“I’m willing to die and sacrifice anything for this program to be winning again,” Posa told a scrum of reporters in the spring. Hyperbole, perhaps, but you could only read sincerity and conviction on his face.

He later told me: “People who leave when times are tough, I feel like it’s soft. I’m a loyal guy. I gave my word to the coaches. I want to rebuild this team.”

Such fierce loyalty may be a surprise on a team coming off a 4–8 season. There is no sugarcoating the struggles of Badger football of late. The program suffered back-to-back losing campaigns for the first time since 1992 — before legendary coach Barry Alvarez set the expectations for Badger football excellence, with three Rose Bowl wins to round out the decade.

The low point of the 2025 season arrived in October, when the Badgers lost to Iowa and top-ranked Ohio State by a combined 71 points while being held scoreless. Afterward, then–Athletic Director Chris McIntosh ’04, MS’19 released a statement to fans acknowledging that the season had “fallen well short of our standards,” and that he and head coach Luke Fickell shared in the frustration.

McIntosh noted that the athletics department was “committed to elevating the investment into our football program to position us to compete at the highest level,” mentioning infrastructure, staffing, and, chiefly, player recruiting and retention. Translation: It was time to up the ante in the financial arms race of the new era of college athletics, in which players can receive direct revenue-sharing payments and third-party NIL (name, image, and likeness) deals, with the ability to transfer unlimited times.

For a team many outside observers left for dead, the immediate returns offered a ray of hope: wins against ranked opponents Washington and Illinois, with UW students storming the field in celebration.

But everyone knows that this season will be the defining one for the future of Badger football. That urgency was on full display in the offseason, as the program stocked the war chest and retooled the roster.

“There is a lot of pressure on this team,” Posa says, “and especially on Coach Fick, because this is the year that he’s got to bring it back up. But we’re all ready for it.”

From the financial strategy to the new roster, here’s how Badger football plans to turn things around.

“Get This Place Bumping”

Two days after the transfer portal opened on January 2, the UW’s top target, quarterback Colton Joseph x’27, announced his commitment to the program. Beyond the excitement of landing an athletic dual-threat quarterback with multiple years of eligibility, it was also an early sign of increased investment in the program.

“When I went into the portal, it was a big unknown,” says Joseph, who led Old Dominion University’s explosive offense the last two seasons. “I wanted to find the best people and the best place to help continue my career success — and that was to come here and be a Badger.”

More than 30 transfer players followed Joseph to Madison, marking a record haul for the program. They include a slew of projected starters to shore up the offensive line, defensive backfield, and skill positions, including running back Abu Sama III x’27, receiver Shamar Rigby x’28, center Austin Kawecki MSx’28, and safety Marvin Burks Jr. x’27.

A small consolation for missing last year’s postseason was the program’s ability to hyperfocus on the new January portal, which consolidated multiple transfer windows into one massive scramble. In the weeks leading up to it, personnel staff and coaches worked overtime to identify potential targets in the portal and players to retain, using an evaluation system that weighs projected fit and production relative to the existing roster to calculate individual value.

Focusing on realistic targets is essential, considering there are some 15,000 football players at the Division I level alone. To run such an operation requires both manpower and strategic thinking, which is why the UW has invested in additional football staff. The directory now reads like that of an NFL front office: a general manager, a director of scouting and player personnel, and a full team of recruiting and scouting staff.

The strategy resulted in 23 commitments within a week of the transfer portal opening. On3’s Team Transfer Portal Index, which measures a team’s production in the portal relative to its lost talent, ranked the UW’s class 15th in the nation, sandwiched between Ole Miss and Miami.

“I think we did our best job of pinpointing some of the guys we wanted to have and then stayed on top of it to get it done quickly,” Fickell says. “That window goes fast. You have to do this the right way in order to execute, or else you miss out on options one through six and settle for option seven or eight.”

The large number of transfers reflects a concerted effort to get more experience on the field in an increasingly competitive Big Ten Conference, from which the last three national champions have emerged. Fickell believes the team is uniquely prepared to handle the roster turnover because of its returning locker room leadership — particularly among the defense’s front seven, a young but productive group that has embraced adversity.

“There’s just a different leadership among the team right now,” he says. “You can feel it. There’s a core nucleus of leadership that has grown over the last two, three years through a lot of hard times.”

It includes linebackers Posa and Cooper Catalano x’29, who as true freshmen and midseason breakouts combined for more than 100 tackles, six sacks, and two forced fumbles to lead a defense that kept the team competitive down the stretch.

“This is a different team, a lot more athletic, and we’re going to get this place bumping,” Posa says.

There’s also been a recalibration in high school recruiting, with the program returning to its local roots and betting that players with closer ties to the state will show more patience with playing time and development. By July, the Badgers were off to a hot start with the 2027 class, securing verbal commitments from 10 of the top in-state recruits, including at positions of traditional strength at the UW — offensive line and running back.

For competitive reasons, student-athlete compensation is not public information, so the athletics department hasn’t reported how much more money it’s investing in the roster, nor does it know the precise spending figures of peer schools.

Still, you can read between the hash marks. Landing coveted transfers like Joseph and retaining rising stars like Posa and Catalano — especially during a down period for the program — suggest spending that’s closer to the upper echelon of the Big Ten.

“Put it this way, we couldn’t do what we did in January if there wasn’t a different level of investment,” Fickell says. “Money doesn’t solve all problems, but when you’re looking for starters and you have to compete in this league, there’s just a need.”

“We’re Being Aggressive”

Following McIntosh’s statement in October, it did not take long for the athletics department to make good on its promises of elevated investment.

In late November, the UW announced a 10-year contract extension with Under Armour, which outfits all the varsity programs with uniforms and accessories. As part of the new agreement, which has a total estimated value of more than $100 million, Under Armour committed to allocate funds to NIL contracts with UW student-athletes for brand endorsements and appearances.

The next month, the UW launched an initiative with Learfield called Badger Athlete Partners, which is designed to expand NIL opportunities. Learfield, a longtime sports marketing partner, committed to adding five positions dedicated to NIL-related deal facilitation and content creation for Badger student-athletes. That team works closely with the UW’s in-house NIL staff, which has also grown in recent years. And together, they see a chance to infuse NIL opportunities into traditional corporate sponsorship agreements. These range from global brand Pepsi to local furniture store Steinhafels, which recently featured UW linemen in a “Recline with the Line” video series.

“The revenue-sharing component of the financial packages for athletes across sports, including football, is not sufficient for what is needed to field successful teams,” says Brian Mason, the UW’s director of NIL strategy. “That requires the ability to position third-party NIL deals to supplement it. We need to take advantage of every opportunity that exists with our full roster of corporate partners.”

When the football program approaches a recruiting target or seeks to retain a current star, it must be prepared to discuss both on-field opportunities and a financial package, which often includes revenue-sharing payments directly from the athletics department as well as third-party NIL deals that Mason’s team works to facilitate.

Upon the landmark House v. NCAA settlement in June 2025, the UW had already committed to pay up to the maximum cap for direct revenue-sharing payments to student-athletes across sports — $21.3 million this year. But the real arms race has been in third-party NIL deals, for which there is no limit. According to ESPN reporting, some football rosters alone are approaching a total figure of $50 million.

Prior to the House settlement, there was a proliferation of donor-funded pay-for-play masquerading as NIL arrangements. Now there is a clearinghouse that reviews NIL deals for legitimate business purpose. Wisconsin Athletics believes it’s positioned to thrive on this commercial-focused playing field.

The department has posted three consecutive years of record revenue in fundraising, sponsorships, and ticket sales. Newer revenue streams include alcohol sales in stadium, the return of major concerts to Camp Randall (hello, AC/DC), and brand-promotion deals, such as Culver’s and UW Health jersey patches for men’s teams and women’s teams, respectively.

“We’re being smart, but we’re being aggressive in order to make sure that we’re keeping up with our peers,” says Mitchell Pinta ’08, the UW’s deputy athletic director and chief revenue officer. “We’re also making sure we have the right partners that fit our brand and our priorities.”

Over the spring, the success of Wisconsin Athletics emerged as a rare bipartisan political issue, with the state legislature and governor working out a bill to provide millions of dollars to UW–Madison for athletic facility debt service. The intent is to free up additional resources to expand revenue opportunities, preserve all 23 varsity sports teams, and help the Badgers stay competitive on the field.

“It is no secret that football drives 80 percent of our total athletics revenue,” says Pinta, who previously worked for the NFL as director of business development. “A healthy football program helps fuel the opportunity for all 22 other sports. The blunt fact of the matter is that we need to do everything we can to put football in a position to be successful on the field.”

Later in the spring, McIntosh departed the university to become the Big Ten’s first deputy commissioner for strategy. The listing for the UW’s new athletic director reinforced the need for financial acumen and expertise in the future business model of college athletics. In July, the university hired Shawn Eichorst for the role (see “The Next Era for Wisconsin Athletics”). The veteran administrator rose through the leadership ranks at Wisconsin Athletics before serving as athletic director at the University of Nebraska and University of Miami. Most recently, he was the deputy athletic director and chief operating officer at the University of Texas, which reemerged as a national semifinalist in football during his tenure.

When it comes to investment, sometimes seeing is believing. That’s especially true when you’re trying to sell the program to current players and future recruits. The Kellner Family Athletic Center — the largest capital project in Wisconsin Athletics history at $285 million, with more than $100 million in private funding — is towering proof. The new facility adjacent to Camp Randall will include a regulation-sized indoor football field; state-of-the-art strength and conditioning, sports medicine, and dining centers; and a 305-meter track.

“While the McClain Center served us well for many years, it just didn’t have the modern amenities that a Big Ten football program requires in this day and age,” Pinta says. “And this facility is not going to just benefit our football program — it’s going to benefit the entire athletics department.”

The first phase of the project was completed over the summer, so if you notice better punting this season, you’ll know why. Unlike the former practice facility, the Kellner Family Athletic Center has that full-sized field and a high-enough roof to accommodate indoor punting practice.

But if punts don’t get you energized for the upcoming season, perhaps the new quarterback room will.

“Make Plays When Stuff Goes Wrong”

For all the talk of money and strategy, the success or failure of Badger football this season may come down to one simple factor: a healthy starting quarterback.

That has been a matter of terrible luck for the UW. In Fickell’s three seasons, the starting quarterback to enter the year has only finished 11 of 37 games — and just two of the last 24. Billy Edwards Jr. MSx’27 sprained his knee in the first half of last season’s opener, leading to a carousel of four quarterbacks taking snaps. The disjointed offense sputtered near the bottom of college football in both yardage and scoring.

The Badgers are hoping that Colton Joseph can run free from the injury curse — and opposing defenders. He did plenty of the latter at Old Dominion, where he was one of only two quarterbacks in the country to eclipse 2,000 passing yards and 1,000 rushing yards last season as a redshirt sophomore. (By comparison, Russell Wilson MSx’13 holds the record for most rushing yards in a season by a Badger quarterback — with 338.) Against eventual national champion Indiana, Joseph ran wild for 179 yards and two touchdowns.

He’s proven he can stretch the field vertically with an elite deep ball. And the belief is that he can unlock offensive coordinator Jeff Grimes’s balanced, physical pro-style system, which at BYU produced a top-two NFL draft pick at quarterback.

“I can make plays when stuff goes wrong and put more pressure on defenses,” Joseph says. “I’m going to do everything in my power to have a winning season.”

Learning from recent history, the Badgers have stacked the quarterback room with Louisville transfer Deuce Adams x’28 and freshman Ryan Hopkins x’30, both of whom turned heads in spring practice and can plug into a similar offensive style.

Compounding the quarterback injuries last season was the hardest schedule in all of college football, according to ESPN’s College Football Power Index, with seven of 12 games against ranked teams.

“The hardest thing for me to judge right now is where our ability stacks up in the league, because the Big Ten has gotten exponentially better over the last three years,” Fickell says. “But putting ourselves in a position to be in the mix for the playoffs in the last quarter of the season is what we have to be able to do.”

That’s a high bar for a team coming off a four-win season, but Fickell is aware of the expectations — and the frustration. Last year, he told reporters: “I know how everybody feels. I live it every single day, every minute.”

In his office over the summer, I asked him what that actually looks like — especially for a coach who is not accustomed to failure, having won national championships as an assistant at Ohio State and then transformed Cincinnati into a playoff team.

“It’s hard. It’s why hopefully you have a good, solid family at home, because that’s the one crew that doesn’t rise and fall on the way you perform on Saturdays,” he says. “If you don’t have some rock, some faith, I don’t know how you’d survive.”

He adds: “The challenge is to be consistent, no matter what you feel on the inside. Your players and coaches are going to look at you every single day, what your body language is, how you respond.”

How will the 2026 Badgers respond, with a coach feeling the pressure, a revamped roster, a new athletic director, a far friendlier schedule, and maybe, just maybe, healthy quarterback play? It won’t take long to find out. The Badgers open the season at Lambeau Field against ranked Notre Dame on September 6.

The lights don’t get any brighter than that.

Preston Schmitt ’14 is a senior staff writer for On Wisconsin.

Remember the walk — buzzing with wary energy — from the residence hall to your first freshman class? Then there was the route from those Regent Street tailgate parties toward a raucous Badger victory at Camp Randall Stadium. Recollections far more serene might include strolling hand-in-hand with a date along the verdant Lakeshore Path at sunset.

Here are some of the most fondly and frequently recalled UW–Madison footpaths, featuring lush landscapes, iconic architecture, centuries of local history, and meditative escapes. And of course, in America’s Dairyland, Babcock Hall ice cream.

Camp Randall Game Day Walk

The path to a Badger football game might be a march, or even a bar crawl. But tradition strictly dictates that whether you come from parties on Langdon or Mifflin streets, tailgates on Regent Street, or Union South’s Badger Bash, those ribbons of cardinal red and white must converge at the end of Dayton Street and flow beneath the imposing 1912 Camp Randall Memorial Arch (though note that it’s temporarily closed due to construction).

For Civil War buffs, the grassy Camp Randall Memorial Park to the left showcases a guardhouse, two cannons, and a host of historic markers. For football-focused fans, however, it’s a direct path between the engineering campus to the right and the looming stadium on the left to reach the students’ Gate 5 entrance near Breese Terrace.

Once the ground has been shaken by “Jump Around” and the UW Marching Band has dazzled with its exuberant Fifth Quarter anarchy, exiting near the Field House offers a view of the new Kellner Family Athletic Center, where future Badger athletes will train.

Lakeshore Path Walk

Student stresses can necessitate a healing respite among trees and rippling Lake Mendota. The cacophony of the Memorial Union Terrace recedes at the entrance to the Howard Temin Lakeshore Path. Although the path technically starts back at Park Street, it’s farther west where one begins to find the soaring trees, small beaches, and large stones that offer spaces for quieter conversations or solitude. The birds’ trills and the gliding sailboats promise an escape from the steady beat of urban campus life.

Trees dwindle along University Bay and the Triangle Marsh before the official path circles the Class of 1918 Marsh into Bill’s Woods and the Big Woods. But most visitors are drawn rightward to Picnic Point, which beckons with its creeping flowers, fire circles, woodpiles, and some of the most expansive Lake Mendota views in Madison. The beloved peninsula juts nearly a mile into the lake.

Here, numerous benches, felled logs, and smaller footpaths provide wide-angle views of the capitol, campus buildings, Langdon Street, and the Edgewater Hotel piers to the right. Look left for “real” life in Madison’s sprawling suburbs and lakeside homes, stretching beyond the boats that dot the water. The Picnic Point portion of the Lakeshore Path is the most visited area of the UW’s 300-acre Lakeshore Nature Preserve, with thousands of people traversing it every year. A visit even on a snowy winter day will turn up students, dogs, and townspeople seeking exercise or peace.

Walk to the point and set everything else in the chaotic world aside.

Lake Mendota Path Walk

A walk on the wild side of the Lakeshore Nature Preserve turns up fewer humans on the narrow, sandy, root-riddled paths. In these biologically diverse arbors, birds clamor amid the rustling of trees and tall grass. If you do happen to meet another person, it likely requires stepping sideways into the brush to let them pass.

A good place to start is Frautschi Point’s small parking lot, which sits across from the Eagle Heights University Apartments. A short walk down toward the lake arrives at the two small bumps that jut out into the water like an owl’s ears and mark the point.

To the west lie nearly abandoned, denser woods. The Lake Mendota path passes through the Tent Colony Woods, Wally Bauman Woods, and steep Eagle Heights Woods, which hosts plants found nowhere else in the preserve. Paths to the east cross the more populated Eagle Heights Community Gardens, where walkways encourage wandering among the varieties of crops. There are plenty of opportunities here to “touch grass” or even squeeze handfuls of soil — a perfect break from scrolling and screens.

This route continues with a loop through the 11-acre restored Biocore Prairie, which consists of marshy fields and teaching landscapes tended by UW staff and students. Take in the new home for purple martins and the Bluebird Trail, dotted with bluebird boxes.

The interior footpaths, some dusted with wood chips, circle back to Eagle Heights. Those seeking more than four miles of leg-stretching can hike the lakeshore all the way back to Picnic Point where it intersects with the Howard Temin Lakeshore Path, then head to Alumni Park, the green space between the Memorial Union and the Red Gym that honors prominent alumni. An audio tour of the Lakeshore Nature Preserve, available at lakeshorepreserve.wisc.edu, features history, poetry, and recollections.

Observatory Hill Walk

An endurance trek from Library Mall up Bascom Hill can curve right around the university’s first building, North Hall, to arrive at the walkable start to Observatory Drive. Cross the street and pause in the Storyteller’s Circle to reflect on the Wisconsin Idea, then take in sparkling views of Lake Mendota from on high, visible through the trees of Muir Woods. It’s seven acres of seclusion in the bustling heart of campus.

Returning to Observatory Drive, gaze skyward to the Carillon Tower with its 56 bells — an 85-foot ivy-bedecked tower out of the Rapunzel fairy tale. Originally it was surrounded by woods, which were partially removed in the ’60s to build the Social Sciences Building. The carillon’s quarter-hour tolling continues to provoke students to hustle, reminded that they are late for class.

Further along Observatory Drive lies its namesake, the domed Washburn Observatory, which inspired a popular 1930s song heralding it as a great place to take a date. The paths just off the street offer better views of the observatory and also pass by the Effigy: Bird Form sculpture by the late UW art professor Truman Lowe MFA’73. This area in Agricultural Hall’s backyard contains the earthworks that remain of the Observatory Hill Mound Group. A two-tailed water spirit and a bird integrated into the landscape are easy to miss when trotting by, although small plaques honor the area’s Indigenous history.

Continuing on the left are multiple paths throughout this National Historic District, which encompasses much of the agricultural campus that grew up around the 1893 King Hall. The College of Agricultural and Life Sciences has devised its own “Discovery Walk” of the area, showcasing the architecture as well as the scientific progress that took place in these historic buildings.

Further ahead, cross to the lake side of Observatory Drive and enter the oasis of Zen that is the Allen Centennial Garden. Smells shift from budding flowers, to spicy tree bark, to earthen mulch, to musty pond before you pass under an ivy-covered cedar pergola and cross a red Japanese-style bridge, both of which are excellent spots to focus all your senses on the surroundings. Many benches, each with a unique view of the thousands of plants puzzled into the sylvan space, surround the yellow-brick Victorian Gothic mansion that once housed agricultural deans.

Exit this small Eden, cross Observatory Drive, and take a path south toward Linden Drive. As the 1908 Tudor Revival–style Stock Pavilion comes into view, envision Harry Truman, Teddy Roosevelt, or Bill Clinton bellowing stump speeches inside, projected by its admirable acoustics. Or, if you prefer, listen hard to hear echoes of Sergei Rachmaninoff, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Muhammad Ali, R.E.M., or Bonnie Raitt, who have also graced this distinctive structure.

The next building to the east is arguably the most delightful spot on campus. It’s the place where chemist Stephen Babcock’s esteemed butterfat test of 1890 paved the way to today’s delectable dairy treats, still made from the 1951 ice cream recipe developed the year Babcock Hall was built. It’s the ultimate cherry on top of a meandering campus expedition. Melanie Conklin MA’93 is a Wisconsin journalist and political communications director.

“Wisconsin was the third-highest-ranked creative writing program in the country when I got in, and I was so excited I canceled tickets to visit another program,” says Benjamin, who finally moved back to her hometown of San Francisco in 2025. “I’d planned to just stay for the program, but I fell in love with Madison, like so many people have before me.”

During their 15 years in Wisconsin, Jandl became the associate director of UW–Madison’s Office of Sustainability while Benjamin launched a literary career. Her debut novel, 2014’s The Anatomy of Dreams, won the Edna Ferber Fiction Book Award and was longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. But it was 2018’s The Immortalists, an instant New York Times bestseller, that catapulted her career. Translated into more than 30 languages, The Immortalists topped a slew of best-of lists and even landed her on The Tonight Show. As for 2026’s Under Story, Warner Bros. Pictures teamed with the producers behind Harry Potter and Barbie to scoop up the movie rights nearly a year before the book was even published.

“It’s totally thrilling,” says Benjamin, who was so overwhelmed when she got the news that she forgot to heat the kettle before pouring cold water into her coffee grounds. (“I was like, why does this taste so bad?”)

Although Benjamin’s first two novels flirted with speculative elements (lucid dreaming, clairvoyance), Under Story is her first full foray into science fiction — and it took six years to write. Benjamin credits the success of The Immortalists for affording her the luxury of time, increasingly rare in today’s publishing industry.

“I don’t have very many ideas, which is one reason why I’m a novelist and not a short-story writer,” Benjamin says. “But when the right idea comes, I know it.”

Escaping Through Fiction

Under Story is a wildly ambitious and poetic brain-bender set in Antarctica and Madison, in both the world as we know it and the inverse as Benjamin imagines it. The idea came during COVID lockdown after she read a 2020 article with the headline “Why Some Physicists Really Think There’s a ‘Mirror Universe’ Hiding in Space-Time.” It detailed a neutrino experiment in Antarctica that was producing strange results and a speculative concept: the CPT-symmetric universe (in which time moves both forward and backward) proposed by Latham Boyle, Kieran Finn, and Neil Turok. A fourth scientist brainstormed a link between the results and the concept, which was later disproved — but the seed was planted.

“I think physicists were probably rolling their eyes,” Benjamin says. “But for a fiction writer, it was catnip.”

Benjamin began about six months of the prewriting she’s come to recognize when she’s seized by a story: deep-diving into rabbit holes, scribbling and sketching in her notebooks, collecting bits of dialogue and scenes — even interviewing a physicist early on.

“It’s a very intense initial process of receiving inspiration, as pretentious as I know that might sound,” Benjamin says. “What I mean is I’m flooded with ideas. I’m taking notes at all hours of the day. When I have this kind of overwhelming transmission, that’s how I know: This is a novel.”

The time also felt ripe for both escape and reflection. In addition to the challenges of the pandemic, Benjamin’s stepmother was living through the final years of advanced Alzheimer’s. Benjamin herself was working through debilitating chronic pain and related issues aggravated by an 18-month book tour for The Immortalists and years of putting her own mental and physical health on hold. These weighty themes play out clearly on the pages of Under Story: self-care versus caretaking within a relationship; expanded consciousness during grief; and the striking parallels between the beginning and end of life.

“I think my anxiety about mortality is simply a driving force for me as a writer,” Benjamin says. “That’s in The Immortalists, and it’s very much in this book as well. A discomfort with uncertainty and a fear of loss — those are things that haunt me and which I’m drawn to exploring again and again.”

The Scientist as Literary Assistant

Many of the novel’s scenes unfold in places like the UW Arboretum and Science Hall.

There’s also so much beauty on display in Under Story, with rich prose celebrating the astonishing unknowable universe. While detailed descriptions of Antarctica’s real-life McMurdo Station afford a rare glimpse of a place most people will never see, the sections set in Madison offer a more recognizable treat. Many scenes unfold in places like the UW’s Arboretum and Science Hall. There’s also a family-owned apple orchard based on Door Creek Orchard in nearby Cottage Grove, one of Benjamin’s favorite haunts.

Writing what you know is the easy part — but there was so much Benjamin didn’t know about the realities of this new fictional world, so she shadowed scientists in caves, attended conferences on psychedelics and mushroom growers, and visited a sheepshearing at the apple orchard. One of the biggest game changers, owed to the success of The Immortalists, was her ability to hire a research assistant for Under Story. The role required a trained scientist with a unique blend of traits: a willingness to imagine bending the rules for some fantastical what-ifs and also to practice discretion with Benjamin’s intellectual property.

To find just the right person, she advertised through related UW–Madison graduate programs, specifically physics and botany. Her first hire was Lena Vincent PhD’22, who held the job for nearly two years before getting hired elsewhere. Her second was Alyssa Adams, who’s been in the role since 2022. Adams has done two postdocs at the UW, one in computation and informatics in biology and medicine, and the other at the Morgridge Institute for Research.

“This is the most fun job I’ve ever had in my entire life,” says Adams, who “felt like a stalker,” learning everything there was to know about Antarctica’s McMurdo Station. What are the oceans like? What time does it get dark in September? What exactly do researchers wear?

“Chloe would ask some really specific questions, like how far is it from this building to that building — would it be a five-minute walk? Ten? And I’m on Google Earth doing these measurements. Going on YouTube, trying to understand what people are saying, what they’re dressed like, what weird stories have happened. She wants to make sure that she has a complete picture of the world, even if she’s not going to share it entirely in the book.”

Best of all, Adams says, Benjamin only shared what was needed to solve each particular story puzzle. In other words, she gave away no spoilers.

“When I finally read the book from end to end, it was like reading it fresh. I respect her so much for that, and I loved seeing how it unfolded,” Adams says. “I was actually crying at a couple points, and I don’t usually cry. I legitimately was like, ‘Am I biased? No, this is an incredible book.'”

A UW Writing Community

UW–Madison’s unique, competitive, fully funded graduate program in creative writing is located inside the Helen C. White building on the shores of Lake Mendota. It only accepts six students each cohort, alternating between poetry and fiction each year. Benjamin prizes her MFA experience for its intimate access to incredible mentors — heavyweights like Judith Claire Mitchell, Amy Quan Barry, Lorrie Moore, Jesse Lee Kercheval — and also for giving her a writing community.

“I felt like I had found my people, and that was very profound,” Benjamin says. “And a lot of these relationships have carried into the future.”

One of those is with New York Times best-selling author Brittany Cavallaro MFA’11, who was in the poetry program but took some fiction workshops with Benjamin and remains her closest friend from those days. The two would meet up to write at Ground Zero coffee shop or the Chocolaterian and critique each other’s work.

“Chloe has terrific instincts for what makes a story emotional and compelling,” Cavallaro says. “She was so smart and poised at such a young age. Even then, her fiction was so emotionally textured, mature, and smart.”

Cavallaro is also responsible for one of the most profound relationships of all — she’s the one who introduced Benjamin to Jandl, who was then pursuing his PhD in 20th-century American literature with an environmental component.

“We probably would not have crossed paths socially if not for her, because those programs are pretty distinct,” Benjamin says, smiling. “There are the sixth floor MFA-ers and the seventh floor PhDs.”

New Beginning

Under Story is dedicated to Jandl, and theirs is more than just a love story — he is an early and exceptionally qualified reader of her work. His writing and educational background, a career in sustainability, and even his rural upbringing have given Benjamin access to another sort of research assistant, this one in-house. One of Under Story’s strongest threads is the climate crisis, and Benjamin even stopped eating meat during the making of this book.

“He has truly earned that dedication, both professionally and personally,” she says, adding that it’s very difficult to support a partner through chronic illness. “That sort of sustained caretaking requires so much grit and commitment. For years, things were very tough. And Nathan hung in there.”

It was actually Jandl’s career that triggered the recent move back to San Francisco, after he was offered a position of director of sustainability at the University of California–Berkeley.

“It’s the only job that would have taken us away,” says Benjamin, with more than a hint of wistfulness in her voice.

Still, beginnings are exciting for any author. She may be living closer to family in the city where she was raised, but she’s seeing her old universe through new eyes, much like her characters in Under Story. She’s found effective treatments for her health issues, and she’s more determined than ever to enjoy her one brilliant chance at this life — so much of which she worked through with this novel.

“I’m more accepting of the unknown, more okay with uncertainty, more positive, as opposed to catastrophic, worry-based thinking,” she says.

Benjamin does miss Madison and maybe always will.

“I’m as happy to be here as I am grieving what we left,” she says. “I’m such a San Francisco soul, but Wisconsin really shaped me. Fifteen years is a long time, and I very proudly consider myself an honorary Wisconsinite. I will always feel that it is one of my homes.”

Maggie Ginsberg ’97 is the author of novels Still True and the forthcoming Daisy Chain. She works as the writer for UW–Madison’s Division of the Arts.

Some, like those that the antibiotic penicillin are made from, are lifesaving. Many are plant pathogens. Powdery mildew, rusts, and blight do more than irritate home gardeners. They cost billions in annual crop losses. In fact, fungi are responsible for about 70 percent of all plant diseases.

Luckily for farmers, doctors, and diners everywhere, fungal research at the UW has deep connections in academic fields spanning five schools and colleges and numerous departments. For 27 years, campus has been home to the Fungal Biology Supergroup, a loose alliance that has grown to some three dozen professors and researchers in disciplines that range from botany and pharmacy to medicine and public health.

The UW’s supergroup is the world’s largest and most diverse collection of fungal researchers, according to Christina Hull, a professor of biomolecular chemistry, medical microbiology, and immunology. “It’s a rich community,” she says. Research ranges from studies on medical applications for psychedelic mushrooms to the development of antifungal treatments for people, animals, and plants.

“The supergroup has become stronger over the years,” says its founder, Nancy Keller, a professor of plant pathology as well as medical microbiology and immunology. Members, including faculty, researchers, and students, meet monthly to share progress in their fields, make connections, and create research partnerships. (One lab even has Fungus Fashion Fridays.)

Mehdi Kabbage, a professor in plant pathology, only needs one word to sum up the supergroup’s impact on the UW’s research prowess.

“It’s massive,” he says. “Massive.”

Here are just a few of the projects that members of the supergroup are tackling to improve our lives.

Stemming the Rot

Programmed cell death sounds like the name of a heavy metal band, but if Kabbage is right, this biological term holds the key to stopping the scourge of soybean farmers everywhere: Sclerotinia stem rot.

The stem rot fungus can live in soil for several years and infect more than 400 other species, including many economically important crops. By tricking the plant into flipping its own “self-destruct” switch, this fungus triggers a biological meltdown that drains more than $1 billion from U.S. agriculture annually. Currently, farmers rely on fungicide applications and other less effective tools to stem the tide.

Kabbage wants to mitigate yield losses by genetically modifying soybean plants to improve their resistance. That way, if Sclerotinia’s cottony growths appear, the plant will defend itself.

By transferring genes into soybean plants, he has succeeded in programming the new hosts to make endangered cells shut down, stopping the disease’s progression.

Kabbage found an added benefit. These enhanced plants are more drought resistant because they are better able to manage the chemical stress caused by water deficit.

He took his first mycology course as an undergraduate in France. “For me, it was love at first sight,” he recalls. “I fell in love with fungi’s lifestyle, the structures they produce, and their plasticity across multiple environments.”

Kabbage is also seeking a cure for a new variant of Panama disease, a soil-borne fungal infection of banana plants. “It threatens to wipe out banana production worldwide,” he says. “Banana plants have no resistance.”

Death Caps, Disease, and Drugs

When a death cap mushroom kills a luckless diner, reporters from outlets like NPR, NBC, and the Washington Post put botany professor Anne Pringle on speed dial.

Pringle, a past president of the Mycological Society of America, isn’t seeking a cure for the deadly effects of the world’s most toxic mushroom. Instead, her interest is invasion biology. As a graduate student in California, she began collecting the killer mushroom when she learned it had migrated there.

“The death cap became a tool to try to understand a particular aspect of the changing biodiversity of fungi and understand why it’s happening,” says the ecologist and evolutionary biologist.

The National Geographic Society has since named her as one of its Explorers, a select group of adventurers and scientists who often appear in the pages of National Geographic magazine. No doubt it’s because she speaks with such passion about fungi.

“If you want to make discoveries that challenge what we think about biology, fungi are the organisms to work with,” she says. “Fungi challenge our very notions of individuality and hierarchy and integration.”

Pringle hates the “myth of the lone professor.” If she were a fungus, she might be of the mutualist variety — one that has a mutually beneficial association with other kinds of organisms — reflecting how she collaborates with grad students and researchers. “Whenever I give talks,” she says, “somewhere at the top, I always tell people that I’m using the word I, but the word I is a lie. It’s never an I. It’s always a we.”

Nematodes are also a subject of study for Pringle, this time in collaboration with Keller, a leader in the field of fungal chemistry. These microscopic roundworms are found around the world. Though most are harmless and benefit soil health, some cause debilitating maladies like elephantiasis, river blindness, and trichinosis.

“We’ve found that extracts from a certain mushroom appear to kill nematodes. We’re going to try to find out what that metabolite is, because there’s a great need for nematicides in the world,” says Keller.

Meanwhile, she and Pringle have allied themselves with Hull. And Keller and Hull, who both work on fungi that cause fatal diseases in people, have also paired up for many years.

“We are interested in how the spores of those fungi can get into a host and set up shop,” says Hull. “If we can stop those spores from becoming active, we could prevent disease in people.”

Hull and Keller’s research into antifungal drug development involves identifying small molecules that will either prevent germination or kill the organism once it has caused a disease.

“Everything is connected,” Hull says. “As a fungal biologist, what else am I going to say?”

Eye on the Spuds

Potatoes are complicated, especially when it comes to fungal threats. That’s the way plant pathology professor and Extension specialist Amanda Gevens sees it.

Wisconsin is the nation’s third-largest producer of the humble tuber by acreage, and fungus can attack it anywhere in its life cycle, as well as after harvesting. One particular fungus that causes early blight shows up in almost every potato field in the state starting in July.

Farmers often call Gevens the plant doctor. She also studies fungal threats to sweet corn, peas, cabbage, onions, and carrots.

“Much of the work I do is diagnostic,” she says. “They call me to their fields or send me potato plants so we can understand what’s making their plants sick and offer management strategies.”

Gevens, in collaboration with Phil Townsend, a professor of forest and wildlife ecology, is developing techniques to detect disease in potato plants before symptoms can be seen with the naked eye. They began with handheld devices in fields. Since then, they have tested the technology in drones and airplanes and hope to extend the testing to satellites. Their goal is to make the technology commercially available.

Gevens’s lab has also studied using ultraviolet light as a nonchemical post-harvest means of stopping fungus. “We expose tubers to low-duration UV light that deactivates pathogens, so potatoes can be stored more healthfully,” she says.

Wisconsin farmers rely on more than 40 fungicides to keep their potatoes healthy, but chemicals can only do so much.

“When we think we’ve got a fungal pathogen managed and outwitted, inevitably, that’s not the case,” Gevens says. “They find another way of persisting. Fungi have a real drive to survive, and that’s the constant challenge.”

Powerful Medicine

The FDA may approve psilocybin for treatment of depression later this year or in early 2027, based in part on research data submitted by the UW’s Center for Psychedelic Research and Education.

“It’s an enormous opportunity,” says the center’s director, Paul Hutson, the Thora M. Vervoren Professor for Research in Psychoactive Substances in the School of Pharmacy.

“This will be a new class of drugs. They will be as big a paradigm shift as any drug class you can think of in the treatment of cancer, mental health, and cardiovascular disease.”

Psilocybin is the active ingredient in some types of hallucinogenic or “magic” mushrooms. Research suggests that the trip-inducing fungus, long used in rituals by indigenous cultures in pre-Columbian Mexico, increases neuroplasticity. In effect, it rewires the brain in ways that create opportunities for learning that can help people overcome psychological woes.

What has most surprised Hutson is how fast psilocybin’s effects occur and how durable they are. “Even though the drug leaves the system within a day, something fundamentally changes in people,” he says.

Trial subjects who are addicted to cocaine, methamphetamines, tobacco, and alcohol lose their desire for those substances “virtually immediately,” he says. “We’ve seen a 90 percent drop in methamphetamine use after two doses of psilocybin.”

Trials are also underway to determine the effect of psilocybin on sleeping subjects and those given the amnesia-inducing drug midazolam, which is administered during colonoscopies.

“How important is it to remember the nature, severity, or intensity of a psychedelic treatment to get a therapeutic benefit?” asks Hutson. “We’re asking fundamental questions about how this drug works.”

A Fungal Legacy

The university’s fungi expertise is not limited to the modern era. UW researchers played a key role in the development of penicillin. A fungus discovered on a moldy cantaloupe in 1943 in Peoria, Illinois, became “the great granddaddy” of all penicillin cultures now in use.

For its discovery, thank UW professor of bacteriology and botany Kenneth Raper, then a USDA researcher. He and his team played a key role in the strain’s commercialization.

Raper shipped samples to UW microbiologists Marvin Johnson and Elizabeth McCoy 1925, MS1926, PhD1929, who exposed them to ultraviolet light. This created a new strain that yielded 900 times more penicillin than the variant Scottish physician Alexander Fleming found in 1928.

Raper came to the UW in 1953 and spent the next 26 years studying fungi and doing pioneering work on slime mold, which, although not actually a fungus, has become a go-to organism for scientists who study cell communication.

Since 1849, the botany department has housed one of the world’s greatest resources for fungi researchers. The Wisconsin State Herbarium boasts a collection of nearly 1.4 million plant specimens, including more than 91,000 fungi. It’s the third-largest public university herbarium in the U.S. — and one of the world’s biggest. In the last decade, staff discovered that 59 of the facility’s fungal pathogen specimens had been mailed to Birge Hall in 1900 by George Washington Carver, the famed botanist and peanut researcher.

“Our greatest strength is in microfungi,” says director and botany professor Ken Cameron. “These are the disease-causing mildews, molds, cankers, rusts, and smuts. Since we’re an agricultural land-grant university, these specimens have historically been very important to us.”

Cameron, who is a global expert on orchids, is very familiar with fungi because the exotic flowers have coevolved with them and need specific fungi species to ensure that their seeds germinate.

Cameron is also president of the Botanical Society of America, and he dismisses the notion that an herbarium is old-fashioned. The UW’s increasingly serves as a kind of lending library. Scientists from around the world borrow its specimens, sequence their DNA, and trace the origins of new diseases.

“We collect plants and fungi for use by the next generation, but when people look at our historical specimens today, they’re looking backward in time,” he says. “What people are now realizing is that we are sitting on a treasure trove of information.”

George Spencer profiled Alzheimer’s disease expert Nathaniel Chin ’06, MD’10 for On Wisconsin in 2023. Together they wrote the book When Memory Fades (St. Martin’s Press).

She has teamed with Hull to understand how death caps are evolving. Most mushrooms need a partner of the opposite mating type to reproduce. But Pringle and Hull found that death caps can reproduce on their own, a fact that helps explain how their territory has spread.

Nematodes are also a subject of study for Pringle, this time in collaboration with Keller, a leader in the field of fungal chemistry. These microscopic roundworms are found around the world. Though most are harmless and benefit soil health, some cause debilitating maladies like elephantiasis, river blindness, and trichinosis.

“We’ve found that extracts from a certain mushroom appear to kill nematodes. We’re going to try to find out what that metabolite is, because there’s a great need for nematicides in the world,” says Keller.

Meanwhile, she and Pringle have allied themselves with Hull. And Keller and Hull, who both work on fungi that cause fatal diseases in people, have also paired up for many years.

“We are interested in how the spores of those fungi can get into a host and set up shop,” says Hull. “If we can stop those spores from becoming active, we could prevent disease in people.”

Hull and Keller’s research into antifungal drug development involves identifying small molecules that will either prevent germination or kill the organism once it has caused a disease.

“Everything is connected,” Hull says. “As a fungal biologist, what else am I going to say?”

Eye on the Spuds

Potatoes are complicated, especially when it comes to fungal threats. That’s the way plant pathology professor and Extension specialist Amanda Gevens sees it.

Wisconsin is the nation’s third-largest producer of the humble tuber by acreage, and fungus can attack it anywhere in its life cycle, as well as after harvesting. One particular fungus that causes early blight shows up in almost every potato field in the state starting in July.

Farmers often call Gevens the plant doctor. She also studies fungal threats to sweet corn, peas, cabbage, onions, and carrots.

“Much of the work I do is diagnostic,” she says. “They call me to their fields or send me potato plants so we can understand what’s making their plants sick and offer management strategies.”

Gevens, in collaboration with Phil Townsend, a professor of forest and wildlife ecology, is developing techniques to detect disease in potato plants before symptoms can be seen with the naked eye. They began with handheld devices in fields. Since then, they have tested the technology in drones and airplanes and hope to extend the testing to satellites. Their goal is to make the technology commercially available.

Gevens’s lab has also studied using ultraviolet light as a nonchemical post-harvest means of stopping fungus. “We expose tubers to low-duration UV light that deactivates pathogens, so potatoes can be stored more healthfully,” she says.

Wisconsin farmers rely on more than 40 fungicides to keep their potatoes healthy, but chemicals can only do so much.

“When we think we’ve got a fungal pathogen managed and outwitted, inevitably, that’s not the case,” Gevens says. “They find another way of persisting. Fungi have a real drive to survive, and that’s the constant challenge.”

Powerful Medicine

The FDA may approve psilocybin for treatment of depression later this year or in early 2027, based in part on research data submitted by the UW’s Center for Psychedelic Research and Education.

“It’s an enormous opportunity,” says the center’s director, Paul Hutson, the Thora M. Vervoren Professor for Research in Psychoactive Substances in the School of Pharmacy.

“This will be a new class of drugs. They will be as big a paradigm shift as any drug class you can think of in the treatment of cancer, mental health, and cardiovascular disease.”

Psilocybin is the active ingredient in some types of hallucinogenic or “magic” mushrooms. Research suggests that the trip-inducing fungus, long used in rituals by indigenous cultures in pre-Columbian Mexico, increases neuroplasticity. In effect, it rewires the brain in ways that create opportunities for learning that can help people overcome psychological woes.

What has most surprised Hutson is how fast psilocybin’s effects occur and how durable they are. “Even though the drug leaves the system within a day, something fundamentally changes in people,” he says.

Trial subjects who are addicted to cocaine, methamphetamines, tobacco, and alcohol lose their desire for those substances “virtually immediately,” he says. “We’ve seen a 90 percent drop in methamphetamine use after two doses of psilocybin.”

Trials are also underway to determine the effect of psilocybin on sleeping subjects and those given the amnesia-inducing drug midazolam, which is administered during colonoscopies.

“How important is it to remember the nature, severity, or intensity of a psychedelic treatment to get a therapeutic benefit?” asks Hutson. “We’re asking fundamental questions about how this drug works.”

A Fungal Legacy

The university’s fungi expertise is not limited to the modern era. UW researchers played a key role in the development of penicillin. A fungus discovered on a moldy cantaloupe in 1943 in Peoria, Illinois, became “the great granddaddy” of all penicillin cultures now in use.

For its discovery, thank UW professor of bacteriology and botany Kenneth Raper, then a USDA researcher. He and his team played a key role in the strain’s commercialization.

Raper shipped samples to UW microbiologists Marvin Johnson and Elizabeth McCoy 1925, MS1926, PhD1929, who exposed them to ultraviolet light. This created a new strain that yielded 900 times more penicillin than the variant Scottish physician Alexander Fleming found in 1928.

Raper came to the UW in 1953 and spent the next 26 years studying fungi and doing pioneering work on slime mold, which, although not actually a fungus, has become a go-to organism for scientists who study cell communication.

Since 1849, the botany department has housed one of the world’s greatest resources for fungi researchers. The Wisconsin State Herbarium boasts a collection of nearly 1.4 million plant specimens, including more than 91,000 fungi. It’s the third-largest public university herbarium in the U.S. — and one of the world’s biggest. In the last decade, staff discovered that 59 of the facility’s fungal pathogen specimens had been mailed to Birge Hall in 1900 by George Washington Carver, the famed botanist and peanut researcher.

“Our greatest strength is in microfungi,” says director and botany professor Ken Cameron. “These are the disease-causing mildews, molds, cankers, rusts, and smuts. Since we’re an agricultural land-grant university, these specimens have historically been very important to us.”

Cameron, who is a global expert on orchids, is very familiar with fungi because the exotic flowers have coevolved with them and need specific fungi species to ensure that their seeds germinate.

Cameron is also president of the Botanical Society of America, and he dismisses the notion that an herbarium is old-fashioned. The UW’s increasingly serves as a kind of lending library. Scientists from around the world borrow its specimens, sequence their DNA, and trace the origins of new diseases.

“We collect plants and fungi for use by the next generation, but when people look at our historical specimens today, they’re looking backward in time,” he says. “What people are now realizing is that we are sitting on a treasure trove of information.”

Just ask a Badger.

“It’s a peak moment, one of the best of my life,” says Sydney Hilley ’20, MS’22, who helped lead UW–Madison to its first volleyball title in 2021. “It was so rewarding to see how happy everyone was, looking at the faces of my teammates crying, knowing how many years of work — our whole lives — led up to that.”

When the women’s hockey team won its record ninth national championship in March, it became the 35th UW team to culminate their season with an NCAA title. These championship teams span nine varsity sports and range from underdogs to dynasties. Each is immortalized in Badger sports lore.

So let’s relive some of the exceptionally dramatic championship runs — and feel what it’s like when the buzzer hits zero.

The Storybook Ending

Volleyball — December 18, 2021

UW volleyball had long been knocking on the door of a national championship. The Badgers reached the regional finals of the NCAA tournament 11 times between 1997 and 2020. Four of those times they advanced to the national semifinal and thrice to the title match. But on each run, they fell agonizingly short of the ultimate prize.

By 2021, the UW program coached by Kelly Sheffield had already secured a place among the elite of college volleyball for its consistent success in a stacked Big Ten conference. But the pressure to deliver on the program’s championship promise had reached an all-time high. With every passing point in every passing tournament — including near-title runs in 2019 and 2020 — you could practically feel an entire fan base holding its collective breath.

And then, a special group of super seniors finally blew the championship door down.

Because the COVID-19 pandemic shortened the 2020 season, the NCAA granted an extra year of playing eligibility. For the 2021 Badgers, that meant the unlikely return of the most dynamic duo in college volleyball: Dana Rettke ’21, the towering 6’8″ middle blocker and former Big Ten Athlete of the Year (and, spoiler alert: eventual National Player of the Year), and Sydney Hilley, the ever-steady and reigning Big Ten Setter of the Year. Hilley and Rettke weren’t just inseparable on the court. They also lived together during all five years of college.

“She was my best friend — still is my best friend,” Hilley says.

Rounding out the super seniors were outside hitter Grace Loberg ’21 and defensive specialists Giorgia Civita MS’22 and Lauren Barnes ’21, MS’22.

None of them had to return to Madison for a fifth college season. There were pro offers. But they had a job to finish.

“This was our last chance to finally go and do it,” Hilley says of winning the championship, “and we knew what it was going to take because we had been close before. We had played together for so long. We loved each other so much. We had the ultimate trust and confidence in each other.”

The fourth-ranked Badgers entered the NCAA tournament on a high after winning the Big Ten championship for a third consecutive year. They swept through the first four rounds of the tournament, with heavy-hitting help from young stars Anna Smrek ’24, Jade Demps x’24, Devyn Robinson ’24, MS’25, and Julia Orzol ’24. At the semifinal in Columbus, Ohio, they outlasted top-ranked and previously undefeated Louisville in a five-set thriller.

Next up: Nebraska — and what would become the longest championship match in college volleyball history.

At first, it felt like déjà vu. The UW dropped the first set 22–25. Then Nebraska raced to a 13–7 lead in the second. Lesser teams might have crumbled, but the Badgers got back into the set with a 4–0 run. From there, it was a prolonged back-and-forth fight, with the UW fending off four set points — including at 28–29. That’s when Rettke took matters into her own hands, finishing off the set with a kill and back-to-back solo blocks against all-American Lauren Stivrins.

“Even if the other team knew that’s where the ball was going, it didn’t matter — she was that good,” Hilley says. “It gave me a lot of confidence to set the ball from anywhere and find her.”

The grueling match continued, featuring two of the best defenses in the nation. The Badgers controlled the net and set a championship record with 24 blocks, including 13 from Rettke. Barnes blanketed the back row with a match-high 31 digs.

The UW squeaked out the third set 25–23; Nebraska the fourth by the same score. And then the Badgers stormed out to a 7–0 lead in the decisive fifth set. At match point, with the UW leading 14–11, a Nebraska hitter smashed the ball out of bounds. The Badgers began to celebrate their big moment at midcourt. But Nebraska challenged the play. After a long review, the refs ruled that the ball had brushed the tip of a Badger finger on the block attempt.

The UW players couldn’t believe the call (and still don’t, Hilley confirms), but the veteran squad quickly regained its composure.

And then, because it had to be, it was Hilley to Rettke — a back set into a violent spike down the line — for the championship point. The team, including Coach Sheffield, broke into tears of relief and joy. The super seniors had finally brought the elusive title home.

“It was the perfect storybook ending,” Hilley says.

The Perfect Defense

Men’s soccer — December 10, 1995

The story of the 1995 UW men’s soccer championship starts with a budget crisis and ends with the most dominant defensive display in NCAA tournament history — five straight shutouts, even after an injury forced a backup goalie into his first real college action.

But if you think this is an underdog story, don’t tell it to the 1995 team.

“We came into the year, legitimately, with the goal of reaching the College Cup,” says Scott Lamphear ’96, the Badgers’ all-American defender and team MVP. “It almost looked like we hated each other, we were so intense in training.”

In 1991, facing a $2 million budget deficit, the UW athletics department made the difficult decision to cut five sports. One of the few beneficiaries was the men’s soccer program, which had previously been allotted two scholarships. Now it could offer the maximum of 10.

Coach Jim Launder made the most of that good fortune, recruiting Lamphear, midfielder Mike Gentile ’97, and forward Travis Roy ’97 — a touted trio from Michigan (the former two being high school teammates). This class would eventually lead the Badgers to glory as seniors.

UW soccer was building on a solid foundation. It had won the regular season conference title in 1991 to qualify for its first NCAA tournament in a decade. Then the scholarship-infused program advanced to the Sweet 16 in 1993, with a memorable win over top-seeded Indiana. The next year, the Badgers qualified for the tournament again but fell short to Southern Methodist University (SMU) in the first round.

With eight returning seniors and some postseason experience, the 1995 squad was as confident as it was determined. The UW’s defense gave up just 11 goals in 25 games, including 17 shutouts. Most of those performances were with goalkeeper Todd Wilson ’98 in net. But after the Badgers blanked Bowling Green to start the NCAA tournament, Wilson dislocated his elbow against William & Mary in the second round. They only had one other goalie on the roster: Jon Belskis ’96.

The walk-on redshirt junior was a massive obstacle: 6’4″, 215 pounds. Yet in his four years at the UW, he had only seen the field twice and never even had to make a save. In fact, he had considered quitting the sport altogether.

But Belskis was brilliant when thrust into action. Leveraging his long limbs to snatch up balls, he didn’t allow a goal in the overtime win against William & Mary — or for the rest of the tournament. It helped that he played behind a nearly impenetrable defense featuring both size and speed.

“When we got the ball, we kept it, and when we didn’t, we were organized,” says Lamphear. “We had amazing athletes who understood the game and worked as a unit. If you got by one of us, there would always be another one there waiting.”

The Badgers got some revenge against SMU, smothering the Mustangs 2–0 to advance to the semifinals. To say they were the afterthought among the four teams heading to Richmond would be an understatement. There was local favorite Virginia, riding a 33-game winning streak and vying for its fifth consecutive title. There was Duke, featuring star freshman strikers who would soon stun Virginia. And there was Portland, with a coach who made history by leading both its men’s and women’s teams to the College Cup.

The Badgers came in with the reputation of a team that didn’t give up many goals — but also didn’t score many. Observing warmups for the semifinal against Portland, Soccer America magazine wrote: “One saw a clue to the Badgers’ low output … shots were flying everywhere but in the goal. One knocked down a walkway barrier and stunned an elderly usher.”

Still, these Badgers were no timid offense. They aggressively controlled the ball against both Portland in the semifinal and Duke in the championship, combining to outshoot them 31–9.

Against Portland, the Badgers finally converted in the 64th minute when Lars Hansen ’95 took a sliding goal-line pass from Gentile and tapped it into the net for the only goal of the game.

In the championship match, Hansen again tipped in an easy shot that had bounced off a Duke defender at the eight-minute mark. (Not a bad showing for the Norwegian forward who, according to Launder, literally walked on to the team after passing by a practice and asking if he could join.)

Matching Duke’s breakneck pace, the Badgers broke through again in the 63rd minute. Junior defender Chad Cole x’97 kicked in a rebound for his first goal of the season.

“There was no chance we were losing the game after that shot. I said right after, we were no longer going for the win. We were going for the shutout,” Lamphear says.

And that’s what they did. The UW’s feat of five consecutive shutouts in the NCAA tournament had never been done before and has never been repeated.

As Gentile told media after the game: “Don’t call us a fluke. Don’t call us a Cinderella team. This is a great team.”