My Canoe CCA

Hello everyone,
In this blog post, I am going to do a brief introduction on my CCA and why I joined it as many people have been asking me what my CCA, which is canoeing, is like. Last year, I picked canoeing as a CCA because canoeing is a competitive sport which meant that it would require a high level of fitness and strength. When I was in primary 6, I was very fat and had very poor fitness, I always admired the people around me who had six packs. So, when I went through the CCA orientation, I was being told that through the regular trainings I attend, I will be able to slim down a lot and get a defined muscular body which is something every teenage boy would want. That was one of the reason in which why I joined canoeing. The second reason was that I thought canoeing is a fun outdoor sport and I have always had a liking for water sports since young, and always set on a float in the swimming pool and used my arms to paddle.

Canoeing is an outdoor activity that commonly requires either a single-bladed paddle or a double-bladed paddle. In our school’s canoe CCA, we have many different sorts of boats. They are classified under Canoe and Kayak. Canoes are usually paddled with a single-bladed paddle and the paddler will have to kneel in the canoe. This requires high level of balance as you are prone to capsize when you lean too much to either side of the boat. Canoes are usually called C by the paddlers. Kayaks are paddled with a double-bladed paddle and the paddler usually sits in the boat. This does not mean that kayaks do not require balance as the competition kayaks are very streamlined in order to reduce resistance, this means that the paddler have make sure that he/she must not lean too much out to prevent capsize. The kayaks are called K by the paddlers. Another difference between the canoe and the kayak is that the kayak have a rudder, a short blade at the end of the boat submerged in the water which helps control direction while the canoe does not have. Although the CCA’s name is called canoeing, it maybe quite misleading at times, as it includes dragon boating as well and there is a lot of long-distance running during the trainings.

These are the different boats we have in our boat sheds at MacRitchie Reservoir:
Kayak:

K-1: single seat kayak (paddled by a single paddler)

K-2: double seated kayak (paddled by two paddlers)

K-4: four-seated kayak (paddled by four paddlers)

Canoe

C-1: single kneeling canoe (paddled by a single paddler)

C-2: double kneeling canoe (paddled by two paddlers)

Our coach and teacher-in-charge usually assign smaller-size people to the Cs while the rest are assigned to the Ks. This is due to the fact that bigger and taller size people have more central gravity than the smaller and shorter people, which means that the taller people tend to have less balance than the smaller paddlers.

The competitions we take part in, which our active teacher-in-charge, Mr Yong Yuen Cheng (well-known long distance runner) signed us up for are: Singapore Canoe Marathon, Natioanl Junior Canoeing Championships, National Schools Canoeing Championships, National Schools Dragon Boat Championships, National Canoe Championships, Club Crew World Championships and World Dragon Boat Racing Championships.

For canoe marathon, the distance ranges from 14km up to 21km. I took part in the 16km race this year and got 15th position out of the 40+ plus people who took part. Mr Yong himself took part in the K2, 21km event and got overall 1st.

For National Junior Canoeing Championships and National School Canoeing Championships which would be held in April, the distances will be 500m and 1000m. These canoeing championships are when the different schools in Singapore come together and compete against each other.

For National Schools Dragon Boat Champioships, we will race against the schools in Singapore over short distances of 300m to 500m.

Whereas for Club Crew World Championships and World Dragon Boat Championships, these are international competitions which means that we will get to travel to the country the competition is held in and represent Singapore and compete. These two competitions are dragon boat competitions.

Mr Yong takes all the competitions seriously, especially the National Junior Canoeing Championships and National Schools Canoeing Championships as Mr Yong was formerly the teacher-in-charge of the canoe team in National Junior College our rival school. Mr Yong said that he left NJC because of the poor attitude the canoe team in NJC has. When Mr Yong just joined NJC, NJC were just underdogs. But Mr Yong coached them till they won close to twenty titles under him for over a span of seven years. Mr Yong wanted to do the same to the Hwa Chong canoe team and bring back gold trophies for our school. In order to fulfill his dream, he inspired us with his own accomplishments and an inspirational movie as our team’s attitude towards him is not very positive. We were finally inspired after a few months of training under Mr Yong and experienced immense improvement.