{"id":995823,"date":"2026-08-12T09:51:24","date_gmt":"2026-08-12T09:51:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/995823\/"},"modified":"2026-08-12T09:51:24","modified_gmt":"2026-08-12T09:51:24","slug":"south-phillys-youth-dragon-boat-team-heads-to-taiwan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/995823\/","title":{"rendered":"South Philly\u2019s youth dragon boat team heads to Taiwan"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>From Philly and the Pa. suburbs to South Jersey and Delaware, what would you like WHYY News to cover? <a href=\"#Section1\">Let us know!<\/a>\n<\/p>\n<p>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.\n<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhose boat?\u201d yells Thao Oo, 18, from the bow.\n<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOur boat!\u201d respond the other nine paddlers.\n  <\/p>\n<p>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.\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p>Their journey is an \u201cunderdog story,\u201d said team member Quamirah Smith-Lewis, 15.\n<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe didn\u2019t start out with a lot,\u201d she said. \u201cWe 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.\u201d\n<\/p>\n<p>Those obstacles included early morning and afternoon practices at <a href=\"https:\/\/whyy.org\/articles\/fdr-park-flood-philadelphia-dragon-boat-boathouse\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">FDR Park<\/a> 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.\n<\/p>\n<p>The group got most of their money back from the compromised GoFundMe campaign and is <a href=\"https:\/\/donate.discoverypathways.org\/page\/youthdragon?elementTitle=Popup&amp;elementName=Dragon%20Boat%20Worlds\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">continuing to fundraise on a different platform<\/a>, Forbes said. But in the meantime, the team is thriving on surmounting any setbacks.\n<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe teens love the motto of, \u2018Hungry dogs run faster,\u2019 so we\u2019re always just pushing through challenges,\u201d he said.\n        <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"From Philly and the Pa. suburbs to South Jersey and Delaware, what would you like WHYY News to&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":995824,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5132],"tags":[5229,31681,1448,2830,1311,244497,30723,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":["post-995823","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-america","tag-boating","tag-pa","tag-pennsylvania","tag-philadelphia","tag-schuylkill-river","tag-taiwan","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/117081924052616332","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/995823","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=995823"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/995823\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/995824"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=995823"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=995823"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=995823"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}