Yiling:First and foremost,thank you girls for giving me this opportunity as a captain to lead Lingnan's first Women International Dragon boat team.
It has been my pleasure rowing alongside with all 23 of you lovely girls. Whether rain or shine,or no matter how bad and dirty our training conditions were,you girls are the toughest bunch I've ever known and most hardworking in terms of training attendance. All of you have been nothing short of joy and laughter,making every training so fun and worth looking forward to.
Looking back,two days before the competition we did a simulation of the 600m at the competition ground and the timing was 4:08. Following which,on the day of the competition,we qualified and made it through to the next round with a much faster timing of 3:26,and subsequently at the semifinals,we smashed our existing practice timing and performed even better by 20 seconds with 3:07,clinching top 10!
This amazing achievement of improving our overall timing by one whole minute had not been easy or possible if not for everyone's effort,especially since we are a rookie university girls' team competing in the Opens category with women who are professional rowers. Nonetheless,we fought hard and impressed many.
Thank you Gordon,Julie,the sponsorship and publicity team,my co-captain Callan,as well as my girls for your never ending support during this entire journey. All of you have made my student exchange experience here in Dragon boat really worthwhile and AWESOME!
Now that the door to the first competition has come to a memorable close,many doors of great opportunity stand wide open in the coming year.
One Team,One Dream. Fight for Lingnan,Fight for One Goal!