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Dragon Boat Canada


IDBF


Canoe Kayak Canada

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[LARDCore]

Just wondering what other teams do to select their competitive/top crew.  Do you factor in attendance/participation?  Do you set minimum attendance requirements during the season and in off-season.  Do you do time trials???

Currently, our team uses time trials on an ergometer and coaches consider attendance/participation as well.  The coaches (I'm one of them) feel that they can put together a pretty strong team, but there seems to always be some issues w/ strong paddlers that don't show their face too often.

Just wanted to see what other teams out there do and how they deal w/ the "complainers"...

[paddleboy]

 sorry gagged ............

[paddleho]

As a coach it took me some time to adjust to the fact that what counts most is the team's shared values. The team has to decide as a group how selection is going to work. i.e. if attendance counts, the 'elite drop-in' type knows up front they might not get seated if they don't show their face once in a while. Or the opposite: if power counts and attendance doesn't, the 'complainers' know that up front and have the option of finding a team that operates in a way they can live with.

Now, if the team decides as a group that the coach is all-powerful and has to make the seating decision as s/he sees fit, then we're back to the drawing board. Dryland fitness tests (strength and cardio) as well as on-water solo trials make sense to me. (I saw an interesting list of dryland fitness tests on this site a while ago. Has anyone implemented them?) I think attendance counts too: not just because it is an indication of commitment, but because a team can get a lot of power out of wanting to excel for each other ... as opposed to resenting the drop-ins and fantasizing about drowning them.

Whatever the criteria, the scheme has to be communicated to everyone early in the season. It's the best way to minimize the complaints, the acrimony and the bruised egos.

My 2 cents.

[LARDCore]

how do teams account for attendance?  

is there a minimum amount of pratices required to be considered for the competitive team, or is it, whoever has the most attendance, gets some sort of multiplier/points/etc. that will be used to determine seating?

[paddleboy]

gagged again.............sorry

[Backward Rowing]

Whatever the criteria, the scheme has to be communicated to everyone early in the season. It's the best way to minimize the complaints, the acrimony and the bruised egos.

My 2 cents.

i

[LARDCore]

i WISH we could do an on-water time trial - i have an oc-1 and have access to a few more, but the problem is, not everyone knows how, or wants to learn to paddle an oc1.  our team brass is also concerned w/ liability.  i agree that would be the best test.  so we're left w/ the erg (we use the paddling adapter) and attendance.
i've realized that no matter what system we decide to use, people will bitch.  that's just the nature of the beast....

as to your comments about people pulling a good trial on a erg and flopping on the water, i agree.  there are a few on my team that pull well on the erg but when i watch them paddle in the boat, it looks like the water is pushing pack the paddle harder than they are pulling....

[WahinePaddler]

Another downside to doing time trials on an erg is that they do not take into consideration the power-to-weight ratio. You may have paddler that performs very well on the erg, but that adds a lot of weight to the boat. For example, I am not physically as strong in the gym or on the erg as several of our other female paddlers, but they weigh a lot more than me. Extra weight on the boat is extra resistance. The on-water time trials give the most accurate account of who is strongest on the water, since you have to pull your own weight and then some to move the boat forward.

Due to the fact that some people do not know how to steer an OC-1 well, we do our time trials in OC-2's. We have one person designated as the steersperson for the entire team (usually our caller), and the steersperson just sits and steers the boat, he does not paddle. This gives every member of the team the chance to perform to the best of their ability, there is no advantage to being able to steer an outrigger, and since we have the same person steer for every trial, every paddler is paddling a boat that essentially weighs the same before they get into it. This way we can see who is strongest and fastest on the water. In this situation, even though a person may not be as strong on land as another, they still can prove that they may be more of an asset to the boat so long as they have a better strength-to-weight ratio.

[Sun]

How much does style/technique count for? A very strong person can pull a lot of water, but he/she may have bad technique. Also, if your boat paddles a certain style, will someone with a different style disrupt your boat?

[WahinePaddler]

How much does style/technique count for? A very strong person can pull a lot of water, but he/she may have bad technique. Also, if your boat paddles a certain style, will someone with a different style disrupt your boat?

You bring up a very good point. One that is often difficult to address. Ideally, you want to develop your paddlers such that you do not have any with poor technique. In addition, an experienced team should be composed of experienced paddlers who can adapt so that everyone is using a similar style, a team that can "gel" will be capable of this (this comes with time, many competitive teams are made up of paddlers who have been paddling seriously for many years, doing both outriggers or kayaks as well as dragonboats).

However, this is not always the case. If you are in a situation where you have a select few paddlers who have poor technique but who are strong enough to validate even having them on the boat, then put them in one of the last rows. This way, their technique, or lack thereof, should not significantly affect the rest of the boat. Same thing goes for incorporating a paddler with a different style, put them in the last row. If you have too many paddlers with either poor technique or different styles to employ this solution,  then addressing these issues in practice is likely your next course of action. You may want to spend a little time working on gelling and fine-tuning technique.

Ultimately, if a paddler is fast enough in an on-water time-trial to be selected for a competitive team their technique must not be too bad. Strength will only take you so far, proper application of that strength with an efficient stroke is what makes the boat go fast.

But when it comes right down to it, if you are trying to select a competitive team, technique does count for something. You can have the 20 strongest paddlers on one boat, but if they can't blend together and if they can't get the timing down, then the boat won't go anywhere. That's where practice come into play. Paddlers need to paddle together to reach their greatest potential. A strong, fast paddler who never comes to practice and therefore cannot blend with the rest of the boat will not be as great of an asset to the boat as a slightly slower paddler who can blend.

There is a lot involved in selecting a comptetitive team, and no equation that I've seen thus far is perfect, but you do the best you can with the tools you have available.