Via Community News Service, a University of Vermont journalism internship
The red hulls of the Dragonheart Vermont vessels sat momentarily still in Burlington’s waterfront cove; The crews’ paddles held at the ready for the opening of the 2025 Lake Champlain Dragon Boat Festival. A horn queued synchronized strokes by the two dragon boats, crewed by breast cancer survivors who chugged towards a buoyed finish line.
Since its first fundraiser in 2006, Dragonheart has donated $1.1 million to cancer care. The non-profit held its 19th festival this past August.
The enduring marriage of dragon boating and breast cancer recovery — first paired by Doctor Don McKenzie in 1996 — gifts longevity to Dragonheart members, during and after cancer. Today, a third of the org’s roughly 200 paddlers are survivors.
Dragon boats are powered by 20 paddlers, kept in time by a drummer at the bow who steadily pounds on a wooden drum. An efficient stroke requires the crew to stretch ahead and rotate their upper bodies to face the passing water, dragging their paddles back with a strong return to an upright position.
“The two people that sit in the first seat, they’re called our strokers,” said Betti Lu Lewis, a member of Dragonheart since 2016. “When their arm goes up, our arm should be going up. When they go in, we should go in.”
The crew’s 22nd member is its steersperson, who stands at the stern to adjust the boat’s direction.
“She’s got a long paddle which acts as the rudder and she’s the one keeping the boat on course,” said John Buck, a festival volunteer since 2011.
“When we’re all together, we’re just gliding across the water,” said Lewis.
Paddlers on participating teams raised a minimum of $75 each, totaling nearly $124,000. The donation goal keeps Dragonheart’s ultimate mission front and center: to support cancer care and the people at all of its stages.
Dragonheart’s gross profits, not counting donated goods or services, amounted to $266,004 this year, said festival director, Vicky Drew. She’s hopeful the net proceeds will be $20,000 higher than in 2024.
Dragonheart will donate a percentage of the festival’s proceeds to Sail Beyond Cancer — a non-profit with over 80 volunteers —which takes nominees on free cruises across Lake Champlain.
“We bring anyone challenged by cancer at any part in their journey — you could be newly diagnosed, you could be living with cancer, you could be on hospice,” said Kelli Shonter, executive director of Sail Beyond Cancer. “We leave cancer at the shore and you get a three-hour break out on the water.”
The amount donated to Sail Beyond Cancer will be announced by Dragonheart on Oct. 1.
Dragon boating was first proposed as a mode of rehabilitation for breast cancer survivors by Don McKenzie, a physician of sports medicine at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. At the time, upper body exercise after mastectomy surgery was thought to risk lymphedema — swelling, often in the arms or legs, from a buildup of fluid in the soft tissue.
McKenzie formed Abreast in A Boat, a dragon boat team of survivors, in hopes of showing otherwise.
“The first 24 women were taking an awful lot of risk. They were doing exactly what they weren’t supposed to do to prove that they weren’t going to develop lymphedema,” said McKenzie. “It started off as a six-month research study. But at the end of the six months, it was such a positive experience for all the women… that we couldn’t stop.”
Dragonheart founders Linda and John Dyer looked to McKenzie for advice as they prepared to launch a local chapter of the sport in 2004. The staying power of dragon boating in Vancouver proved easily transferable to Burlington.
In 2013, Nikki Hayes was introduced to Dragonheart by her oncologist. She’s since become one of Dragonheart’s most decorated members, competing with Team USA at the World Dragon Boat Racing Championships five times.
This summer, Hayes tried out for the international championships’ first breast cancer survivors crew. Spots on the team were open to all ages, not separated by division as usual. At 69, Hayes made the boat once again.
“We know how to paddle when it’s windy. We know how to paddle when it’s wavy,” said Hayes. “We can handle it all coming from Lake Champlain.”
In June, Abreast in A Boat celebrated 30 years of the inseparable relationship between dragon boating and life with, and after, cancer.
McKenzie now helps survivors form dragon boat teams around the world, in part by speaking with local physicians about paddling as a tool, not a setback, in recovery.
“The fact that women are not afraid to do exercise, that we’ve been able to show that, ‘Yes, actually you can have breast cancer…’ And by doing some regular exercise, they can get back to living a full life,” McKenzie said. “I’ve enjoyed every minute of it.”
Back in Burlington, Pat King was invited to a Dragonheart practice by a student’s mother while teaching at Richmond Elementary School. King pointed out a boat named Jill bobbing at Dragonheart’s dock on festival weekend, honoring her friend who later passed from breast cancer.
King is now 71 and has paddled for 18 years. Since joining Dragonheart after her diagnosis, King considers herself an athlete for the first time in her life.
“I felt like a new person,” King said. “Thank god I had cancer, how weird is that? I wouldn’t have met all these people. It’s just the oddest thing to say: I’m thankful for cancer because of what it’s given me.”
Last week, paddlers took their seats in pairs and pushed off for a final practice, then lifted the dragon boats from Lake Champlain until the water warms in May.
