3rd Annual Northern CDBA Championships - October 3 & 4

She's numbah wone!

The Battle of the Dragons was billed as "The Most Competitive Dragon Boat Race in 1998 in Northern California." Which is true considering these years were the infancy years for dragon boating in California. It was held at Leo Ryan Park, Foster City, California Oct 3rd and 4th, 1998.

Leon, Wynne, and Kenny had graduated from college the prior year and we had such grand aspirations for our new club.

Leon was working at the architecture firm SMP/SHG at the time and was able to convince a large number of them to join the team. The team was overwhelmingly comprised of architects during this race and was able to have a banner and new uniforms purchased for this mostly corporate team with their logo affixed. Our jerseys even had numbers like a professional sports team.

Kenny reminiscing August 2010

As you know, we have received partial sponsorship from the architectural office of SMP-SHG Los Angeles, and will be representing them during the races in San Francisco. We have also received some donations from various engineering firms in the Los Angeles area.

Happy smiles all around.

I will be able to provide a list of them at a later date. So far, we have collected enough donations to send a team of 24 persons to San Francisco -- covering entry fee, roundtrip airfare, racing jerseys, and possibly some food for the race days. We will ask that for now, each participant find some lodging on their own. I will be able to provide a list of convenient hotels, reasonably priced, close to the race area later as well.

Please go through some of the information that I've enclosed to get some background information on the history of dragonboat racing, the race itself, festival activities during the weekend, and other sponsors and events.

Henry Chiang

Row 3: Joel Blank, Sue-Meng Lau, ??, ??, Greg Kromhout, ??, Kenny Kim, Tom Havel, ??, Charles Chung, Bill Ash
Row 2: Maryam Belli, Huay, ??, Leon Cheng, Wynne Wong, Wileen Wong, ??, Eddie Liu
Row 1: Jason Cheng, Henry Chiang, Dennis Wang, ?? Noel Wu