They don't expect to knock the Flyers or Phillies off the sports pages, but why can't national champions and world contenders get a little recognition in their own home town?
"In Hong Kong, they love us; they treat us like kings," says lean, muscular Sam Heed. "Here, we're nothing. And we're the national champions."
The 37-year-old Haverford School history teacher is a member of the Philadelphia Dragon Boat Team, now off at world competition in Hong Kong and China.
Sure, dragon-boat racing is probably Philadelphia's smallest, most obscure sport. But these guys live up to the sportswriters' lexicon of cliches: dead serious, finely honed, fiercely competitive, rock-hard, simon-pure amateurs who compete for the love of sports.
A dragon boat is a low-slung, heavy wooden craft with 20-paddlers, a steersman and drummer to keep the beat. Racing them is a Chinese tradition that goes back a couple of thousand years. It's tied in with legend, ceremony and religion.
Back in 1983, Hong Kong decided to create international competition. An invitation was sent to the U.S. Rowing Association headquartered in Philadelphia. The late John B. Kelly Jr. was intrigued and put together a team.
Actually, the sport is closer to canoeing than rowing; the paddles and stroke are the same. The invitation should have gone to the canoe group, but came to the rowing association by mistake.
The Hong Kong sponsors donated the 2,000-pound boats, and the Philadelphians did very well.
There are now more than a dozen other American dragon-boat teams, but Philadelphia is a perennial powerhouse - thanks, in part to the determination of brothers, Bob and Pete McNamara, who have jointly run the team for many years as coach-paddlers.
Bob McNamara, 38, the current coach and an emergency-room physician, rowed on the La Salle College varsity eight in 1977, the year the school won the Dad Vail Regatta. Brother, Pete, 36, is a lawyer who also rowed for La Salle.
It's a custom-made sport for jocks who are just a bit over-the-hill in their own sport but still fit, strong and full of competitive juices.
"Our average age is 32," Bob McNamara says. "We have swimmers, wrestlers, canoeists, you name it."
There is keen competition just to make the team. Tryouts are one-on-one canoe races. Acceptance means regular weight training and grueling practice on the Schuylkill River five days a week.
