Dragon Boat 2015
After two years of an upsetting 2nd place finish, WMST finally regained their glory and cinched the win for the 2015 YMCA Dragon Boat Races! It was a great turn out this year with many WMST members and friends of members as well!
The first even was Human Foosball which involved four quarters and five players per quarter. Just like the standard miniature version popular at arcades, players found themselves in a life-size inflatable version and had their hands strapped onto a large metal pole and feet/head/elbows were your only way to move the ball. After an intense back and forth of scoring between the opposing team and WMST, we succumbed in the final quarter and lost our first event. Scorers for WMST included Tim Vibrock and Heidi Hall.
Human Foosball was followed immediately by Sumo Soccer, which is always a favorite, composing of four quarters with five players per quarter. Imagine holding a giant and oversized inner tube around you and running around a soccer field trying to kick a ball at your feet that you cannot see…because of the giant inner tube…and that will give you a good idea of what Sumo Soccer looks like. The four quarters ended in a tie with the opposing team and required a shoot-out, in which WMST was victorious! Two goals came from outstanding performer Walid Ben Ismail.
Finally time for our first boat, with both experienced and new rowers on the boat. The Dragon Boat consists of 18 rowers, one flag catcher, and one drummer. The key to the Dragon Boat is rhythm and following the lead of the first two rowers. The drummer helps to keep time (but mostly is just there for ceremonial purposes and to look good…your fearless, and pregnant, captain Alana Wilson took that role), while the official time of the Dragon Boat stops once the flag catcher (performed masterfully by Kim Baty) hoists herself on the top of the dragon head and grabs the flag pole at the end of the 500 meter course. Our first heat in the Dragon Boat was won easily with a time of 2:05, and was more than seven seconds ahead of the next team.
Next up was an all-time old-school favorite that brought everyone back to their gym glass days – Dodgeball! Best out of three games with 10 players per game. New rules imposed by the YMCA involved an added level of difficulty whereby you could win not only by knocking out everyone on the opposing team, but also by knocking down small orange cones at the back of the opposing teams line. WMST won the first game, while the opposing team won the second game, causing a tie-breaking third game to take place. Ryan Toman showed off his skills as the last man standing and managed to knock down all of the cones on the opposing team!
WMST headed back to the boat after dodgeball for another round and the chance to advance into the finals. With the weather conditions deteriorating (wind and rain), we managed to win our head once again in a time of 2:08, allowing us to advance to the finals as the fastest seeded team and so far undefeated.
The YMCA brought the popular TV Game Show “Minute to Win It” to the Woodlands. First up was Joey who had to hold a long piece of dry spaghetti noodle in his mouth and retrieve dry penne pasta noodles onto the spaghetti noodle, which was successfully done in less than one minute and with great skill! This was followed by two sets of charades, the first of which brothers Austin and Sean Wilson joined forces and had to mime different jobs, which they did so as if they’d grown up playing charades together their whole lives! The next set of charades involved showing off dance moves, and Tara Daley and Danielle Bradford joined forces and lit up the dance floor with their fast feet! Tim Vibrock had to shoot down several ping pong balls perched atop a golf tee with a straw and a cue tip, again successfully completed in less than one minute! The final two events were a team effort and involved lining up covers of People’s Magazines “Sexiest Man” in chronological order…we were not successful in our attempt at this, but it could have been because the ladies were distracted by the eye candy on the covers! The final event involved lining up popular toys in chronological order, again we came close but had two toys swapped in the order and failed that challenge as well. Despite those final two challenges, WMST ended up with the highest score of the day out of all teams for Minute to Win It. This was a team first at this event as usually we struggle a bit more!
The Wet & Wild Obstacle course Relay was our final event before the last boat. It involved the whole team split into different sections of the relay. The first part involved filling up a bucket of water with a sponge and running a slalom course back and forth while holding the bucket of water overhead and not spilling any! Despite swimmers generally not being known for our gracefulness on land, we did surprisingly well at this portion of the course, which I attribute mostly to the fact that water was involved! The second part of the course involved tossing nerf water balls in to a small baby pool approximately 10 meters away and was completed quickly. Next up was using water guns to knock several whiffle balls atop of poles…which was where we ran into some trouble! The key to this portion of the relay was working together as a group, which we didn’t really have a problem doing, it was just that after 3 days of the YMCA Dragon Boat event, the water guns were in less than great shape and it was difficult to get enough force our of them to combine the water flow to knock down the balls! After finally completing this section, the last group of WMST swimmers had to kick soccer balls into a small baby pool, and thus ended the relay.
Finally, the finals of the Dragon Boat were up next. We were lucky enough to have the same sterns man for all three of our races and we developed a good report with him. He told us that we were given the toughest lanes for this final heat and that in order to win the boat, we had to beat all of the other teams on the first lap by at least five seconds in order to win coming home. We got the short straw and ended up in the longest lane coming home. It goes without saying that all of our competitive nature kicked in at that moment and we rose to the challenge, easily beating the other three teams on the first lap. As we lined up for the last lap, in the longest lane with the wind and rain in our faces, we all dug deep for the final lap and came out victorious with our fastest time yet of 2:02 to win the final Dragon Boat, which cinched the win for the whole event! Not only did we win the ridiculously large stuffed dragon for winning the entire event, but we also got a smaller dragon as a prize for being “Star Performers”!
Many thanks to our cheerleaders who showed up to support us, and as Captain, I would like to thank the entire 2015 Dragon Boat Team for toughing out a long and fun day in the rain: Anne Blount, Emily Blount, Tara Daley, Janis Gebhart, Stacey Eicks, Tracey Shoemaker, Lindsay Shoemaker, Heidi Hall, Danielle Bradford, Meredith Cox, Patti Bates, Kim Baty, Jacob Wilson, Austin Wilson, Sean Wilson, Jing Yang, Bill Blount, Ryan Toman, Scot Marshall, Ted Eicks, Walid Ben Ismail, Mick Long, Ryan Holloway, Tim Vibrock, Steve White, Joey, David Williams, and Michael Collins.
-Alana Wilson