The Machestic Dragons Women's Breast Cancer Survivors practice recently at Mercer Park Lake in West Windsor, N.J. The sport can physically help cancer survivors to recover. (Photo by Martin Griff)

TRENTON, N.J. — How did a 2,000-year-old Chinese sport take hold among modern breast cancer survivors of the West?

Dr. Donald McKenzie, a sports medicine physiologist at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, launched the first survivor team in 1996 to challenge a theory that repetitive, upper-body exercise encourages lymphedema in breast cancer survivors. None of the women on his team developed the chronic, difficult-to-treat swelling of the limbs, and the exercise exacerbated none of the existing cases.

So, from China, by way of Vancouver, to New Jersey, three times a week the Machestic Dragons back their 40-foot-long boat into the lake at Mercer County Park.

Up to 20 members, all breast cancer surivors, make up the crew. The steerer steps in first; then the engine room — the middle — fills with the strongest paddlers. The two paddlers in the front seat, the strokers, climb in last, usually with wet feet and ankles. The paddlers follow the strokers.

Everyone listens for coach Ellen Law of East Hanover, who calls the strokes.

The team practices different starts, quick strokes, timing or just paddles easily. During races, the drummer watches the strokers. The faster they paddle, the faster the drum beats. Paddlers are so focused that they can feel if someone among them is off.

"I'm always up for it," says Terry Coleman of Lawrenceville. This is her seventh season paddling for Machestic Dragons, her first as the team's president.

Right now, the team is preparing for its second Paddle for Pink Dragon Boat Festival, a fund-raiser June 1 at Mercer County Park Marina. It's a day of races, 250 meters long, in which 25 open teams and six survivor teams participate.

Following a Chinese tradition, an eye-dotting ceremony will be performed to wake up the dragons and to bring good luck to the paddlers.

"I never even heard of dragon boating until I got a flier" from the Breast Cancer Resource Center, YWCA Princeton, says Coleman. "Now these women are my new best friends. We've traveled the East Coast, to Montreal and Berlin. And I competed in the biggest breast cancer survivor race to date, in Caloundra, Australia.

"The thing about dragon boat racing is there's plenty of support, companionship and physical activity with people who have been through the same thing you have. It makes body and mind strong. A few of the women are in their 70s and they are fit. I feel healthier than I ever have."

"I'm a rookie," says Donna Jones of Hopewell. "I found my lump in 2007 with a routine mammogram. I was a healthy 45, I went to the gym, I ate the right things. It's a classic case of 'It can happen to anybody.'"

She, too, found Machestic Dragons through BCRC, where Jones also took food classes, joined support groups and got a free wig during chemo.

She joined the team in January and began training and taking exercise classes. "Physically, I don't think I'm up to par. It leaves me winded. But it's a wonderful opportunity to try, to be with other women," she says. "Some of them are pretty elderly, so I suck it up. If they can do this, I certainly can. Anything that will make me well, physically and mentally."

Not only did Jones have a lumpectomy with lymph node involvement at Stage II, five months of chemotherapy and two months of radiation, but also her father died during her ordeal.

"Adversity brings out the worst or the best in people. It brought out the best in my husband. We live each day differently. We know how deep our love is. People go through life not knowing how blessed they are.

"I truly believe in God's plan and what He has in store for me. I'm still healing, still searching; I'm trying everything," Jones says. "Machestic Dragons is a part of that.

"What a wonderful group of women. They've been through the same ordeal. It's a sisterhood. It strongly states there is life after breast cancer."

"I was diagnosed in November 2004, just after I moved to Burlington, in the farm country," says Annie Carricato. She wanted to be with her four grandchildren.

"I had a lumpectomy and one week of chemo. 'I can't do this,' I said. It's against my nature." She stopped chemo and compromised with radiation.

"I felt so betrayed by my body and spirit; you think you're so in touch and ... " Carricato leaves her sentence unfinished.

She had an emotional breakdown."'How can this happen to me?' I thought. Eventually you get your sense of humor back," she says.

Yet, on some days she believes what a friend once told her: "When one door closes, another one opens. It's a trap door. And it leads to hell."

She was depressed, as many cancer patients and survivors are, and knew she had to do something. "I needed to stay engaged in life, but I didn't see anything that was attractive to me," she says.

Carricato's oncologist told her she needed endorphins: Either exercise more or take drugs. While enrolled in BCRC's Healing Through Creativity, Arietta Wismer of Skillman invited Carri cato to join the dragon boat team.

"Sounds great," she recalls saying. "But you wouldn't want me on your team. I was always the last one picked."

"Oh, no, no," said Wismer. "We take anybody."
   "'What the heck; I'm gonna try,' I said. I started training last year and I found it so empowering. I didn't think I could feel like this again," says Carricato. "Last year I was so high all summer. I feel exhilaration in the races.

"We're a community and I get tearful for people who should be in the boat ... but they're gone. The first flower ceremony left me crying," says Carricato.

The team conducts a special flower ceremony, rowing to the center of the lake during the Paddle for Pink Festival and observing a moment of silence. Members each throw a pink carnation that represents someone in their lives.

"They are my heroes, these women," says Robbinsville's Sharon Nemeth of her teammates. Midge Franco of Hillsborough recommended dragon boating to Nemeth's colleague and she joined them three years ago. She is not a breast cancer survivor; in fact, about a third of her teammates are supporters.

"It's camaraderie and exercise and I fell in love with their attitude. They're energetic and passionate about being outside. It's a floating support group," she says. "I intended to be a supporter, but it's therapeutic for me to be with peers whose common goal is wellness.

"At first I thought, 'I'm going to sink this boat.' But it's a team sport. If one person improves her stroke, the boat goes faster. The key is to be in alignment; pull as much water as you can.

"After a stressful day, you go out on the water; you're in the fresh air; you watch the geese. The sunset over Mercer Lake reminds me of sunsets in Hawaii.

"I can't speculate where any of the women are in the course of their illness, but it's always in the back of my head," says Nemeth. "I'm so impressed; no one talks about their illness. They're involved for the activity. The team has had some losses. But they work through it, staying where they need to be."

Linda Kerwin of Robbinsville found a lump in 2001. After a mastectomy, and removal of 24 lymph nodes, all clear, she recovered well. But after four months of harsh chemo, "I lost all my stamina, all my hair and 25 pounds." A friend read about the dragon boat team.

"But I wasn't athletic," Kerwin says. "When you're ill, you just don't remember what it's like to feel healthy and in control. Breast cancer derailed me."

Now, Kerwin says having cancer changed her perspective.

"I had issues with people helping me and accepting generosity; I was in bad relationships; I always took the low road. I finally said, 'I don't need this; life is too short! Some good has to come out of this. I know there's a reason.'

"My life has turned around," says Kerwin. "I had to get hit over the head, though.

"I remember sitting on the sofa, toward the end of my chemo crying. 'God, who's going to want me now? I'm damaged goods. Bring me someone who will cherish me.'

"Then I found a letter in my mailbox. I'm reading this nine- or 10-page letter with my chemo brain: 'Do you remember me from college? I've been thinking about you.' This guy and I hit it off one semester, then he got married." And divorced.

She delayed responding to the letter for months. "Finally, he drives from upstate New York. He has the same face, a bit more weight and a pony tail," she says.

Six years later, he still adores her. "I got out of my way. I deserve good things," she says.

But Kerwin has lost four friends to breast cancer. "It's an epidemic. The boat is the best avenue for women to survive. It's a sisterhood. We're not exercise nuts. It's the camaraderie and we're getting on with life. I've met some extraordinary women through dragon boating; there's no other way our paths would have crossed."

(N.J. DeVico, who wrote this for The Times of Trenton, N.J., can be contacted at features(at)njtimes.com)