Rita Menshon tried cancer support groups. It didn't take.

Three years ago, she ventured to Lake Lanier for something different. Since then, she has been paddling for a dragon boat team made up of breast cancer survivors.

Jason Getz/Staff (ENLARGE)

The head and tail for a dragon boat hang in the Lanier Canoe and Kayak Club. Dragon Boat Atlanta does not practice with the head and tail on the boat. They are put on the boat for competition.

Jason Getz/Staff (ENLARGE)

Dragon Boat Atlanta acting caller Kathy Cunningham (facing rowers) and steerswoman Sharon Beckman (right) work to get the team ready to race in a competition on Sept. 9.

Jason Getz/Staff (ENLARGE)

Dragon Boat Atlanta members Becky Humphrey (left), Janice Baker (behind Humphrey) and Linda Lewis, laugh before practice. After that, it's serious business.

DRAGON BOAT RACING A dragon boat is a long boat, similar to a punt or gondola, that seats 20 (in the United States, in Asia, 50 or more) paddlers who sit in pairs in 10 rows. There is a stylized Chinese dragon head on the front and a dragon tail on the back. The boat is controlled by a person who stands in the back who uses a fixed steering oar (like a rudder) or, in some styles of boat, a paddle. There is a drum on the front and a raised seat for the drummer. — usadragonboating.com

"I'm just not one to sit and listen to women cry," said Menshon, 56, of Kennesaw. "I ended up with these very courageous women who were doing something physically, rather than sitting around."

Menshon and her teammates seem unlikely candidates to extend a Chinese tradition dating back more than 2,000 years. But Dragon Boat Atlanta, which counts about 40 breast cancer-surviving women among its ranks, has company. Dragon boat teams of breast cancer survivors are spread across the globe. In the sport, women like Menshon find exercise, support and peace.

"That's what we're about — thriving, not just surviving," said Sharon Beckman of Sugar Hill, the boat's steersperson.

The sport of dragon boat racing goes back to ancient China, but has gained in recent popularity among schools and businesses as a unity-building exercise. The 11th annual Hong Kong Dragon Boat Festival at Lake Lanier on Sept. 9 will include about 40 teams from around metro Atlanta.

Dragon boats fit 20 rowers, a steerswoman and a tempo-setting drummer in the front. The boats are about 48 feet in length and 4 feet across. In races, they are decorated with dragon heads that, according to Chinese legend, ward off evil spirits.

Paddlers sit two abreast, a feature of the sport that has spawned clever names for teams of breast cancer survivors.

Defeating breast cancer seems to afford women the grace and humor to give their teams names such as "RowBust" and "Abreast in aBoat."

Sunday, about 25 team members and a couple of newcomers gathered in the early afternoon at the Lanier Canoe & Kayak Club in Gainesville for their weekly practice. Most of the women are in their 40s and 50s, and some have beaten back breast cancer multiple times.

"It's just such an honor and inspiration to be with these women," Menshon said.

Sunday, thunder interrupted practice so the team practiced on land, rehearsing the tempo of its 5-10-5 start to its races — five hard but short strokes, followed by 10 fast strokes and then five hard, deep pulls on the paddle.

The practices are combined with good humor and laughter, but team members are, to varying degrees, serious about improving and winning. Some admit to giving newcomers the once-over, trying to figure out how much they can help the boat.

Said Menshon, "We want to win bad."

The weekly practices have become treasured hours for many team members. Some women have come even as their chemotherapy treatments ravaged their strength.

The waters are usually calm, and often the only sounds are the drummer and the steerswoman beating or calling out cadence and encouragement. The boat glides fastest when the team works as one, 20 oars rising and slicing back into the water in synchronicity.

"You hear it every Sunday from somebody: 'This is the most peaceful feeling in the world,'" said Linda Evans of Smyrna, a six-year breast cancer survivor and a team member since its formation in 2003.

Dragon boat racing as an outlet for breast cancer survivors began in 1996, when a Vancouver doctor set out to dispel the notion that survivors should not participate in exercise, particularly for the upper body.

Dr. Don McKenzie decided dragon boats were ideal, a "strenuous, repetitive upper body activity that projects a visible message to all people with breast cancer," as he wrote in a 1998 article of the Canadian Medical Association Journal.

A 2005 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that breast cancer patients who do three to five hours of moderate exercise are about 50 percent less likely to die from the disease than sedentary women.

"We feel empowered," Menshon said. "We feel we're all in the same boat. We've all been in the same boat. But this time, we have a paddle."