BURLINGTON, Vt. (WCAX) – Boat lovers step into their dragon boats, and ready their paddles for the 2024 Lake Champlain Dragon Boat Festival.
“We have wanted to come out to the Vermont festival for several years. The Dragon Heart Team, you know they are great hosts. We finally just did it, we finally decided we were coming,” Nicole Herlofsky of Dragon Divas said.
Herlofsky came all the way from Minnesota, with her dragon boat team, the Dragon Divas.
She was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2016 and joined the Divas in 2021.
She says she doesn’t know where she would be without her group of ladies that joining the team was one of the best decisions of her life.
“Everybody get’s it. We don’t talk about cancer all the time. We don’t talk about cancer hardly ever. But everybody gets it. Its the comradery, it’s the support, it’s a support group on the water. They are all your sisters,” said Herlofsky.
Creating those sisterhoods is exactly what Dragonheart Vermont is looking to do. The festival has been going for 18 years now but the non profit is celebrating 20 years of serving their community on the water. The festival raises money for breast cancer research and racer Naomi Barell says this kind of event gives people the opportunity to remember their loved ones who suffer from the illness.
“I am one of four girls in my family. In which two of us have had cancer. So it’s special to me to be here. Every woman out there is carrying two breasts. I always say, cancer plays no favorites,” said Naomi Barell of the Malia paddling team.
It’s not just racing, the festival has vendors, dance parties, and of course their beloved flower ceremony for those that have lost their lives to breast cancer.
“It is so fun. I thought the cancer survivor ceremony was really beautiful. So you hear the number of people with cancer. But that is not the end of the story, I think events like this really show how many people care,” said Annie Marek of Underhill.
For more information : Dragonheart Vermont