their division, quite an achievement considering they had only begun practising as a team two days before the race.
“The team (made up of UWI students and staff) really only started training about five weeks prior to the regatta. Two days before the race we actually met and put together the ten-person squad for the race,” Andre said. “We had five sessions. The people unfamiliar with dragon boat racing learned how to row and the people who were familiar learned to row together.”
Yet amazingly they were able to not only win their race but to do so by two boat lengths, one of the longest recorded at the regatta. Andre, a second-year student at the Faculty of Medicine and a seasoned dragon racer, credits the attitude of the entire team (20 people in total including reserves).
“Everybody came with the right mindset,” he says. “We were all open to working together. We wanted to work together. We wanted to be a team.”
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