EIGHT young paddlers from Manning River Dragon Boat Club have capped off a great year of training and competition by travelling to Perth to compete in the Australian Dragon Boat Championships.
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They competed with and against the best in the country, making the finals of every event they raced in.
By the end of the three days of competition they had amassed a very impressive nine gold, four silver and four bronze medals.
The club's seven juniors were Sam Thomson, Sean Page, Alistair Adamson, Josh Barry, Luka King, Kane Dayoub and Nirian Boelling-McDougall.
Competing as the NSW Zodiacs, some events saw them joined by paddlers from Coffs Harbour, Sydney Zodiacs, St Scholasticas and even a few Queensland paddlers who would have otherwise missed the opportunity to compete.
Manning's sole youth paddler, Tara Manahan, paddled with Sydney Zodiacs in the under 24 division.
The paddlers raced over 200m, 500m, and two km in three divisions - Mixed, Women's and Opens; in boats with 10 or 20 crew.
The event started with the State vs State day, with all Taree paddlers representing NSW.
Among the many medals won by NSW Juniors, Taree paddlers took home two gold, one silver and two bronze.
In the U24 Division Tara's NSW teams took out one gold and two bronze.
On 500m race day Taree juniors, took one silver and finished in three more finals, including the 2km race where they were just out of the medals in fourth place.
In the U24 division, Sydney Zodiacs took three gold medals from three events.
In the 200m events the juniors took two more silver, including in the 2km race, and reached a further two finals.
Their fourth place in the open 10's race was a very impressive result which saw them shave over three seconds off their best time.
In the U24's, Sydney Zodiacs again picked up three Gold medals.
For Kane, Luka, Nirian and Alistair this was their first season competing at Nationals.
The Manning club is extremely proud of the all the young paddlers' achievements and commitment to training, which has involved many trips to Sydney to train with NSW/Australian junior coaches Mary Weaver and Tanya White.
Mary and Tanya have given wonderful support, help and encouragement to our juniors, both in training and at competition and the Manning club is extremely grateful for all they have done.
A huge thanks also go to Taree coaches Yvonne and Ted Towers, and junior co-ordinator Brenda Thomson, who have worked hard to encourage junior participation in the Manning and wider North Coast area, and have given our paddlers the best preparation for these titles.
