Oshkosh Dragonboat Club

Hey all,
It’s time to start planning to be part of the Oshkosh Dragonboat Club.  Spring is here!  We’ve been working and are getting the boat out of storage this week, so you know it’s time for “Paddles up!”.  It’s also time to pass the work to your friends that they too can become a member, or a steersperson, and have fun with people who like to paddle!

Check out the new Oshkosh Dragonboat Club site:
http://www.oshkoshdbc.com/
We now have an official site, thanks to Matt Suwalski.  It is a start, and we have a lot of work to do yet to get it really fully functioning.

We are planning on our first club meeting on Saturday, May 9 at 9 a.m.  We hope you can join us this year, so mark your calendar now.  More information will be coming as the date is closer.

Several people from the club have been meeting recently (all happen to be steers for the club).  We’ve been dealing with constitution, steeers training, and all the logistics required to start this organization.  Thank yous go to Jim Chitwood, George Paul, Matt Suwalski, and Rod Halbleib for their work this past couple of months.

With the planning that has taken place, it is our intention to:

1.  Have regular dragonboat club meetings once a week from May through October.
2.  Approve a working constitution, and elect officers for the new club for UW Oshkosh as well as community members.
3.  Recruit and train steers people this year that will steer for all outings at club meetings, steer for Racine’s Race in July, and Oshkosh’s race in September.  If anyone is interested in becoming a steersperson, please contact me!  We hope to train with Racine in May and June.
4.  Set up our registration for the club, as well as our treasury, and register as many club members as possible.
5.  Eventually, we hope to have competitive teams form from the club membership and race in our event as well as travel to compete.
6.  Support the Oshkosh Dragon Boat Race and Festival with our club (steers people, volunteers, practice, etc.).

There is much more to come, but this is on the horizon.  We’ll be sending out more promotion and information soon about club dues and joining this year.  We hope to get even more people interested in joining, and paddling on the Fox with our fantastic club.

Please let me know if you have any questions.  As I said, I’ll be in touch again soon with more details.  Just wanted you to know we are alive after a long winter, and looking forward to our first meeting on May 9th.

Randy Hedge