Dragon boats racing but dragon needs a name
Dragon boat races on the Fox River have been part of the annual St. Charles festival for a quarter of a century. But this year, for the first time, the festival includes a costumed dragon mascot, and a contest to name the beast.
"You met the dragon. What would you think to call her," Julie Bolster of St. Charles asked her son Camden, 7, and daughter Cienna, 5.
"Reeling, because it was red," Cienna says.
The dragon's body and tail are bright red, but the head is blue, says Bolster, who uses that detail to suggest the name of Sapphira. The red and blue combo reminds Camden of fire and ice, so he asks his mom to whip out her phone and find a Chinese word for the phrase.
The decision is easier for the 5-year-old daughter of Mark and Krystle Ansay of Hoffman Estates. "Serenity is her name, so she voted for Serenity," the mom says of her daughter. Dad, however, cast a vote for Puffy.
With Saturday's temperatures in the 90s, Sweaty would have been an apt name for Leigh LaSota and Tyler Warden, both 25, the two St. Charles East High School grads who took turns wearing the dragon costume.
"All the costume parts are really from China," says Vanessa Bell-LaSota, Leigh's mother and the event coordinator for the Festival of the Fox. Once spread throughout the business district of St. Charles, the Festival of the Fox moved all the vendors, crafts, entertainment and food to Pottawatomie Park this year, with a carnival on the other side of the river.
Bell-LaSota says she expects 5,000 people to attend the fest, which started Thursday and ends Sunday. It already has a record 32 teams in the boat races, which feature teams of 18 paddlers, a drummer and a flag-catcher racing in long boats festooned with dragon heads.
Dragon boat racing stems from an ancient Chinese tale of a patriotic poet who, "as an act of despair against the corrupt government," threw himself into the river and drowned despite boats who tried to rescue him, says Terry Andrew, a retired CPA and jazz pianist, who has been master of ceremonies at the festival for 25 years.
"Gee whiz," Andrew says privately when asked about the poet's protest against corrupt politicians. "It's been 2,300 years and it's still going on."
For details and today's schedule, visit festivalofthe fox.com.