South Philly teens are trying out for Team USA in dragon boating, after a year of underdog success

In a city of underdogs that inspired the Rocky franchise and produced greats like Allen Iverson and surprise Super Bowl champs, they say hungry dogs run faster.

And newbie dragon boat athletes Shwe Tun, Joy Chen, Maritza Texis, Tha Oo, and Say Htoo are starving.

The five South Philadelphia teens are on an improbable journey to try to make the national team in a sport unheard of by their parents only a year ago, propelled by their determination and 11th-hour donations from people moved by their story.

All are refugees or children of immigrants, all were introduced to the high-barrier-to-entry sport last year through a Jefferson Methodist Hospital grant. Yet in less than a week, they’ll compete against more than 120 of dragon boating’s best, many of whom have presumably trained for much longer than the Philly contenders and are better funded.

But Texis, 16, is not thinking about what she lacks.

“It’s a once in-a-lifetime opportunity that I couldn’t pass down and I’ve been working really hard for it,” she said, squeezing into a dry suit should she fall into the cold water during a recent practice at FDR Park. “Even if I don’t get accepted into Team USA, I’d still really love to continue dragon boat racing.”

Where rowing teams max out at eight rowers and a coxswain, a dragon boat features 20 paddlers sitting in rows of two, with one person steering in the rear and what’s called a drummer up front, keeping pace. Unlike rowing, the 2,000-year-old dragon boat racing is not featured in the Olympics but offers stiff international competition nonetheless.

Making the national youth team would not only give the teens bragging rights and access to laser-focused coaching, it would open doors. This year, the World Dragon Boat Racing Championships will be held in Brandenburg an der Havel, Germany.

» READ MORE: If it seems every American is doing dragon boating, you may be right. But it all started in Philadelphia

Ten days from the March 14 tryouts, the team was balancing nerves and fine-tuning their speed runs, while their coach tried to cobble funds for the trip.

Chen, 17, is the first in her wetsuit — recently donated and worn for the first time Tuesday — ready to test a newly donated outrigger canoe boat that Team USA uses to time potential recruits. Though a dragon boat holds 20 paddlers, Team USA wants to see how they handle themselves alone.

The canoe used to test speed has one lateral support float and is as finicky as it looks. The teens have only had a handful of practices with two older hand-me-downs. The trick is to manage steering through wind with powerful strokes without flipping into the water. Doing so during the timed trials would be catastrophic.

“Don’t fall, Joy!” cheer her teammates as she begins to carefully cut through the lake at FDR Park, which was frozen only a couple of weeks ago.

After a couple of sprints on the lake, each looking steadier than the last, Chen diligently follows the round robin set up by her coach Adam Forbes, director of Discovery Pathways, a program that aims to get underserved youth outdoors. The program has historically done this through watershed cleanups, camping, and fishing. A grant to get youths active made it possible for Forbes to assemble a small dragon boat program of 40 kids. It was just happenstance that Chen and others took it up.

Though Chen acts like a natural athlete as she swaps spots on the makeshift weight station with Texis to do a set of burpees, she says it wasn’t always the case.

“Actually, I hated sports, I couldn’t do anything,” she said. “I always had like a B or low A average when it came to gym, I really didn’t want to do it.”

Tun, 15, echoed the sentiment after back-to-back sprints in the water that left him catching his breath. Dragon boating changed his perspective on everything from teamwork to pain tolerance.

“At first I didn’t really like the soreness, the tiredness,” he said. “But each day I came back anyway because I just remembered how fun it was, even if I knew how sore I got.”

The attitude shifts turned into behavioral shifts. Suddenly, the group was embracing the cardio and outdoor workouts in the cold they wouldn’t have been caught voluntarily doing only months ago. And their work paid off.

For a rookie team competing in T-shirts, they immediately punched above their weight. Discovery Pathways placed first in a June regional youth cup. Two months later, they took home the gold in the youth division at the Southeast Asian Water Festival, as well as overall gold for beating the adult teams.

By fall, the team had enough sponsors to pay for matching performance shirts they got to wear in a fall race in New Jersey. The teens took home silver, coming in half a second behind the winning team made up of adults and some competitive dragon boaters. The adults felt bad, said Forbes, not realizing they’d beaten a youth team and impressed by their performance.

Word of the implausible winning team from Philly made it through the dragon boating community and to Team USA, which is based in California. Forbes was invited to send a video of the team. Discover Pathways was given five try out slots.

With only a few months’ notice, the teens have spent most of the winter training for a three-day endeavor where they will be tested on speed, form, and ability to be coached to a higher level.

Obsessed with “keeping up their muscle” — they all bring this up in casual conversation — the teens have kept a five-day a week workout schedule, trying to overcome every disadvantage with the help of their affable leader.

Forbes has been a key figure in making California possible for the kids despite, or maybe because of, his “let’s have fun” attitude to coaching. When the teens first return to the open water after a months-long break due to inclement weather, Forbes’ ambitions are simple.

“My goal is to get on the boat and hopefully not flip,” he tells the teens. “The goal for today is to ease into the water.”

Forbes has taken this one-step-at-a-time approach to everything related to California.

When the kids couldn’t get out on the water, Forbes got some rowing machines donated and installed in their homes. When Chen couldn’t fit one in her house, Forbes and his wife set up a machine in theirs so she could come over and practice. When an outrigger canoe was donated from Florida but with no way to get to Philly, Forbes used his connections again: One volunteer drove the canoe from Florida to North Carolina and another took it the rest of the way.

Forbes then linked the group to more experienced paddlers like Stacey Scanlan, a member and coach of several Philly area teams, including the Philadelphia Dragon Boat Association, the country’s oldest and most decorated team.

Charmed by the “cute and excited” teens, Scanlan agreed to fine-tune their outrigger canoe technique.

“You’re at a disadvantage if you don’t know how to use them, even though it doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re not good at dragon boating, but it has a huge learning curve,” she said. “It’s your own boat, you have to steer it yourself, and it takes a good while to really get used to that.”

Oo, 17, is ready for the feedback and equipped with self-critiques the afternoon she joins them. Oo, who helps set the speed on the actual Discovery Pathways dragon boat, got “smoked” in an earlier outrigger race against Htoo, also 17. He identified some issues with his steering and his initial push off the water so he could work on them with Scanlan.

“I want to make sure that my start is correct,” he said. “I think my main issue over there was that my start wasn’t fast enough and I didn’t get out the hole fast enough.”

Though the stars haven’t always aligned for the South Philadelphians — torrential rain cut into their outdoor practice time Wednesday, Tun got sick — the teens count whatever little wins they can. No one fell out of the outriggers Tuesday.

Another huge win: Forbes found an anonymous donor to pay for their flights and his wife scoured the internet to find the most affordable Airbnb for the team to stay.

Amid all the frenzied activity, the teens are also trying to savor the road to California. Oo hasn’t been on a plane since he arrived in Philadelphia from Thailand when he was 3. Los Angeles County, despite recent wildfires, seems like a nature lover’s dream and the group can’t wait to explore. Their families are also excited. Though they can’t join the group, they’re already tasking the teens with photos of their adventures.

Tun, 15, said she’s trying not to overthink the tryouts or the illness she was battling Tuesday — she still showed up to support her teammates and do some light working out.

“Future me can worry about future me later, I’m trying to stay present and be in the moment,” she said.

Then, like almost all her teammates, a “what-if” slips out.

“But if I do make it, then it would be like an amazing thing.”