In Mandi Sedlak’s world, everything seems to fit. Even in her worst moments.

It’s true of her golf game, her husband, her career and the prosthetic leg connecting these threads. The Kearney native will be relying on the list’s last item when she competes in the U.S. Adaptive Open at Woodmont Country Club in Maryland July 7-9.

It will be the fourth time Sedlak, 45, will compete in the U.S. Golf Association-organized event, which is one of the sport’s major championships for physically and mentally impaired adults. All participants are required to go through a qualifying round. Sedlak won hers on May 27 in Texas. She hopes to continue that success in Maryland.

“My goal is to win, and it hasn’t shown in the first three years,” said Sedlak, noting that she has started out strong in each of the past three years before losing momentum in the later rounds.

If successful, she’ll join an elite group to win the relatively new tournament, first held in 2022. But it won’t be her first win on a big stage.

Sedlak, who now lives on Johnson Lake south of Lexington, won two major events in 2016 — the World Disabled Golf Championship and the Women’s National Amputee Championship.

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In 2017, she successfully defended her Women’s National Amputee championship at Pumpkin Ridge Golf Club in Oregon.

Closer to home, Sedlak is this year’s defending women’s club champion, among all golfers, at Wild Horse Golf Club in Gothenburg.  

But Sedlak’s fit with the game of golf today involved a journey more circuitous than an everyday hacker trying to get around a hulking oak tree.

“I believe everything happens for a reason,” she said, “and I’ve only learned that from everything I’ve been through, I guess.”

The Big Pivot

Young Mandi Bartels got her first exposure to golf growing up in Kearney.

But she focused her attention on gymnastics, a sport in which she reached the threshold of elite status.

“She liked golf, but gymnastics became her life. That’s all she did,” said Mark Bartels, Mandi’s father, who owns a truckers insurance business in Kearney.

Gymnastics coaches from Arizona State University and the University of Wisconsin told the elder Bartels that his daughter was on track to compete in college — on scholarship.

“Mandi’s a very determined person, and when she wants to do something, she goes all out,” Bartels said.

But at the age of 13, she developed a problem that changed her life.

“It was the summertime, and I was walking around bare-footed at gymnastics practice,” she recalled. “I thought I had a piece of gravel stuck to the bottom of my foot when I was on the balance beam. When I went to wipe my foot, it didn’t wipe away.”

Something inside her right foot was bothering her. But Mandi kept quiet. Gymnasts, she explained, tend to have a high pain threshold and intense determination to keep competing. She loved gymnastics so much that she didn’t want it taken away because of an injury.

When the pain became unbearable, Mandi went to a doctor, beginning a yearslong process that eventually led to a diagnosis of plantar neurofibromatosis. The disease, defined by painful tumors, is not a cancer, but had to be treated as such because of its potential to spread in the body, including to the nervous system.

Crossing Paths

All Mark Bartels wanted were definitive answers about how to fix his daughter’s foot condition. Instead, they got a steady dose of frustration. They saw at least 13 doctors, none of whom, he said, could provide a conclusive solution.

Everyone knew this: Gymnastics was history.

Years passed, until one day Bartels met Dr. Dan Slawski through their local church. Slawski, a former Air Force major, had recently arrived in Kearney to work at a local clinic.

“We were pretty much at, ‘What do we do?’” Mark Bartels said, reflecting back on his initial conversations with Slawski.

Slawski, who graduated from the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, recommended doctors back in St. Louis who he thought could address Mandi’s condition. They, too, failed to provide answers, ultimately deciding amputation of Mandi’s leg below her knee was the best option. It would be Mandi’s 13th of 15 surgeries in 15 years.

Slawski performed the procedure in Kearney. One week earlier, 21-year-old Mandi and her family gathered for a group consultation with doctors and a certified prosthetist named Jim Sedlak. Mandi said she had never heard of the word “prosthetist” before that session.

“Isn’t he cute?” Lori Bartels, Mandi’s mother, said to her husband after the consultation meeting that Jim Sedlak had attended.

Eight years into his profession, Sedlak had never been asked to witness a surgical amputation until Slawski asked about Mandi’s procedure.

“I don’t usually meet a lot of people prior to their amputation,” Sedlak said. “When I first met her, yeah, it was a week prior to her amputation. I’m not going to lie. It was depressing.”

Even when asked about it 24 years later, Sedlak had to take a few moments to gather himself before reflecting on it.

That’s because Jim and Mandi Sedlak have now been married for almost 21 years. He hasn’t witnessed another amputation since.

Fit To A T

From working with Mandi on her prosthetic fit after the amputation, Jim got to know her better. He hired her as an office administrator in his Grand Island office.

“She had an incredible personality to work with people, and she hit it off with everybody who came to the office,” Jim Sedlak said.

Six months after she was hired, Mandi became a board-certified mastectomy fitter, which is what she does for a living today. She works down the hall from her husband in their Kearney office.

Despite the family’s nightmarish medical experiences in St. Louis, Mark Bartels noted that one good thing came out of it.

“Was it fate? It very well could have been,” Bartels said.

In the summer of 2000, from a wheelchair at a poolside hotel in St. Louis, Mandi met Janet Lindsay, who was working as a LPGA tournament official at a tour stop just outside of St. Louis.

Despite seeing Mandi Bartels in a wheelchair with an elevated arm and a propped-up leg after a surgical transplant of veins and arteries to the bottom of her foot, the now-retired Lindsay described Mandi as someone who “could just light up a room” with her personality.

Their meeting — one year before the amputation — and ensuing friendship rekindled Mandi’s interest in golf and inspired her to take her game to a higher level.

“She was gracious enough to provide tickets and passes to my parents and I,” Mandi said. “She picked me up in a cart, took me around and disappeared for the day. Introduced me to many players, gave me a lot of insight on the behind-the-scenes look at golf.

“It was at that moment that I (said), ‘I absolutely love this, and this is going to be my new passion in life.’”

The inspiration is mutual, Lindsay said.

“I tell Mandi, ‘You inspire me.’” 

Teeing It Up

After Mandi and Jim got married in 2004, Mandi decided to get back on the golf course at nearby Lakeside Country Club. Though appreciative of being under the tutelage of older ladies during various golf scramble events there, she wanted more out of her game.

Mandi and Jim then started mixing it up with the men at Wild Horse, which was more satisfying to Mandi’s competitive nature.

Before this year, Mandi Sedlak had never had any formal training in golf. That doesn’t stop her from being hard on herself, a trait she developed as a competitive gymnast. She locked in and continued to push herself to reach higher self-imposed golf standards.

Physically, Mandi Sedlak said she feels like she’s 25, not 45.

“If I would show up and play my normal golf game, I’m right there with everybody else,” she said.

But in an effort to play better in the second and third rounds of this year’s U.S. Adaptive Open, Sedlak sought tips from PGA teaching professional Jay Cottam of Meadowlark Hills Golf Course in Kearney.

Cottam played on the golf team at the University of Nebraska at Kearney for three years before the Lopers program was cut after the 2017-18 season. While at UNK, teammate Luke Grossnicklaus of Aurora competed while wearing a prosthetic leg.

“He used to always say, ‘The only disability is a bad attitude,’” Cottam recalled. “I think Mandi displays that in her everyday life.”

Cottam said he’s encouraged by her approach. “She’s always really attentive in our lessons and asking the right questions,” he said. “It’s pretty cool to see her do all this.”

When asked about Sedlak’s issues after the opening round at past Adaptive Opens, Cottam said, “She gets to thinking about things too much.”

So Cottam outlined a plan for Sedlak this year that is meant to address her mental game on the course.

Jim Sedlak, who plays with Mandi on the weekends and will caddy for her at the U.S. Adaptive Open, estimates that Mandi averages between 210 to 220 yards off the tee with a driver.

“She hits the ball really well, but I told her, ‘Hey, even on your best days, you’re not going to hit every single green in regulation,’” Cottam said.

With that in mind, Cottam has pushed for Sedlak to work on her chipping game.

“She’s got a lot of good golf left in her,” Cottam said. “She’s been an inspiration for me and my teaching.”

Though Cottam’s program emphasizes the cerebral part of Sedlak’s game, she’s not short on drive or self-motivation, but actually rather matter of fact about her journey.

“It is what it is. I guess I was taught through the course of life you don’t feel sorry for yourself,” she said. “It sucks what you’re going through, but there’s a lot of other people worse off than you.”

This story was originally published by Flatwater Free Press, an independent, nonprofit newsroom focused on investigations and feature stories in Nebraska that matter. Read the article at: https://flatwaterfreepress.org/rare-disease-cost-a-nebraska-woman-her-le...