It’s a sport that’s consistently gaining popularity in Lethbridge. With the annual dragon boat festival bringing in a huge number of boats to the city. Many have caught the bug, to go dragon boating, and this week some dedicated teams are taking their talents south of the border. Eleven Lethbridge teams will be heading to the 3rd annual Montana Dragon Boat Festival on the weekend. The boats will make the usually quiet waters of Henderson Lake a busy place for practices.
Alex Seberg certainly knows her way around the water, she’s the lead stroke for her dragon boat team, called the Leftovers. A name that Seberg came up with herself.
“We’re kind of the leftovers of all these other teams from the Lethbridge area and we all have bumper stickers naming what kind of leftover item we might, or might not be.”
The Lethbridge teams will invade Kalispell, Montana for one of the biggest dragon boat festivals in North America. In total seventy-five teams and over two-thousand paddlers from across the north west United States and western Canada will take part. Dragon Boating veteran Jim Manzara loves to support these types of events.
“It’s a support for dragon boating in not only western Canada, but all of North America. It’s kind of neat that Kalispell would come up and join us here at out festival so we thought we’d show support for them,” said Manzara.
Many of these teams are experience and want to put on a good performance in Montana, but competitors like Eric Marshall know they have to work as a unit to be successful.
“With dragon boating it’s very important to work together as team, the paddle’s need to be synchronized, everybody’s got to be at the same level and working together.”
The teamwork has already started, as many teams plan to carpool down to Montana.
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