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Rita Menshon tried cancer support groups. They didn't take.
Three years ago, she ventured out to Lake Lanier for something different. Since then, she has been paddling for a dragon boat team made up of breast cancer survivors.
"I'm just not one to sit and listen to women cry," said Menshon, 56, of Kennesaw. "I ended up with these very courageous women who were doing something physically, rather than sitting around."
Menshon and her teammates seem unlikely candidates to extend a Chinese tradition dating back more than 2,000 years. But Dragon Boat Atlanta, which counts about 40 breast cancer-surviving women among its ranks, has company. Dragon boat teams of breast cancer survivors are spread across the globe. In the sport, women find exercise, support and peace.
"When you've been diagnosed with something, you think about your own mortality," said Linda Evans of Smyrna, a six-year breast cancer survivor and a team member since its formation in 2003. "But when you're out there physically exerting yourself, you forget about those things."
The sport of dragon boat racing has gained in recent popularity among schools and businesses as a unity-building exercise. The 11th annual Hong Kong Dragon Boat Festival at Lake Lanier on Sept. 9 will include about 40 teams from around metro Atlanta.
Sunday, about 25 team members and a couple of newcomers gathered in the early afternoon at the Lanier Canoe & Kayak Club in Gainesville for their weekly practice. Most of the women are in their 40s and 50s. Some have beaten back breast cancer more than once.
"It's just such an honor and inspiration to be with these women," said Menshon, who has been a cancer survivor for 10 years.
Dragon boat racing as an outlet for breast cancer survivors began in 1996, when a Vancouver doctor set out to dispel the notion that survivors should not participate in exercise, particularly for the upper body. A 2005 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that breast cancer patients who do three to five hours of moderate exercise per week are about 50 percent less likely to die from the disease than sedentary women.
"That's what we're about --- thriving, not just surviving," said Sharon Beckman of Sugar Hill, the boat's steerswoman.
Dragon boats fit 20 rowers, a steerswoman and a tempo-setting drummer in the front. The boats are about 48 feet in length and 4 feet across. In races, they are decorated with dragon heads that, according to Chinese legend, ward off evil spirits.
Paddlers sit two abreast, a feature of the sport that has spawned clever names for teams of breast cancer survivors.
Defeating breast cancer seems to afford women the grace and humor to give their teams names such as "RowBust" and "Abreast in a Boat."
Thunder interrupted Sunday's practice on the lake, so the team spent some of its practice on land, rehearsing the tempo of its 5-10-5 start to its races --- five hard but short strokes, followed by 10 fast strokes and then five hard, deep pulls on the paddle.
The weekly practices have become treasured hours for many team members. Some women have come even as their chemotherapy treatments ravaged their strength.
The waters are usually calm and often the only sounds are the drummer and the steers-person beating or calling out cadence and encouragement. The boat glides fastest when the team works as one, 20 oars rising and slicing back into the water in synchronicity.
"You hear it every Sunday from somebody: 'This is the most peaceful feeling in the world,'" said Evans.
While the practices are combined with good humor and laughter, team members are, to varying degrees, serious about improving and winning. Some admit to giving newcomers the once-over, trying to figure out how much they can help the boat.
"We want to win bad," said Menshon.
Over practices and trips for training and competition, friendships have formed. They have raised money for cancer research, both through the team and through other activities, such as the Avon Walk for Breast Cancer and Relay for Life.
They even produced a fund-raising calendar featuring team members in the buff, posing with strategically placed paddles, dragon heads and drums.
At one end, team members can encourage each other when they can't keep up with the pace by saying, as team member Robby Deckert said, "Put it in perspective. Who would have thought we'd be on a dragon boat team?"
But on the other hand, a T-shirt reading "Now just shut-up and paddle" doesn't look so out of the place, either.
"We feel empowered," Menshon said. "We feel we're all in the same boat. We've all been in the same boat. But this time, we have a paddle." DRAGON BOAT RACING
A dragon boat is a long boat, similar to a punt or gondola, that seats 20 (in the United States; in Asia some seat 50 or more) paddlers who sit in pairs in 10 rows. There is a stylized Chinese dragon head on the front and a dragon tail on the back. The boat is controlled by a person who stands in the back who uses a fixed steering oar (like a rudder) or, in some styles of boat, a paddle. There is a drum on the front and a raised seat for the drummer.
--- usadragonboating.com
Copyright 2006 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
