Bob Asmussen: New Zealand-born Prairie Dragon Paddler bringing team to homeland for festival

Apr. 4—Diane Salfelder is going home. And taking a bunch of friends with her.

The retired Champaign Central High School English teacher is a founding member of the Prairie Dragon Paddlers.

On Friday, the group of breast-cancer survivors will board a bus bound for Chicago's O'Hare International Airport. From there, Salfelder and the rest of the group are taking a 16-hour direct flight to her native New Zealand.

On April 15-16, the team will compete in the International Breast Cancer Paddlers Commission Festival at Lake Karapiro, which is near Cambridge, New Zealand.

Salfelder, now 70, spent most of the first 29 years of her life in New Zealand. Though she lived in different places in the island nation, she considers the capital, Welllington, as her home.

"Wellington is my city of love," Salfelder said. "It's beautiful. It's like San Francisco."

Growing up in New Zealand, Salfelder was a high school athlete, playing netball, cricket and soccer. She surfed "almost every day."

"I really, really miss the sea and the mountains in the background," she said.

She moved to the U.S. and is now an American citizen. Salfelder retains a hint of her New Zealand accent, but it is mostly gone.

This will be her first trip back in 16 years. She is staying with her brother and sister-in-law, Graham and Glenda Smith.

Salfelder is serving as unofficial tour guide for the Champaign group. In her earlier life in New Zealand, she traveled throughout the country for her job with a sewing-machine company.

"I know it very well," she said. "It's easy to travel, but the roads are usually just two lanes. There's a lot of twists and turns. They drive on the other side of the road, of course, too."

Salfelder gave a talk to the team and showed a movie about New Zealand.

"I've offered all along the way for them to ask me advice," Salfelder said.

Over the years, Salfelder has made the long trip a handful of times. She has been there three times with her now-grown daughters, Brittany and Stevie. Brittany lives in Oakwood and Stevie is in rural Mahomet.

Traveling to New Zealand is on the expensive side. Prairie Dragon Paddlers coach Debi Bliss estimates each member is paying about $6,500. No team funds are being used for the journey.

Sixteen Prairie Dragon Paddlers are going in the 22-person boat. This is the first time the team has its own entry in the international event.

"That's a really big deal for us," Bliss said.

To Salfelder, it is worth the price.

"I have to go, right? I really didn't have any choice," she said.

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She is looking forward to seeing her teammates enjoy Maori culture. The base hotel is in Rotorua, a city of 77,000.

"It is the big center of the Maori culture," she said.

The good fight

Health-wise, Salfelder continues to battle.

"Most of the team members have gotten through their breast cancer," she said. "I am the only one that has metastatic breast cancer, that's a Stage IV. I take meds. The side effects are tough, but I'm a pretty gung-ho kind of person. You can't hold me down.

"I believe in myself. I believe in living and seizing the day."

Her oncologist is Dr. Ken Rowland at Carle Foundation Hospital. He has been her doctor since she was first diagnosed in 2013. How does he feel about her travels?

"He's fine. He said, 'I'll see you when you get back,'" Salfelder said. "He's quite pro me doing this."

In the last year, Salfelder has jumped into mentoring at Carle's Mills Breast Cancer Institute in Urbana. She calls patients across the country, offering words of encouragement.

"It's given me a new avenue to go to, and I really enjoy talking to them," Salfelder said.

The work pairs nicely with the Prairie Dragon Paddlers. Salfelder will be in the boat with the rest of the team, paddling away. And she has attended all of the team's training sessions.

"I'm pretty competitive," she said.

The Prairie Dragon Paddlers are a good fit for Salfelder.

"It's a combination of camaraderie and being a part of a breast-cancer survivor group that's active," she said. "That makes a big difference to me. I have to be doing something. For me, the activity is the racing and the training for the racing."

Finding a way

The weather has been too cold and windy for the team to get in the boat at Homer Lake. So, they have been training and working out twice a week. On Wednesday at Urbana's First Presbyterian Church, the training included sitting on chairs set up in shape of the boat and rowing with improvised oars.

Bliss, one of the founders of the team in 2015, is in her third season as coach.

The international commission holds an event every four years. This year's festival was originally set for 2022 but was pushed back a year because of COVID-19.

Like the Olympics, bids are submitted to host, and New Zealand won this year. There will be two 500-meter races and two 200-meter races. The C-U team will have a practice day on the course, which will be eight lanes wide. That's different than the usual four-lane courses.

The event will include 81 teams. Those from the Southern Hemisphere have an advantage. They are coming off their summer.

"We're a little bit behind the curve," Bliss said.

Bliss is making a family vacation out of it. Her husband, Mark; sons, Josh and Ben; and mom, Vickie, are making the trip, too.