<h2>Don&#39;t be afraid to MAKE WAVES!</h2>

Don't be afraid to MAKE WAVES!

Posted by Dr. "Captain" Rob McGregor

Rotarians are not afraid to challenge status quo and make a difference in our communities. So how could we shy away from literally making waves for great cause?

Looking for a great way for your Rotary club to serve, build better friendships and improve teamwork while getting a new kind of workout? Explore the opportunity to sponsor a dragon boat for your local Dragon Boat Festival. All proceeds go to supporting breast cancer survivors. I had been introduced to the sport of Dragon Boat racing by a friend and co-worker when in Philadelphia. When one of our own, Susan Coville-Hall, introduced the concept of Rotarians volunteering to help at the race, I thought it was a great opportunity to build a team and compete. The club stalwarts were a bit skeptical at first but I think all 24 of us became converts when this abstract concept became a reality. The Akron Rotary WAVEMAKERS made their debut at the Portage Lakes Third Annual Dragon Boat festival on July 11, 2015.

Here is some brief back ground. Dragon boats are of Chinese origin. The boats are 45 feet long with ten rows for two paddlers per row and a Dragon's head out front. In the bow of the boat is a seat and a drum to keep pace and there are professional steerers standing on the back. Depending on the festival, the courses are 200 - 500 meters long. Races take between 1 -2 minutes and require strength but most importantly, synchronization.

Only half the team could make our single 60 minutes of paddling practice, the rest got a crash course on land and on the job training! The opportunity for club member involvement extends far beyond the physical competition. We recruited an

artist and graphic designer from our club, Tom Knauer to have his team develop a logo and name, then Karen Meek and her company rapidly turned over our production for our awesome award winning TShirts seen belo

w. Club members organized providing snacks to replenish our carbohydrate stores. As it is an all-day event we expanded our team to include spouses and I brought my daughter in from Philly. Smaller children, family, friends and dogs joined our cheering section and had a great time on the beach. We had a team tent decorating competition on the beach, our team's tent looked awesome - decorated by Sam Lupinski and my daughter. We had our "drummer" dressed as a wave maker hula girl, as Kaley Foster helped raise additional funds in the drummer competition. Our external fundraising was hampered by some technical difficulties with the organized web support of the festival (or lack of technical prowess of our Captain) and our late entry but as I write this we have garnered $500 additional dollars with more to come.

The Akron Rotary WAVEMAKERs easily won two of their three preliminary races, and remained undefeated by beating one of the race favorites in our second heat with our best pace of 1:11 seconds. As rookies, we gained confidence and competence as the day went on. We were clearly motivated by competition so could have benefitted from tougher competition in race one and three as our average times left us short of

qualifying for the finals by mere seconds. I hope we all left feeling inspired by the "survivor" boats’ intensity and sense of hope gained by competing and excelling. We were also inspired by the sense of community coming together for a worthy cause. This experience nailed number three and four of our Four Way Test - building good will and building better friendships, and beneficial to all concerned. WAVEMAKERS will be back!!!!!!

Go make some waves!!!!