Brother and sister Jade and Sean Page were a dynamic duo at the Australian Dragon Boating Championships in Queensland. The Manning Dragon Boat Club members paddled hard in 2km, 500m and 200m races, bringing home plenty of medals.
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Jade and Sean paddled in a team from across Australia known as the Aussie Joeys.
“We don’t have enough junior paddlers in our Manning River Dragon Boat club to compete as a team at the Australian championships, which is the case for many regional clubs,’’ Sean explained.
“A team of dedicated coaches pull together junior paddlers from across Australia to compete as the Australian Joeys. I have seen this team grow from 50 paddlers to more than 100 over the last three years. Not only do we get the chance to compete at the national level, but we make friends with junior paddlers from across Australia.”
Jade, who attends St Clare’s High School, was surprised by the results.
“We don’t get the opportunity to train together as a team every week. We hop in the boat and paddle to the start line working out a race plan as we go. It was so good when we reached the finish line with well-trained school teams from Canberra and Sydney. It proved that our club provides us with great training routines that make us competitive on race day.”
Jade was very excited by the women’s events where they proved to be tough competition for last year’s championship team, St Scholastica’s College.
“We placed second to St Scholastica’s, but got closer to them with every race, especially in the 2km race. We were happy with this given this team has been working hard in preparation for racing in Hungary this year.”
Jade came home with three silver and two bronze medals.
Sean won three gold and a silver medal. He really enjoyed the open events. “Our competition was Canberra Grammar who have always dominated this event. We were very excited at coming first in the 200m, 500m and 2km races.”
