When two enthusiastic students first convinced math teacher Julie Jones to help organize a Tantramar Regional High School (TRHS) team for the Greater Moncton Dragon Boat Festival back in 2006, Jones thought the goal of raising $1800 would be tough to accomplish. Now, 17 years later, a small army of 196 students and 14 staff at the school have raised over $45,000 and counting. “Right now I have a total of $45,539,” said Jones on Tuesday. “And there’s still money coming in.”
Jones says the team surpassed last year’s record amount of $39,000. “I’m pretty pretty darn proud of these kids,” said Jones. “It’s pretty amazing.”
Katerina Hicks is the leader of this year’s Dragon Boat council. The graduating student says it is “absolutely wonderful” that a small community like Tantramar was able to raise such a large amount of money to go towards the Lions Sick Children’s Fund and other charities chosen by students. “I’m so proud to be a part of that,” says Hicks.
To raise the money, the students ran a number of activities and events, including a carnival, popcorn and vegetable and flower seed sales, and two shows featuring Nova Scotian hypnotist Ian Stewart. “One of the good things about Dragon Boat is that not only can we fundraise money for charities,” says student council member Mack Faulkner, “but also do it in ways that engages our community.”
Faulkner will captain one of the TRHS teams that will race this Friday on Jones Lake in Moncton. It’s one of the few school days when students “get to hang out with friends, to cheer with all the other Titans and have, essentially, the whole day of just having fun and enjoying being with your fellow students,” says Faulkner.
Jones says a parent committee is working on setting up a Titans Village for the students at the lake on race day, complete with shelters and food. The students will arrive around noon to start getting ready for the races, including applying face paint to match the colour of their boats. Jones says lots of community members make the trip to see the races.
“You have to go to experience, to see how awesome it is, to see all that school spirit,” says Jones. “It kind of gives you chills to be there. When you have 196 kids all in a big circle doing their cheer circle and cheering and getting pumped up right before the races.”
This year, Tantramar had eight teams ready to race, but thanks to the success of the girls rugby team, which will see them competing in the provincial championship game this Friday, one team had to be dropped from the roster for race day.
This is the last year in the festival for both Faulkner and Hicks, as both head off to university next year. Faulkner is headed to Kingston Ontario to attend Queen’s, and Hicks is off to Acadia to study biology. They both says they’ll be taking some extra leadership and organizational skills with them, thanks to their time working on the DragonBoat council.
”I feel like I’ve learned who I would like to be as a leader,” says Hicks, citing Julie Jones’ as an example of “a type of leader that you want to follow… She’s really taught me to be respectful as a leader,” says Hicks, “and build relationships with the people you are working with, and get their input.”
The Greater Moncton Dragon Boat Festival starts this Friday afternoon at Jones Lake in Moncton. There’s still time to help the Tantramar team raise even more money, and attain the coveted prize as top fundraising school. You can find further info by looking for TRHS_Official on facebook or other social media.