Riding on the dragon
They found a shared love of dragon boating while recovering from breast cancer. Now Valda McBeth, Megan Dent, Carol Coad, Carolyn Arnold, Deryl Whyte, Sharon Taylor and Kathleen Moriarty are among a team challenging themselves to reach an international competition.
Nine Taranaki women who have already had the fight of a lifetime are taking on another one – a dragon boating world championship.
Kathleen Moriarty, Megan Dent, Carol Coad, Norma Haley, Sharon Taylor, Valda McBeth, Carolyn Arnold, Derly Whyte and Nancy Mong have all, at some point in their lives, battled breast cancer.
But they have also found a love of being on the water with the Taranaki Dragons dragon boating team as a way of rehabilitation.
Now, the women are hoping to combine the two and create their own pink team, called Taranaki Pinks, to compete at the International Breast Cancer Paddlers’ Commission (IBCPC) Dragon Boat Festival at Lake Karipiro in April 2023.
A pink team means everyone on the boat, including the sweep at the back controlling the direction and the drummer at the front keeping paddlers in sync, must have endured some form of breast cancer.
‘‘All 22 people have to be survivors to enter a breast cancer race,’’ 58-year-old Dent said. ‘‘And they have a breast cancer division in the competitions we go to, and we can’t enter because we haven’t got a full boat of survivors.’’
Dragon boating has been proven to be beneficial for women following breast cancer as the movement keeps the arm and lymph nodes healthy.
‘‘After my mastectomy I couldn’t lift my arm above my
head, but I can now. I’ve got a whole lot of movement back since dragon boating,’’ McBeth said.
Coad, Moriarty, and Haley have been with the Taranaki Dragons since they first started in 2008, with their cancer journeys starting around a similar time.
Dent joined in 2009, after a specialist told her about the team while she was going through treatment.
As for McBeth, she only joined in November after batting the disease three times, but is already in love with the sport.
‘‘I knew about it when I had breast cancer but never did
anything about it.
‘‘When you’re out on the water you just forget everything else.’’
The women train twice a week on the Waitara River with the Taranaki Dragons but hope 15 more breast cancer survivors catch the bug and jump on the waka, so they’re able to register a team for what they are calling their ‘‘world championship’’.
It’s the first time since the establishment of IBCPC in 2010 that the festival will take place in the Southern Hemisphere, and it’s expected more than 5000 breast cancer survivors from all over the world will compete.
‘‘It’s the only time it’ll be here
in our lifetime,’’ 75-year-old Coad said.
‘‘So it’s a big deal,’’ Dent added. But the goal isn’t just to make a team to be able to compete at worlds. ‘‘Oh no, we wanna win,’’ Dent said quietly under her breath, with the woman bursting into laughter.
And although the competition is two years away, registration of team members and payment to enter needs to be completed by October 31, and they want to have enough women to compete at a regatta in the Waikato in November.
‘‘Breast cancer is such a big thing in Taranaki, so I don’t see
why we can’t have our own team,’’ Dent said.
The team has been fundraising to cover most of the cost of putting a team together, with a screening of dragon boating film The Pinkies Are Back held on Wednesday night at Event Cinemas, New Plymouth.
To join the team, women make contact through the group’s Facebook page. The current crew can’t think of why you wouldn’t want to join.
‘‘The exercise, the camaraderie, all that goes with team sports is there. And you get out of town and leave your husbands behind,’’ Dent said.