The 2019 Australian Dragon Boat Championships was held at Weston Park, Yarralumba in Canberra. It was a 5-day event, where dragon boat clubs across Australia came together to compete in various categories. CYSM Sea Dragons members raced in the State vs State day and the entire team attended the two premier club vs club days, to compete across 2km, 500m and 200m categories.

State vs State was a fantastic opportunity for our team members to compete at the Victorian state level. This year, 24 CYSM Sea Dragons represented Victoria across Premier, Senior A, Senior B and Junior categories as dummers, sweeps, paddlers and even coaches! We hope that you all experienced another level of competition by being a part of the Victorian State Team. Our Victorian State representatives were: 

Premier: 
- Darren Newton (Coach) 
- Boyce Wong (Assistance Coach & Paddler) 
- Anthony Alvior (Paddler) 
- Cat Besido (Drummer) 
- Eric Cham (Paddler) 
- Kevin Kesuma (Paddler) 
- Kai Lin (Paddler) 
- Katie Nguyen (Paddler) 
- Chris Phoumsavanh (Sweep) 
- Sue Phung (Sweep) 
- Yuan Soon (Paddler) 
- Claire Tan (Paddler) 
- Young Tan (Paddler) 
- Melissa Tan (Paddler) 
- April Yeung (Paddler) 

Senior A: 
- Richard Hu (Paddler) 
- Fung Lay (Paddler) 
- Sui Lay (Paddler) 
- Siu Wong (Paddler) 
- Tina Wee (Paddler & Drummer) 

Senior B: 
- John Moffat (Paddler) 
- Benny Teoh (Paddler) 

Juniors: 
- Aidan Meyer (Paddler) 
- Kaitlyn Meyer (Sweep) 

The next two days were hard fought days of racing and the competition this year was fierce. As our club kept improving, so did all other clubs across Australia. This year, we are immensely proud to have received our first medal in the mixed category. The mixed category is one of the most competitive categories and demonstrates the full competitive nature of a club, as both male and female paddlers jointly race together. Last year, in the Premier Mixed 200m race, we came 4th and was shy of 3rd place by 0.36 seconds. This year, we finally did it and placed 3rd with a time of 00:58:01 seconds!

Look at our proud results below:

As always, please see a video summary of AusChamps 2019 by our amazing video editor, Eric Cham, below: