by John M. O’Hara Jr.

Black clad paddlers sit poolside and paddle for 30 minutes. Paddles flail like the legs of a giant centipede, pulling water to the point where it whirlpools. The only thing missing is a drummer.   

‚ÄúOur drummer just moved to New York,‚Äù said Rachel Zucker, a history teacher at Burlington High School.  Zucker, along with a battalion of enthusiastic paddlers, practices for the Living Root Dragon Boat Club of Greater Boston twice weekly at the JFK middle school on Elm Street half the year, she said.

When the weather is warm, the team moves to the Charles for practice, said Zucker.

“Out on the river you can see the sun setting over the city. The river practices are amazing,” she said.

“It’s great exercise,” said Margo Mungovan, a Montessori teacher from Beverly.

Coach Bob Lee said he begins each practice with a twenty minute warm-up, drawing points from martial arts and yoga.

‚ÄúIt helps you build mental and physical strength,‚Äù Mungovan said.   

‚ÄúI wanted to do it for the competition,‚Äù said Brian Caldwell, a systems engineer from Marlboro. Caldwell said he found the team on Craigslist, did some reading on it and thought it seemed intense. ‚ÄúI came one day and I just kept coming back.  It‚Äôs addictive.‚Äù

Zucker became interested in the sport after seeing a race in Taiwan, she said.

‚ÄúThere were all these little people in boats,‚Äù she said, chopping at the air below her chin with her flattened palm.  ‚ÄúI was like, ‚ÄòI have to do that,‚Äô‚Äù she said.

The team is tentatively planning to travel for races this year in San Fransisco, Montreal, Flushing and maybe Pheonix, among others, said Zucker. ‚ÄúThe Boston race is medium sized.  Montreal was insane. We‚Äôre going to come back this year and show them we learned a lot,‚Äù she said. 

“All summer is all races, it’s really fun,” said Zucker.

Dragon Boating is a sport born of an ancient Chinese tradition, according to the team’s website, livingroot.org.

In ancient China, races were held as a fertility ritual to insure a prolific harvest. The Chinese Dragon, a symbol of water and prosperity, rules rivers, seas, clouds and rains. The races, symbolic battles between rival dragons, awakened the dormant dragons and rain ensued, according to the site.

The ritual further evolved in the fourth century when noted Chinese poet and patriot, Qu Yuan, banished from the kingdom, made himself a martyr. 

LRDBC of Boston was founded in 2005 and is supported by a host of corporate sponsors including Starbucks, Tsingtao Beer, Boston Billiards and Patagonia, among others, according to the Web site.

“We need a really tiny female. She doesn’t need to be Asian, just loud,” said Zucker.