Ted Yuen: The Helmsman on the Boat and the Navigator of Students
It’s hard to see where the finish line is when you’re racing on a dragon boat, and not being able to grasp the distance makes you apprehensive. But every time, you know the boat won’t go off course, and you can hear the cheering coming from behind. Because he is there.
This year marks 48-year-old Ted Yuen’s 10th year as a Western Dragon Boat Club(WDBC) coach, and it’s also the time he chose to leave. In 2014, Yuen’s friend was looking to step away from the position and recommended him to the school. At that time, Yuen had been paddling for 15 years and just started learning how to coach.
“They (Western University) liked my ideas. They liked my thinking. They liked my attitude.” Then, Yuen was successfully inducted.
I was coached by him for almost two years.
It was also during his first years as a coach that WDBC made a finals for the first time at Centre Island Race. He described it as a “glory race” that people are most proud of.
Yuen lives a two-hour drive from Western University. But during the school years, he persisted in coming to London twice a month to coach each member during water practice on Sundays. He did this for 10 years.
He’s been racing dragon boat since he graduated from college 25 years ago. In 2006, a chance made him even more determined to keep going on this journey.
At that time, one of his ex-teammates told him that a dragon boat team was recruiting members to play in the 2008 Club Crew World Championships (CCWC) in Penang, Malaysia, and asked if he wanted to try out with them. Back then, Yuen felt that he was not good enough and brushed off the idea several times. However, unable to resist the repeated pushing from his former teammates, he finally decided to give it a try.
“I just kept trying out, and they never told me to go home. And I stuck with it.” Yuen said.
Eventually, he made it to the team. Looking back on this experience, he said that his captain at the time saw how hard he was working to join the team, “he guided me and took me under his wing.” And he learned how to lead a team and how to treat others from the captain.
In 2011, Yuen and a group of paddlers started their own team and won the Canadian National Championship. Later, he joined the New Dragons Racing Club (NDRC), a Toronto-based competitive dragon boat club that was established in 2011. Since then, he has travelled the world with NDRC every two years to compete in the CCWC and has brought home dozens of medals.
Not every race was smooth. Yuen and his team experienced many mishaps like seats breaking, boats sinking or breaking, or worrying about not being able to fill the boats.
Nothing that happened on the water could compare to the challenge he found himself facing on dry land two years ago. He was diagnosed with a brain tumour, Schwannoma.
After the surgery, Yuen was unable to walk properly for two or three weeks, lost facial function for a long time, and permanently lost left-side hearing. But when he talked about it, he laughed and called it “a minor inconvenience.” Because - “It only took about one month out of my life, really.”
Perhaps it was this optimism that got him back into dragon boating so quickly, and it was those years of experience that gave him more capital to become a coach.
People came and went in the team, and today, he still plays for NDRC and keeps working out five to six times a week. “Loyalty” is the word he uses to describe himself. “I think it’s a character or a backbone,” Yuen said.
In the summer of 2022, having never raced before, I was unquestionably placed in the B-boat. WDBC has two boats, and while there was no explicit rule that the better athletes would be in the A-boat, everyone knows that the A-boat belongs to the better ones. I was unconvinced, so I asked my former teammate, who by then had already had a competitive season of paddling, how I could get to the A-boat.
She said it’s really simple; you just need to show Yuen you are really trying hard.
That summer, I was going to the gym five times a week, going to other people's garages to practice on the paddle ergometer, and finding carpools to go to a lake 40 minutes drive from London to practice Outrigger Canoeing. Then, I waited for an opportunity.
The A-boat was missing a left pacer, and I had been working as a left pacer in the B-boat before. Throughout the training period of the season, Yuen was constantly switching people around to find the best results. I was switched to the A-boat, and he didn't switch me back after that, so I finished the rest of the season in that position and got my first medal in this sport. He was my captain. He guided me and took me under his wing.
Later on, I asked Yuen about switching people around. He said, “If you want to be on the boat, you got to show me that you can. I got to see that drive that you can fight for that 500 meters.” I guess he saw my efforts.
Many things in life do not come to fruition with hard work. But paddling a dragon boat in Western is different, as long as you work hard, Yuen will give you an equal chance to get on the A-boat.
Also in 2022, David Leung had just taken over the position from the previous president. “Every president has different goals, and each year, clubs change a lot,” he said. And this was just in time for the COVID to pass, the club needed to reorganize after a lull, and there simply weren't enough members recruited to fill a boat. Leung had to ask Yuen a lot of things.
In addition to the technical coaching, Leung said Yuen has become a role model in the way he treats people and leads a team. He described Yuen as more of a “quiet guy”. He won’t get your attention all the time, but when he talks, everyone in the room listens.
Years of experience and his own personality seem to have contributed to his composed nature. “If anything ever happens, I’ll run up to him and I’ll just say, what do we do now? And he’s always very composed like he has a plan of action.” Leung said.
“I aspire to be someone like that,” Leung said. He also respected Yuen’s mentorship because “he cares a lot about developing you as a person, not just as an athlete.”
Leung said that Yuen would comment Happy Birthday on a team member’s FaceBook post. When Leung didn’t plan things out properly, Yuen wouldn’t just bring the mistake up and say, “Hey, can you make sure you meet this deadline for dragon boat next year?” Instead, he will say, “Hey, we are adults. I want us to treat each other as adults. So I think you need to work on your timeliness. You need to have these values of what it takes to be a leader or how to get a team going.”
These traits Leung learned from Yuen apply not only to the Dragon Boat Club but also to the rest of his life. Yuen really wants to make everyone a better person both inside and outside of Dragon Boat. He is the helmsman of the Dragon Boat team and the navigator of countless students' lives.
At the end of the interview, Leung added, “Sometimes people see him as a scary person at the beginning, but once you get to know him a lot more, he’s kind of goofy outside of dragon boat, and he’ll make some funny jokes and stuff.” He also ran to his fridge to show me that Yuen’s favourite beer is Lost Craft.
Yuen's professionalism makes it hard for people to imagine that dragon boating is just a hobby for him. Graduating from Centennial College, he currently works in a construction company, working an eight to five job like many other people.
Yuen is focusing on training for the senior national team now, and his last fight before retirement will be the 17th World Dragon Boat Racing Championships in Germany next year.
