Dragon boat racers up for the challenge

As clouds threatened overhead, the Witches of East Greenwich, discernible by their green-and-black tights, huddled yesterday along Kelly Drive near the Schuylkill, waiting to embark on their maiden voyage.

These 50 eclectic, determined women made up two of the 154 teams competing in the annual Philadelphia International Dragon Boat Festival.

In preparing for the race, only one of the witches, who hail from the close-knit Gloucester County township of East Greenwich, had ever paddled before. Every other day the witches are moms, grandmoms, housewives, professionals, and entrepreneurs. One fights crime as an FBI agent. Another, wearing a bright green wig, is battling brain cancer. And this woman, Rosael Amoroso, would paddle this day with only her left arm.

Three weeks ago, Amoroso marked her 42d birthday lying in a hospital, dealing with a complication from the brain tumor that surgeons had removed a year ago. In recent weeks the shunt in her head had become infected.

"I can't not be in this race because I have this PICC in my arm," Amoroso said of the catheter that pumps antibiotics through her right arm. "I have to do this for myself."

Since her Stage 4 cancer was diagnosed last year, preparing for this race became her solace - something of her own outside the cancer, which the 4-foot-11 mother of three said had a 50 percent chance of returning. "You look forward to not talking about being sick all the time," said Amoroso, a former elementary school guidance counselor, of her bond with the witches. "I felt if I have this goal, I know I'll be around. It was something positive to keep me going."

The festival, in which teams paddle 500 meters in three heats, was founded in 2002 by Carol Lee Lindner.

Lindner, 69, of Haverford, started padddling as a 52-year-old empty nester, and eventually started a women's dragon-boat team. "I would be physically exhausted but spiritually alive," Lindner said. "I wanted to bring that to the masses. Now the festival has just taken a life of its own."

Dragon-boat racing started centuries ago in China, and has caught on in the West during the last 20 years.

Twenty paddlers typically sit two by two, one next to the buddy he or she is responsible for, Lindner said.

A helmsman steers with long paddles at the stern. A drummer keeps time at the bow.

"That's the beauty of dragon boating," Lindner said. "It's not an individual sport. It's 20 hearts beating as one."

The 154 entries this year were a record, with 4,000 paddlers from Philadelphia, New Jersey, Maryland, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and Canada. They ranged in age from 8 to 88. The teams were made up of spouses, nonprofit workers, corporate 9-to-5ers, teachers, bankers, college students, cancer survivors, doctors, aging rockers, novices, rowing veterans (marked by matching life jackets), and those raising money for charity.

Some paddled to dispel the odds. In previous years, a blind team, a deaf team, and a homeless men's team took to the water. Yesterday, Lindner served as the drummer for a team with Asperger's syndrome, similar to autism.

In its first heat, the Asperger's team finished fourth, in 2 minutes, 32.87 seconds.

Some, like the witches, paddled to honor a part of themselves often lost.

"It's really about moms stepping up and doing something for ourselves," said captain Jen Moughan, 41, who sees to a 7-year-old son and runs a consulting business. "With this race, I feel like I'm wearing a Velcro suit and throwing myself up against the wall to see what happens. There's a sense of excitement in that."

"These women have hectic schedules," said the witches' other captain, Megan Heyer, 38, a married mother of three who has rowed with her fellow nurses and staff at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital. "But they managed to carve out this time, to do something they would have never dreamed of."

Amid the smell of barbecue and the cheers, fight songs, and high-fives, the witches divided into two boats, No. 5 and No. 7 in an eight-boat race.

Their category - Health and Fitness and Novice Women Challenges - was the 15th race of the first heat.

At the starting line, boat No. 4, Team Intensity, took off. In red shirts and white caps, its members moved down the river in synchronized rhythm. The witches struggled to keep up.

For most of the race, their boats trailed, side by side. They finished in a little over three minutes, seventh and eighth.

The race proved more grueling than their practices. But with the lessons learned, and the congratulatory hugs and smiles they shared, there was little room for disappointment.

"I felt good," said Amoroso. "This is something I've dreamed of, and it's finally under my belt.