We went to the New Zealand Dragon Boat Festival in April 2023. Thousands of breast cancer survivors and their supporters competed and celebrated both the games and the journey to New Zealand. International festivals are our Olympics, and the International Breast Cancer Paddlers’ Commission holds one every four years.
Before the first race in New Zealand, Head Coach Peter Van de Castle gave a heartwarming speech. He encouraged us to remember how far we’ve come, both literally and metaphorically.
Members of the Annapolis Dragon Boat Club posing for a team photo at the 2023 New Zealand Dragon Boat Festival
Come in close, everyone — paddlers and supporters. Come in tight.
The dragon boat is the common factor for all of you here, with folks from around the world. All of you from ADBC, paddlers and supporters alike, have faced the infuriatingly unwelcome visitor of breast cancer. You are different people, and your experience with breast cancer is your own. The disease may have a commonality, but each of you has one or more experiences that make it private … and maybe even painful. There must have been times of fear and uncertainty as you faced engagement with an unseen enemy. An enemy that you had to confront.
You did that, perhaps with some trepidation but without hesitation, and you knew what you were fighting for.
But. You. Are. Here.
The Club has lost people to the disease known and near to us. Yet, we are here. The community of breast cancer folks from around the world is here and being celebrated in New Zealand. Because you confronted the disease where you were then. You might have been overseas, at work, at your home, in a doctor’s office, or maybe at the hospital. And here you are. Now. Together with those you know because you sit together side by side, front to back, in a big canoe — that looks like a dragon.
You have gained health, power, and strength when that might not have seemed to be the expected result after a cancer diagnosis.
You have persevered and preserved yourselves. Maybe not everything is the same as before. But you have a new you that did not exist before.
You are you, a newer, stronger human in the world. You are gaining strength and sharing that strength with each other.
The world you share with all those other dragon boaters and those of us who support you. The Annapolis Dragon Boat Club in New Zealand.
—Written and presented by Peter Van de Castle, ADBC Head Coach
