PHOTO COURTESY OF DAWN LEBSACK
Dawn Lebsack of Medicine Hat poses alongside her dragon boat teammate Annette Cameron at the national championships in Montreal from Aug. 18-21.
jtubb@medicinehatnews.com@ReporterTubb
Family is the only thing Dawn Lebsack loves more than paddling and dragon boat racing.
The 57-year-old Hatter was a part of the Coulee Classic Dragons master’s dragon boat crew which earned a silver medal at the national championships in Montreal from Aug. 18-21.
She said it was an unforgettable experience with a group of women she has trained with since 2016.
“It was cool and the medal is amazing, I have not seen a medal like this before,” Lebsack said. “It was very cool and it just kind of proved that mature women can train and be successful in whatever goals they put out.”
Lebsack and her team made up of paddlers from Lethbridge, Taber, Coaldale, Airdrie and Calgary competed in the Senior C division at nationals, for teams aged 50-75. She drives to Lethbridge twice a week to train and practice with the team on top of coaching and paddling with a team in Medicine Hat.
She said the team in Lethbridge is a tight knit group which she says is important in a sport like dragon boat racing where each person has to work in sync with the other.
“You all need to be committed because if you don’t have the commitment to go to practices or festivals, you can’t make it as a team,” Lebsack said. “Granted most of us are parents of some sort, either human babies or fur babies, and we all have these outside responsibilities and some of us are still working as well. The coaches of this team are very accepting that if life happens and you can’t come, that’s OK. You do what you need to do to make your life better right now.”
Lebsack’s team lost to the dragon boat team from Pickering, Ont., which she says consistently attends nationals and competes at the World level. She said getting to be part of a team of mature women that can train and perform at that high level is something she is proud of.
“It’s a super awesome feeling and I’m very proud of the team that I coach here in Medicine Hat and our association, it’s probably close to 60-70 people and we’re all in the upper age of over 30-40 years old, up to 70,” Lebsack said. “Whenever the team I coach wins the race and they do their personal best, they almost make me cry. I get very, very proud. I’m extremely proud to take a person who has never held a dragon boat paddle or sat in a dragon boat before and help them get into time to make that boat move and float over the water. It’s a different experience and it’s a different technique.”
Editors note: An earlier version of the story misspelled Dawn Lebsack’s last name as Lesack.
