Yorkville man part of team that paddled Mississippi in under 17 days

After dreaming of paddling the Mississippi River since childhood, Wally Werderich finally got his chance.

The 50-year-old Yorkville resident was part of Mississippi Speed Record, a four-man team that has claimed to have set a new world record for the fastest time by a team to paddle the length of the Mississippi. The group reached the Gulf of Mexico early May 27 after 16 days, 20 hours and 16 minutes of nonstop paddling.

The team made the voyage in a 23-foot-long Minnesota 4 canoe, Werderich said. A St. Charles Canoe Club sticker placed on the side of the boat was significant to Werderich; he’s belonged to the group for many years and honed his paddle racing skills on the Fox River, where the club trains.

While the crew’s results have not been certified yet by Guinness World Records, public relations executive Kylie Galloway said the organization has received an application for the title and will confirm the team’s success or failure within 12 to 15 weeks. The record can be accomplished in any kind of paddled boat, according to Werderich.

The previous record for paddling the Mississippi in a team was set by Team MMZero in 2021, Galloway said. They reached New Orleans in nearly 18 days.

The same year, Scott Miller also led an attempt at the record with his first edition of the Mississippi Speed Record team, though with different teammates than this year. Miller’s team had a lead of seven hours compared with the pace of MMZero’s effort, but a multiday storm caused Miller and fellow paddlers to need to be rescued by their safety boat just before they reached New Orleans.

Within days of his 2021 attempt, Miller started dreaming up another try. He reached out to Joe Mann of the Kansas City area and Paul Cox of Atlanta. Mann suggested that Werderich join, and he also brought on Judson Steinback from La Crosse, Wisconsin. Joe ultimately became the group’s backup paddler.

Miller, Steinback, Cox and Werderich paddled in shifts throughout the attempt. One or two men would enter the canoe’s rest area to sleep for a few hours at a time, Werderich said.

Paddling through the night on the Mississippi was “really truly intimidating yet also awe-inspiring,” Werderich said. In northern Minnesota, he said, the team could hear wolves howling. He said his ears first became adept at listening for wildlife, and later, he learned to keep his eyes peeled for other water dangers like barges in the lower Mississippi.

“That was quite, quite difficult but at the same time, when you get out, and there’s nothing around, the starry skies were so beautiful, and the river was so calm,” Wederich said. “It’s just so serene, and it was like a different world.”

With this, Werderich said, the most difficult part of the journey was navigating the barges at night. He said they would only be lit with fast blinks of red, green and amber, and a small light could be seen on the pusher boats behind them.

“They had engines that could tear the canoe apart, if we even got close,” he said. “At times, just trying to process that in my head as we’re going was completely terrifying.

Even with the help of a navigation boat and radar support, Werderich said it was still on the paddlers to make the exact moves they were communicating to the barges.

On the other hand, Werderich said his favorite part of the experience was the very beginning. The headwaters of the Mississippi, he explained, are just about 10 feet wide. He said paddling the long canoe through the twisty, narrow area surrounded by wilderness was the best part for him.

The team didn’t make the trip alone. A ground crew consisting of about 20 people helped make the trip possible by keeping the team members safe and well fed. Among the members of the support team on this trip were Werderich’s parents, Anita and George. He said it was “quite a family adventure to share together.”

Throughout the journey, the positivity of the people around him kept Werderich strong.

“Right from the outset, there was such a positive vibe,” Werderich said of the paddlers and support group. “Everybody always stayed positive. It was really uplifting.”

Although he’s now a resident of Yorkville, Werderich said he was born and raised in northwest suburban Bartlett. He said he learned how to paddle on Tyler Creek at Big Timber Scout Camp in Elgin. His mother, for a long time his Scout leader, watched him fall in love with paddling from the age of 7.

Werderich said he practiced for the world record attempt by spending a significant amount of time on the Fox River with his 18-year-old son, George, who has also taken an interest in canoe racing.

Werderich’s mother also said Wally was fascinated by the Guinness Book of World Records growing up. As a child, he bought a copy and said to his parents, “Wouldn’t it be neat if my name were in that book?” Along with his fascination with paddling the length of the Mississippi, Anita said her son’s accomplishment combined two of his biggest dreams.

After crewing many of their son’s races over the years, parents Anita and George Werderich both said they were very happy to be involved in this trip, too. George Werderich said his initial reaction to hearing his son would be making the trip was to wonder, “How do you get a month off from work?” Wally Werderich works as an assistant public defender in the Kane County public defender’s office.

Then, George remembered his son’s longtime dream and encouraged him to give the record a try.

“We have four children, and we have always supported them in their endeavors and their interests,” Anita Werderich said. “I was quite flattered that we were included in this Mississippi Speed Record endeavor. It just seemed like a chance of a lifetime.”

Werderich’s parents drove their motor home ahead of the canoe to provide a place for other crew members to sleep and eat throughout the two weeks. George said he’s never seen a group of people come together like the 25 people who contributed to this effort.

“I never heard a bad word spoken about anybody,” he said. “Everybody had one goal that was there. The whole goal was to make it work for the boys on the canoe.”

Anita said everyone involved was amazing, full of love, and wanted to help in any way they could. In the boat, an additional power the men had was the power of positive thinking, she added.

“The power of ‘We can do this.’ The power of ‘We got this guys. I’ll take care of you. You’ll take care of me,’ and the power of ‘We are brothers, no matter what happens,’” Anita said. “This has been a great experience, and they all said at the end that positive thinking was a huge part of this success that they have had.”

Werderich said the support shown to the paddlers through social media, too, added to the feeling of positivity throughout the attempt. He said the team saw hundreds of people on the river’s edge every day cheering them on. They made signs and brought the paddlers treats.

At first, Werderich said he couldn’t understand why people would care so much about the Mississippi Speed Record team. He later came to realize that people cared because a group of normal people were “doing something that was difficult and having a positive attitude about it.”

Josh “Jay” Berndtson, who solo kayaked the Mississippi on a 62-day trip in 2019, made a YouTube video he published after the team launched explaining the Mississippi Speed Record’s journey. Berndtson said people had a lot of questions, and with his experience, he believed he could help answer them.

After Berndtson published the video, though, he said people asked him to keep providing updates. Throughout the journey, his series featured pictures and videos gathered by supporters and gave insight into what the team was navigating at every step.

Berndtson said the sheer number of people who came out to watch the Mississippi Speed Record is something that was unique to the team. When individual paddlers make the trip, he said people will be excited and astonished by that, but with this group, it seemed that people were coming to see them in “massive numbers.”

He said the group making their GPS tracking public helped build their profile, too.

“From what I understand, through time, it really did give them a source of strength to battle on,” he said. “It was a source of excitement, something to shoot for, to see the next fans.”

Werderich said that filmmakers with Wilderness Mindset followed the paddlers and will create a documentary. He said there’s so much more to the attempt than the four men in the canoe, and he’s excited to know that the documentary will also shed light on the ground crew in addition to the men in the boat.

Reflecting on the experience, Werderich said he felt like all the forces of karma aligned in the team’s favor.

“I surrounded myself with some really, really good people in this effort,” Werderich said. “I walk away from this, and one of those thoughts in the back of my head is that good things happen to good people. I truly believe that that’s what this was.”