BY DONNA COCHRAN
FOR SPIRIT POINT DRAGONS
At the opening dragon boat festival of the season, Salt Spring’s Spirit Point Dragons won silver at the Fairway Gorge Super Sprints on Satur-day, May 24.
The “Sprints” is the first Fairway Gorge Paddling Club festival of the season. The 200-metre races promised to be “quick and crazy” and a chance to showcase the teams’ spring training work. The festival hosted 19 women’s teams and 17 mixed teams competing in three races — a placement heat, semi-final and final.
Spirit Point’s times in the placement heat (1:00.145) and semi-final (59.295) placed them in the Mixed A final (second highest level in the fes-tival). Their final race was their best of the day with a quick start and fast-paced sprint to the finish. Spirit Point silver medal finish time of 57.131 was a hair behind first place VIP GD Alumni (56.781) and ahead of third place VCPC Dragon Flyers (58.049).
Coach Michael Peirce was elated with the team’s strong performance and awesome start to the new paddling season. A huge thanks goes out to our manager Barry Green, coach/caller Lynda Green and steersperson Tom McKeachie, who deftly handled some strong currents throughout the day.
Team paddlers included Cora Platz, Sheena Frisch, Audrey Denton, Sam Goddard, Stewart Rimmer, Melynda Okulitch, Michael Peirce, Ann Marie Davidson, Louisa Taylor, Chloe Frisch, Gwynneth Ortlepp, John Ortlepp, Chris Ortlepp, Leah Chang and Andrew Okulitch. Special pad-dles up to our newbies who raced for the first time — Libby Barrett and Molly James — and to our three guest paddlers from Nanaimo Pad-dling Club’s Nusa’Lon Dragons: Jona Hanna, Kix Citton and Natalie Gillon. Many team members wore shimmery, colourful leggings to honour our team member April Ray, whom we lost late last year.
If you want to give dragon boating a try, new paddlers are welcome. Our practices are Mondays and Thursdays from 5:30 to 7 p.m. For more information, contact coach Peirce at mpstripad@gmail.com.