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NORTHAMPTON, Mass. (AP) — Their paddles slicing through glass-like waters, nearly two dozen athletes work in total synchronicity to glide across the Connecticut. A vibrant dragon head leads the crew around river bends and through straightaways at Connecticut River Greenway State Park. With each blade full of water, the human-powered watercraft takes off.
The sport is dragon boating - a team paddling pursuit with ancient Chinese origins. Some 20 paddlers pile into what is essentially a 40-foot-long fiberglass canoe with a "steer" in back guiding the boat and a drummer setting a pace up front. Betsy Powell, founder of Paradise City Dragon Boat in Northampton, said the sport was modernized in the 1970s.
"It feels like you are floating on air," said Susan Parent of Springfield. "The wind in your face ... like something out of Peter Pan."
A stark contrast, she added, to a time in 2013 when she was having trouble lifting her arms past the level of her chest. Parent was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2012 and struggled immensely with scar tissue and atrophy of the muscle following her lumpectomy, radiation therapy and lymph node resection.
She decided that just wouldn't do. It was time to get involved with something.
That something was dragon boating, which Parent describes as a humbling experience pairing physical and emotional camaraderie.
But Paradise City Dragon Boat, the new team Parent now paddles with, isn't an average athletic team. It's a co-ed, all-inclusive cancer survivors and supporters team that paddles out of Northampton Community Rowing's boathouse at 68 Damon Road.
"When we're in the boat, we're one beat, one stroke, one rhythm," she said. "It's an awe-inspiring feeling when you all have that common bond, which is cancer."
Powell started Paradise City Dragon Boat in February and they took to the water in May. She said it acts as a support group for members in a "non-support group way."
"Not everybody is going to be comfortable sitting on a sofa talking about their feelings," she said. Instead, the paddlers sit side-by-side in two columns split to either side of the four-foot-wide boat. When the team's boats are fully dressed up, said Powell, they feature a red, green and yellow dragon head and tail at either end. Paradise City Dragon Boat paddlers compete in races across New England and New York.
"Cancer survivors have been thriving through dragon boat paddling for many years," Powell said. At the time, she said, women were being told that exercise would increase the likelihood of lymphedema - a side effect of breast cancer surgery and radiation which causes swelling due to the removal of or damage to lymph nodes.
In the mid-90s, Canadian sports medicine and exercise physiologist Donald McKenzie challenged that idea. He used dragon boat paddling as a case study to research the effects of strenuous upper body exercise on breast cancer survivors. The study yielded results indicating that dragon boating was, in fact, beneficial for breast cancer survivors, according to study outcomes shared by the International Breast Cancer Paddlers' Commission. Powell said the sport offers a way for survivors to reconnect with their bodies following treatment.
Anna Symington of South Hadley, who is one of the team's three co-captains, found that healing after her several-year breast cancer treatment including radiation and medication. She said she experienced nerve damage and was told the sensation may never come back. "You feel like the air is knocked right out of you," she said of her earlier diagnosis. Symington has recently developed sensation in areas she said she hasn't felt for years. "It makes me forget about that," she said.
The motion, Powell said, is simple: "Dig in and pull back powerfully."
Dragon boating is a great activity for someone working their way back up to fitness, said Powell.
She said this particular fitness goal often ties in with those who have had their bodies taxed by cancer, treatments and surgeries.
The sport offers accessibility in that paddlers can paddle at a pace that suits them as well as taking breaks while other paddlers continue on. "You just build off the energy of each other," said Symington. "It's exhilarating."
She said for her, the action is almost spiritual and has offered healing beyond just physical. "It just takes you to a difference place," she said.
Meg O'Hare of Hampden was looking for that place of community support after being diagnosed with breast cancer in 2014. Her interest in dragon boating was piqued after seeing a flier for breast cancer survivors during a cancer support group.
"I was so frightened as to what I was going through, I said, 'Maybe it would be good to be around people who were also going through this,'" she said, adding that she paddled through active cancer treatment for nine months.
O'Hare said the sport helped her rebuild muscle lost following a mastectomy and lumpectomy, but that wasn't her biggest gain. "I've found a group of people who are my soulmates," she said.
Cindy Sheridan Murphy of West Springfield also struggled with the "what's next" question after breast cancer treatment. She'd been a triathlon athlete prior to her diagnosis.
"It feels like you're a whole person again," she said of paddling, which has reduced her daily pain and allowed her to once again move her arms above her head.
"We're in a different place in our lives," she said. Although life is different now for Sheridan Murphy and many of her teammates, they feel lucky to have found each other along that path.
"I think we get each other," she said. "We get it."
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Information from: Daily Hampshire Gazette (Northampton, Mass.), http://www.gazettenet.com
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