At a critical moment when they knew their boat was about to tip, The Dragon Divas shouted, “Just keep paddling, and don’t give up!” Their determination kept them upright, but it has also seen this team of breast cancer survivors through a great deal more.

Now in their fourth season of dragon boat racing, the team of 40-plus members includes five Woodbury residents: Virginia Heinrich, Kathy Miller, Nancy Reichow, Susan Sheridan, and Dr. Judith Trudel. The group is the first-known dragon boat racing team of breast cancer survivors in the Twin Cities.

Sheridan, one of the team’s newest members and a 13-year cancer survivor (she was diagnosed with invasive breast cancer first at age 29), was persuaded by Reichow to join last year; she was familiar with The Dragon Divas from a report on WCCO-TV that first aired two years ago. “Being out on the water, it’s a floating support group,” she says. “This was the first year I didn’t recognize my 13-year anniversary [of her first cancer diagnosis], but it took a long time to get there.”

While the team finds support in its common experience of survivorship, its members prefer to focus on the present and on encouraging others. “We want to inspire other people who have challenges, to show them that life doesn’t have to end after a cancer diagnosis,” says Reichow, a veteran member of The Dragon Divas. “We’ve been on rough waters—and have traveled rough waters before.”

She recalls how, at the Dragon Festival at St. Paul’s Phalen Lake Park, a woman approached the team to thank them for their participation and said, “It is wonderful for my community to see you healthy, laughing together, and actively competing in this sport. Cancer in our [Asian] culture is considered a death sentence. You demonstrate it doesn’t have to be.” The Dragon Divas have won the Spirit Award each year they have participated in the Lake Phalen Dragon Festival.