Plus, there’s breathing rhythmically and working as a team with other people.”įor the past two years, the Wellness Warriors have stayed connected through Zoom cooking, painting, and yoga lessons and kayaking trips.
“It’s a full body sport, you’re twisting your torso, you’re reaching down, you’re using your legs to push up. But win or lose, dragon boat racing is known to be beneficial for cancer survivors. “We’re usually first in our own lane,” quipped Kathleen Schnaidt, president of the Wellness Warriors. Sometimes, this means that they’re not as competitive as some would like. Wellness Warriors welcomes all cancer survivors, regardless of physical ability. Typically, there is a cancer-survivor division of Boston’s festival, but since the festival is scaled back for public safety, Wellness Warriors are the only all-cancer paddlers competing this year. During the last full season before the pandemic, they even qualified for the Dragon Boat World Championships in France. They usually compete in the all-cancer paddler division in festivals. The Wellness Warriors are a club team that practices twice a week. The others are club teams that practice all summer. They got together specifically for this festival and had three, two-hour long practices to train. Some of the teams competing in this year’s festival are community teams.
She was unable to run after her breast cancer treatments, so she joined Wellness Warriors, longing for competition. “I was playing sports literally up until my diagnosis,” Wolter said while waiting to get into a dragon boat Monday on the Cambridge side of the Charles River, near MIT on Monday. Jennifer Wolter, co-captain, was attracted to the group because she’s been an athlete from a young age, playing field hockey and softball.