Miles Johnson-Foeman

“I remember when I first started dragon boat, I wanted to sit in the pacer position because I thought that they had the best view of the water. You sat in the front, you set the pace for the whole boat, and you didn’t feel like your body was mashed against the person sitting next to you. It was love at first sit when I started sitting in the front of the boat. There, I could work on being a strong technical paddler.

My dragon boat career started by chance. My middle school had just received a grant and they were picking a few 6th graders at random to be on the Healthy Dragons team. It just so happened that the one they picked originally wasn’t there that day, so I was the next choice. Who knows what would’ve happened if my name hadn’t been picked? I probably would have lost interest and gone back to my regular schoolwork. It’s a good thing I didn’t! 

My favorite memory as of right now is logging in one of my best friends to the Pottstown Dragon Warriors. He paddled with me while we were in middle school, but he went into “retirement” during high school. I called him one day after a long day of college classes and asked if he wanted to join me in my fight to be one of the top dragon boat paddlers. He agreed and it was on. Since then, we’ve won several medals at several races and show no signs of stopping.”

[Miles G. Johnson-Foeman (Philadelphia, PA, USA), paddler on Pottstown Dragon Warriors, ex-paddler on Healthy Dragons (branch of Philadelphia Flying Phoenix) and Philadelphia Dragon Boat Association Yutes.]

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