All two minutes of exciting race footage, plus the results reveal and ensuing elation.
Lightwave Takes Gold at 2011 Treasure Island
A big congratulations to all members of Lightwave for a spectacular effort at the 2011 San Francisco International Dragon Boat Festival. What better way to close out the racing season than with some hardware, and gold hardware, at that!
Lightwave started off strong in the seeding heat with a second place finish, losing to the San Diego Dragon Boat team. A lapse in overall timing contributed to a disappointing fifth place finish in the quarterfinals. After a night’s rest, the team came back strong to take first place in the Recreational Division A semi-final. Finally, with a long, slow stroke rate set in everyone’s mind, Lightwave pulled together for an amazing first place finish, just 0.44s ahead of Dragon Hearts Beat.
In the gender and specialty races, Lightwave Mens learned a new technique to try from their cooperation with the River City Dragons (Winnipeg, Canada); Team Moochy fostered an even stronger bond of friendship between the women of Lightwave and friendly rival DieselFish; and the Masters continued to show the junior paddlers how it’s done.
With an abundance of paddlers on the Lightwave race roster, some of the paddlers were given paddling time with other teams. Nevertheless, they are still members of the medal-winning Lightwave family! Thanks for the dedication and determination they show to Lightwave.
Races are over, but practices are not! Keep coming to Sunday practices to keep up with your paddling or give steering or drumming a try. And now is a good time to bring your friends along; we can always use a second boat next season!
Stay tuned for more practices and more social activities to come. This post was made possible by the letters G, O, L, D, with additional support from the exclamation points, !, !!, and !!!.
2010 SF Int’l Dragon Boat Festival
This year at the Treasure Island race, Lightwave rounded out the 2010 season with well-deserved SILVER medals in Recreational Division A, losing to the UC Davis Racing Dragons by a mere 0.5 seconds.
Lightwave also met new friends among the teams who combined paddlers to form a mens, two womens, and masters boats. Our thanks go out to DieselFish, VIO, and LifeScan, and congratulations to the Masters team for making the finals!
Awesome performance by the team at Treasure Island, resulting in GOLD medals in the Recreational Division A consolation final! We also hosted team DPW from LA and had another traditional watermelon eating contest with twists :)
A bunch of videos are posted here.
Great job at Treasure Island! First place in Recreational Division A!! We won Goooooooooooold baby!!!
2007 Treasure Island Race
The night lazily crept to the horizon’s edge on the first day of the season’s final race, as Lightwave paddlers headed to the Treasure Island. Newly-christened Watermelon (aka 1) and Pineapple (aka 2) crews were scheduled to race in the first two heats. The team finished the setup logistics just in time for the drizzling rain…
Final Conquest Attempt at 2006 Treasure Island
Fighting against cold Saturday morning weather, Lightwaver arrived at Treasure Island for the final race of the season. Apparently Coach Jackie’s “six forty-five… six forty-five…” hypnotize attempt did have some effect since everyone was at the tent ‘relatively on-time.’
After warmup and calorie intake, the team paddled the first seeding race with
expected result. The second seeding race was pretty intense. The team managed to take the leading position with the second team just a second away. Partnering with Alameda Dragonflyers, the team closed the day with
two gender races.
This year, Team DPW was assigned as our ‘chow down’ host team. They were loud and rambunctious, total opposites of Lightwave. Team DPW was an awesome team to hang out with. Our combined team dinner was an unforgettable memory.
With the excellent results from the Day 1 seeding races, the team earned a spot in the Recreational division A semifinal as their first race on the second day. This means that we were against some of the best recreational teams. The race was very intense with teams taking no 2 to 5 positions reaching the finish line within 2 seconds time span. Unfortunately, the team was just 2 seconds away from no 2. This placed the team into consolation A at the final race which we finished 3rd.
Although we did not win any hardware, Lightwave did conquer the Watermelon Eating Contest against Team DPW with special thanks to Dan, Frank, Leann, Wendy, Coach Jackie, our Watermelon King and everyone cheering on.
Lightwave will continue to bind together to paddle our way up the divisions. With some luck and aggressive recruiting efforts next year, we hope to pit a second boat. Maybe we can recruit callers willing to fall into the water to exorcise some bad luck.
Lightwave sends Special Thanks to our Saviour Foodies, Jennie, Dan, Charles, Mei, William, Gloria (Jennie’s sister), Frank, Leann, Chris, Nelly, Giny and Olivia.
Both hands and feet up to Captain Ray and Coach Jackie for the Ultimate sacrifice to coach and lead the team through our many practices and races this year. Thank you and GO WAVES!!
