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On a recent afternoon, the sun glints off the Schuylkill River as Discovery Pathways Youth Dragon Boat Team glides through the water, paddles cutting through the thick, humid air while they push off from the deck.
“Whose boat?” yells Thao Oo, 18, from the bow.
“Our boat!” respond the other nine paddlers.
The team of teenagers from low-income, predominantly immigrant and refugee families focuses on technique and rhythm during one of their final practices before they fly across the world to represent South Philadelphia at the dragon boat world championships in Hualien, Taiwan, at the end of August.
Their journey is an “underdog story,” said team member Quamirah Smith-Lewis, 15.
“We didn’t start out with a lot,” she said. “We try to train as much as we can, but there are a lot of obstacles in our way. And even with all that, we still manage to show up and make the time for it.”
Those obstacles included early morning and afternoon practices at FDR Park and on the Schuylkill River, and a hacked GoFundMe, said Adam Forbes, coach of the youth dragon boat team and executive director at Discovery Pathways, a small nonprofit based in South Philly focused on environmental education and health.
The group got most of their money back from the compromised GoFundMe campaign and is continuing to fundraise on a different platform, Forbes said. But in the meantime, the team is thriving on surmounting any setbacks.
“The teens love the motto of, ‘Hungry dogs run faster,’ so we’re always just pushing through challenges,” he said.