Paddling for fun, and to fight breast cancer, at Lake Las Vegas dragon boat races

It’s about staying active, the camaraderie and leaving all your concerns on land. But it’s also about combating breast cancer and recovering from it.

These are the things that drew participants at this past weekend’s Nevada International Dragon Boat Festival to the sport of dragon boat racing in the first place, and why they continue to do it. It’s the zen-like feeling of being part of a team of 22 people — 20 of them paddling — on a dragon boat as it glides across the water.

“The greatest thing about paddling is that you can leave everything including your phone on shore and be able to get in a boat for an hour, an hour and a half, and just let it go,” said Lori Godfrey, 65, a breast cancer survivor who is the coach and a paddler for the Oregon-based Golden Dragons. “You have no concerns, no outside world, only what’s on the water. And that’s a fantastic place to be.”

This weekend, that water was Lake Las Vegas in Henderson, where about 1,000 people on 40 different teams raced and competed in the fifth installment of the festival, which was organized by the nonprofit Dragonboat Racing Association Group of Nevada and took place Saturday and Sunday. Because of COVID, organizers said, this was the first festival since 2019. Teams from the U.S., Canada, and the Philippines took part. The event raises money for the fight against breast cancer, organizers said.

“What we’ve learned about dragon boating and breast cancer is that it definitely helps in the recovery process with your muscles when you’ve gone through surgeries,” said Leticia Antonio, the Dragonboat Racing Association Group of Nevada’s vice-president.

“The world kind of stops on you,” said Sherri Weaver, the groups’ president, who is also a breast cancer survivor. “This helps you get back into it, and it’s a great support system.”

Godfrey, who lives in Banks, Oregon, and whose team practices on the Willamette River, took to the sport for the health benefits, she said.

Godfrey mentioned the work of Canadian sports medicine specialist Dr. Don McKenzie, who has been instrumental in espousing the physical and mental health benefits of dragon boat racing — the upper body activity that comes with paddling, as well as the sense of community and togetherness — for breast cancer survivors.

“(It) absolutely benefited me. It’s changed my life, really,” Godfrey said. “There’s paddling, that’s one thing, but it’s just the camaraderie is of course very important. But I’m alive. I’m alive and I’m a miracle.”

The weekend event pitted various types of teams competing in different races. There were women’s teams, mixed teams with men and women, teams of people 50 and over and teams consisting of breast cancer survivors and survivors other cancers, organizers said. The types of races included distances of 500 metres, 200 metres, and 2,000 metres.

Dani Kala, one of the coaches with the Vancouver, Wash.-based Catch-22 dragon boat team, said the Las Vegas event is one of her favorite races because everything about the event has always been welcoming, she said.

“For one, the water — just something about being on the water,” Kala said. “And then the beauty that always surrounds water, like (at) Vancouver Lake, we can see Mount Hood and we can say see Mount St. Helens. And then there’s birds. We see eagles; we see ospreys. There’s an osprey that has a nest at the end of our dock. But then mostly, it’s the people.”

Becky Marks and Mike Ayotte of the Kelowna Dragon Boat Paddling Society traveled from Kelowna, B.C., to participate.

“The camaraderie, the teamwork, the community itself,” Ayotte said. “I’ve been paddling for about 15 years now, and probably for the past eight years, I’ve traveled around the world with dragon boating.”

Marks, the president of the Kelowna dragon boat organization, said she first got into the sport after watching her sister take part in dragon boat racing.

“I was like, ‘Oh man, that looks super easy. I’ll give that a try,’ ” Marks said. “And I got in the boat and, afterwards, I was so sore. But I was like, I’m done, like, I’m hooked. Twenty-one years later, here I am.”

Contact Brett Clarkson at bclarkson@reviewjournal.com.