Emily Ma grew up watching dragon-boat
racers clad in ski caps and ski masks paddle through ice
back home in Vancouver, B.C. These days, she’s navigating
warmer waters as one of the coaches for the Stanford Dragons,
a group of 25 Stanford students and alumni who have
raced competitively since 1999.
Dragon-boat festivals in China date back more than 2,000
years. The sport, featuring long dragon-shaped canoes,
has grown in popularity in the past few decades. The
Stanford team was organized by a group of alumni who
were already dragon boating with other teams. Last September,
they won the Novice B division at the Northern California
International Dragon Boat Championship and Festival.
Distinguished by red bandannas and their “fearsome” guttural
cheer, the Stanford Dragons rely on a rhythmic
drumbeat to synchronize their paddling. Regardless
of their size, “everyone has to agree to paddle
55 strokes a minute. You make that agreement and when it
works, you feel like you’re part of a single entity,” says
Ma, ’03, MS ’04.
