The success of the women’s volleyball team at the Wisconsin Field House is a highlight of Gawlik’s tenure as a top UW athletics administrator. Bryce Richter

Terry Gawlik remembers the day when Title IX became federal law in 1972. She was a successful multisport athlete at her Texas middle school, where her coach broke the news: “This is a great day for women’s sports.”

It would be hard for her to forget. As a UW senior associate athletic director, Gawlik oversees 10 sports programs and is in charge of the athletics department’s ongoing compliance with Title IX — the sweeping statute that prohibits sex discrimination in any educational program that receives federal funding. Although there were efforts early on to exempt athletics, the mandate is now fully entrenched in intercollegiate competition: men and women must have equal opportunities.

The stacks of reports sprawled on Gawlik’s desk serve as a tangible reminder of her task. To comply with Title IX, athletics departments must provide equitable access to sports offerings, athletic scholarships, and all other program areas, such as equipment, travel, facilities, and coaching. The first criterion can be met in several ways. The UW applies the proportionality rule — demonstrating that its sports opportunities for men and women are “substantially proportionate” to its respective enrollment numbers. Enrollment by gender is roughly equal, but it fluctuates each year.

“People have a misconception that Title IX tells you to drop sports,” Gawlik says, noting that the UW’s baseball team was terminated in 1991 only because of a department-wide budget crisis. “No, it doesn’t. It tells you to be in compliance.”

The UW added women’s athletics, which had existed as club teams, to its intercollegiate program in 1974. Although the budget grew from $118,000 to $1.1 million by 1989, a complaint was filed with the regional Office of Civil Rights (OCR) against the athletics department, citing slow implementation — one of the first such measures in the nation. Gawlik, who arrived at the UW in 1994, helped to develop various plans for compliance while meeting financial concerns. The university and OCR went back and forth for 12 years. “They told us, ‘You better be spot on,’ ” Gawlik says, referring to the proportionality numbers.

By 2001, the UW had instituted strict roster management — calculating target participation numbers for each team — and had added women’s lightweight rowing, softball, and ice hockey. Women made up 52.6 percent of the UW’s student-athletes, effectively matching the 53.3 percent of total enrollment. OCR then dropped the complaint.

The right mix of sports and roster sizes is delicate. Rosters fluctuate, and even a practice player counts as a participant. Gawlik tracks the numbers closely — not only participation, but also practice times, support services, and expenses for travel, recruiting, and equipment.

There is no plan to add or subtract sports. “Right now, our numbers match up,” she says. “We’re offering the sports that we would like to offer.” She references assistant women’s rowing coach Monica Whitehouse ’14, who walked on to the UW rowing team her freshman year and then represented Team USA at the 2016 World Rowing Championships. “That, to me, is what participation opportunity is,” Gawlik says.

As the highest-ranking female administrator in the athletics department, Gawlik has had a front-row seat to the exponential growth in women’s sports. Before arriving at the UW, Gawlik coached collegiate women’s basketball, volleyball, tennis, and track. Her introduction was in the early 1980s at the University of Mary Hardin–Baylor in Texas, where she coached two sports while earning her master’s degree. “I didn’t have any assistants. I also taught classes, half the time I was the trainer, I always drove the van, and I was doing all the recruiting and film,” Gawlik recalls, laughing.

Since Title IX, there’s been a 260 percent increase in the number of female athletes at the UW. The women’s sports budget has grown to $24.5 million, more than 50 coaches are on staff, and the 12 teams have more than a dozen national championships combined (including ice hockey earlier this year). When asked where women’s athletics would be today without Title IX, Gawlik takes a moment to ponder.

“Unfortunately, there’d be a lot of women and young girls out there not having the opportunity to play,” she says. “But I also think that we would have found a way. Maybe not at this type of level. But women are competitors — we don’t like to sit the bench.”

Lakes are a familiar backdrop in Taschwer’s life. She first learned to water ski as a three-year-old, going on to make history in world competition.

Gabbie Taschwer ’18 doesn’t quite walk on water, but she’s almost that good.

At the Show Ski World Championships in September 2018, she and her U.S. teammates became the first female water-skiing trio ever to perform a triple helicopter spin in competition.

The trick involves sailing off a ski jump, spinning 360 degrees in the air, and sticking the landing in unison. It had never been attempted — let alone accomplished — by three women during any tournament in the world, according to Gerry Luiting, a U.S. team coach and a chair for the International Waterski and Wakeboard Federation. “The crowd gave them a huge standing ovation, and that doesn’t happen at the world championships unless it’s pretty amazing,” he says. “It’s analogous to a standing ovation at the Olympics.”

There is no shortcut to learning the helicopter spin or any other trick, Taschwer says. “It’s just a lot of crashing until you figure it out. It’s a high-risk sport, but high reward, too.”

Luiting praises Taschwer as among the best water-skiers in the country. She does it all: swivel skiing, barefoot skiing, pyramid formations, jumps, and tricks. “I’ve watched her since she was a little girl,” he says. “She doesn’t see being a woman [as] a barrier, and that’s awesome. She essentially does all of the traditional girl acts in the show and many of what traditionally have been guy acts.”

“She is truly fearless,” adds Julie Patterson PhD’18, one of Taschwer’s teaching assistants at the UW who later became a friend. “She has motivated girls across the world to break down all boundaries in the sport of water skiing.”

Taschwer’s connections to the UW and the sport run deep. She grew up in nearby McFarland, learning to ski on Lake Waubesa at age three with her parents, both former professional water skiers. Her father, Jeff Taschwer ’84, is now a pharmacist at the Middleton Memorial Veterans Hospital in Madison. Her mother, Lori, works on campus for a surplus equipment program, SWAP.

Gabbie started skiing as a paid performer with the Tommy Bartlett Show in the Wisconsin Dells when she was a high school freshman. She continued to ski there through college and also competed nationally with the volunteer Mad-City Ski Team. As a member of the UW’s Water Ski and Wakeboard team, she placed third overall for women skiers at the 2018 collegiate conference tournament.

Although competing in world-class competitions as a student was often tricky, Taschwer graduated in December with a degree in kinesiology after three and a half years. She wanted to finish school as quickly as possible to maximize her years of professional skiing in peak condition. To stay on track, she took summer courses and studied between performances on the docks of the Tommy Bartlett Show.

For her final kinesiology practicum, Taschwer combined her schoolwork with her passion and volunteered with Colsac Skiers, Inc., a water ski school on Lake Wisconsin for children and adults with disabilities, including veterans injured during military service. “It was so wonderful to give others an experience that means so much to me,” she says.

In March, she will start as a full-time water skier for the highly acclaimed Holiday Park Ski Team in Germany, following in the wake of her parents, who skied with the team decades ago.

Taschwer rarely gets nervous as a performer these days — with the slight exception of that triple helicopter spin. “I tried to tell myself it was just another ski show, but I had a few butterflies,” she says. “It was pretty cool to make history.”

Nicols regularly plays this selection of songs at games: “Jump Around,” House of Pain; “I Want It That Way,” Backstreet Boys; “I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Who Loves Me),” Whitney Houston; “WIN,” Jay Rock; “thank u, next,” Ariana Grande. UW Athletics/David Stluka

Former Badger women’s basketball point guard Shawna Nicols ’05 — known today as DJ Shawna — is now the official disc jockey for the Wisconsin Badgers. She deejays at sporting events, including football and men’s and women’s basketball games, and tunes into her skills from the court to read both the players and the crowd. Nicols aims to add to Game Day traditions and create a positive experience for everyone — no matter the final score. Playing to a stadium full of people is, she says, “very surreal. I remember the first day we did sound check at Camp Randall. … I can’t imagine what it feels like to be Beyoncé, but that was maybe a small sliver of it.”

Borland made the trip to Appleton, Wisconsin, to support his new friend Ann McKee ’75, the night’s keynote speaker, whose brother was a star quarterback at Lawrence in the ’60s. To a stunned and largely unsuspecting audience, the foremost researcher on chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) in football and other contact sports laid out her decade-long body of research on the degenerative brain disease that’s linked to minor, repetitive hits to the head.

Audible gasps interrupted the room’s silence when McKee projected side-by-side scans of healthy brains and brains riddled with damage. One had belonged to a 17-year-old high school football player who died by suicide and showed signs of CTE. “I’m not sure I’m giving the right speech for this crowd,” McKee confessed beforehand. By the time she was done, the night felt less like a celebration of sport and more like a cautioning of it.

As Borland was leaving, an attendee approached him. She wanted a picture to text to her partner — a huge football fan. “It’s ironic to me,” Borland says later. “Everyone tells me, ‘I loved watching you play at Wisconsin.’ And then they will say, ‘I really commend your decision [to leave football].’ ”

When you meet Borland, the unassuming history major sticks out more than the football player, with the wisdom and receding hairline of a man well beyond his years. His smile is welcoming; his tone is soft, reserved, and polite. He speaks with equal parts curiosity and conviction. Each word is carefully considered. He’s read hundreds of books since he left football. His word choice — from “disequilibrium” to “abyss” in a seamless sentence — bears it out.

Borland was born in Kettering, Ohio, a midsized suburb of Dayton. He was the sixth of seven active kids, with the oldest, a daughter, followed by six sons. They excelled in many sports growing up, except one: football. “I begged my dad to play every fall,” says Borland, who watched Wisconsin, Notre Dame, and the Green Bay Packers religiously.

Jeff Borland, who owns an investment advisory firm, played college football briefly at Miami University of Ohio. He was adamant that none of the boys would play organized football until high school. “I can’t say my concern was concussions — that would be too easy,” Jeff says. “It was more [broadly] head and neck injury based on the lack of form and technique.”

Borland fell in love with the game within five minutes of his first freshman practice. He took quickly to running back and receiver. On defense, his coaches designed a play for him — called “Badger” — to roam the field and target any player he saw fit. Once, he jumped and somersaulted over the offensive line, piledriving the running back into the ground in a single motion. It was violent — and it went viral.

The college recruiting process was brief. Borland’s dream school was always the UW. His grandfather, Henry Borland ’52, was an alumnus, and his father grew up in Madison. Most colleges projected him as a linebacker, even though he had never played the position formally.

Borland outperformed modest expectations and higher-rated recruits at his first two summer camps. His only preparation had been 20 minutes in a gym with his father, who relayed what he could remember from playing the position decades prior. By the end of a three-day camp at the UW — “When I showed up, they didn’t know who I was,” he says — head coach Bret Bielema saw enough potential to offer a scholarship. Borland jumped for joy — literally. He did a backflip in the Camp Randall parking lot and accepted the offer within an hour.

Borland went on to become one of the UW’s most dependable tacklers of all time. His aggressive, hard-nosed style on the field — combined with a school record for volunteer hours off of it — endeared him to fans. “You will be hard pressed to find a more genuine, empathetic human being,” said Kayla Gross ’15, community relations coordinator for UW athletics, in 2013.

Borland helped lead the UW to three conference championships, earning Big Ten Freshman of the Year in 2009 and Big Ten Defensive Player of the Year in 2013. His 420 career tackles rank sixth in school history.

During the 2014 NFL Draft, Borland’s reputation reigned. “He’s too short. He’s too slow. I don’t care — he can play,” proclaimed NFL Network draft expert Mike Mayock, describing Borland (endearingly, if later ironically) as a “thundering hardhead.” The San Francisco 49ers agreed, selecting him in the third round and signing him to a $2.9 million contract.

Coach Jim Harbaugh spoke glowingly of his middle linebacker throughout the year, telling reporters, “He’s so physical. You can see when he takes on the lead blocker that there is some rattling of fillings.” By season’s end, Borland led the 49ers’ top-five defense in tackles, was named to the All-Rookie Team, and was selected as an alternate for the Pro Bowl. He was just 24.

And then he walked away from it all.

Borland began looking into CTE during training camp of his rookie season. He had never given head injury serious thought until he ran head first into a nearly 300-pound fullback in practice. He almost certainly suffered a concussion, but he didn’t report it to the team, fearing that missing time could jeopardize his place on the roster.

Borland felt increasingly isolated in the 49ers’ locker room as he read A League of Denial. The book revealed the NFL’s resistance to acknowledging the link between football and CTE. When teammates and coaches were around, he hid it within another book’s cover.

Borland learned to compartmentalize. “I was living a very binary life, out of necessity,” he says. During practices, games, and training, his focus was remarkably singular. But in the back of his mind, he was thinking of his long-term brain health. And he was learning that with each collision he was compromising it.

Borland wrote a letter to his parents and handed it to them after a preseason game. It outlined his concerns and suggested that he might not be long for football. (Earlier in the summer, he had jotted down his career goals, including playing for at least 10 years.) They were surprised — and then relieved. Jeff Borland thought back to the UW days. His cousin, cheering emphatically, once remarked that the parents’ section at Camp Randall felt oddly quiet and dull. “What you’ve got to understand,” Jeff told her, “is we want them to do real, real well — and we want the team to win. But mostly we want them to be able to walk off the field at the end.”  

Borland started with simple Google searches, then research papers, then books. He learned of the tragedy of “Iron Mike” Webster x’74, a star center for the Badgers who retired in 1990 after a Hall of Fame career with the Pittsburgh Steelers and Kansas City Chiefs. Legendary for his durability and toughness on the field, Webster later experienced chronic pain, dementia, depression, and homelessness. He died in 2002, becoming the first former NFL player diagnosed with CTE.

Borland went straight to the source: researchers. That’s how he met McKee, who leads the world’s largest brain bank at Boston University. She’s analyzed several hundred brains of former football players — far more than anyone else. She told him the hard truth.

By the end of his rookie season, Borland had seen, read, and heard enough. He was leaving football to preserve his long-term health. He informed the 49ers in March 2015, to the shock of teammates and NFL fans alike.

“It’s essentially heresy to walk away from football in America,” Borland acknowledges. Extreme fans called him, in the nicest of terms, soft and weak. Wrote one on Twitter: “All due respect to Chris Borland, and head injuries are no joke, but what a p – – – – .”

But to others, like David Meggyesy, Borland’s decision was a courageous act. Meggyesy would know: 50 years ago, he also walked away from the NFL in his prime. An outspoken civil rights advocate and Vietnam War critic, he was benched for silently protesting during the national anthem. He retired and released Out of Their League, a scathing account of racism, sexism, and abuses of power he witnessed in the NFL. After hearing Meggyesy speak at the UW in 2013, Borland picked up a copy of his book and consulted with him during his rookie season.

“When Chris retired, he had a lot of influence because he had such integrity and perspective about what he was saying,” says Meggyesy, who later worked for the NFL Players Association. “It was believable for a lot of people. He really loved to play the game. He was a hell of a player.”

If Borland had any lingering doubt, it disappeared in July 2017. McKee and her team at Boston University’s CTE Center had finished analyzing the brains of 111 former NFL players, ranging from ages 23 to 89. All but one showed signs of CTE.

The condition’s degenerative (and currently untreatable) nature means that the damage doesn’t cease even when the collisions do. CTE isn’t diagnosable in the living, but the symptoms often arise later in life, sometimes decades after the exposure to contact. The most common symptoms are memory loss, dementia, and behavioral changes such as aggression — similar to the effects of Alzheimer’s disease, but with different lesions and indicators in the brain.

TIME named Ann McKee as one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2018. McKee’s work was central to Borland’s decision to retire, and “she may have saved my life,” he wrote in the magazine. Dina Rudick/The Boston Globe via Getty Images

The research points to a numbers game. The more blows to the head, the more likely the disease. Notably, these include minor — or subconcussive — impacts. Because players rarely feel or show pain at the time of small, indirect hits, the damage is easy to ignore. But they add up to much more than the occasional big hit. Twenty percent of those with CTE never suffer a diagnosable concussion, according to McKee.

Critics are eager to point out the limitations of McKee’s research. Her work relies on donated brains. Families are more likely to donate their loved one’s brain if they had noticed signs of cognitive decline, and McKee readily acknowledges this selective sample.

But she returns to the numbers game. Some 1,300 former NFL players died over the eight-year span of her study. She has proof that 110 had CTE. Even in the unlikeliest event that not a single one of the other 1,190 former players developed CTE, the prevalence of the disease would still be close to 10 percent of all players. “That’s a public health problem,” she says.

When discussing her research, McKee oscillates between a rigorous scientist consumed with the hard data and a concerned citizen visibly affected by the human toll of CTE. To avoid preconceived notions, she analyzes each brain without knowledge of whom it belonged to. Afterward, for statistical comparison, she sets out to learn as much as she can. For hours on end, she listens as family members’ memories and stories turn to grief and anger. When McKee presents her research, she feels compelled to show more than the subjects’ shocking brain scans — she shows their smiling faces, too. McKee, like Borland, no longer watches football. A lifelong Packers fan, her breaking point was Donnovan Hill in 2016. At age 13, he broke his neck and was paralyzed from a head-first collision while playing youth football. At age 18, he died from complications stemming from his injury. “That hit didn’t just cause paralysis,” McKee says. “He had tremendous brain damage.”

The current strategies to make football safer — better helmets, lower tackling, improved concussion protocols — might reduce some harm. But these ideas are rooted in a misguided focus, perpetuated at the very top of athletics, McKee says.

“The NFL has decided that this is a concussion issue, which it is not,” she continues. “It’s about the subconcussive, repetitive hits that happen with every collision.” Framing the issue around concussions, which can be managed and treated without fundamentally altering the sport, is a strategic choice.

According to McKee, the way to reduce the risk of CTE is to reduce collisions. In football, that’s no easy task. Collision is intrinsic; linemen surge together and crash helmets nearly every play. Fewer collisions translates to fewer practices, fewer plays, fewer games.

Ultimately, when Borland and McKee are asked how to make football safer, their answer is simple: football — at least the sport as we know it today — cannot be safe.  

Borland insists that he’s not anti-football. He’s pro-information. He wants players — many of whom remain “willfully ignorant,” he says — to learn the risks and to make informed decisions.

“I don’t [subscribe] to the notion that football is inherently evil or that there’s this impending doom and the game needs to go away,” Borland says. His primary concern is youth football, which often has the least regulated contact rules of all levels.

Earlier this year, he testified in support of the Dave Duerson Act, a proposal to ban tackle football for children under the age of 12 in Illinois. Those who started playing contact football before age 12 began to show signs of CTE an average of 13 years earlier compared to those who started playing later in life, according to McKee’s research.

Borland also volunteers for nonprofits dedicated to brain injuries in sports, including the Concussion Legacy Foundation and the After the Impact Fund. He travels and speaks frequently at conferences, and occasionally chats with players (including former UW receiver Jared Abbrederis ’13, who retired from the NFL in January) about his decision to leave football. Only a handful of NFL players have followed in Borland’s footsteps. That likely won’t change until CTE is more visible and can be traced in the living — which could be as soon as five years from now, McKee estimates.

The advocacy does not come naturally for Borland, who notes that the sport has afforded him lifelong memories and friendships. “I think the advocate struggles with [the question], ‘How much do I owe?’ ” Jeff Borland says. “As a parent, I would say I’m not sure he owes any more than he’s already done.”

While occasionally tempted, Chris Borland believes scaling back now would be a betrayal. “I’ve had wives of players tell me, ‘I wish he was dead, because he’s not the man I married, and I’ve just become a full-time caregiver for the last two decades.’ I can’t imagine saying no to someone who asks for something from that world,” he says.

In addition to the truth, Borland is searching for peace. The conversation surrounding safety in football provides anything but that. “The irony that I quit not to deal with this and [now], at least intellectually, deal with it every day isn’t lost on me,” says Borland. “And it’s tiring.”

Perhaps unintentionally, his favorite activities since leaving football share a common thread of escape: both physical, with traveling, surfing, hiking; and mental, with yoga and meditation.

Borland’s foray into mindfulness and meditative practice began when his brother-in-law gave him a copy of Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, which prompted him to meditate “pretty clumsily.” Soon after, a mutual friend connected him with Richard Davidson, founder of the UW’s Center for Healthy Minds and a leading researcher on how meditative practices can affect emotional health and the brain.

Borland was immediately struck by Davidson’s candor and scientific rigor (something he particularly appreciated after being approached for endorsements of “concussion-curing” pills and other pseudo-therapies). For years, Borland had learned to train his physical body to prepare for the next play, but never his mind to prepare for what’s next in life.

The difficulty of transitioning from the intensity of professional sports to the slog of everyday life is well documented. Similar to military veterans, retired athletes can struggle with the sudden loss of structure, camaraderie, serviceable skills, and even a sense of identity. Daily meditation has helped him to work through personal anxiety and depression, and more simply, to relax and clear his mind. He thought it could help others, too.

Last spring, Borland and Chad McGehee, an instructor for the Center for Healthy Minds, collaborated on a first-of-its-kind meditative program for former NFL players. Seventeen participants met in Madison over a span of two months. McGehee taught them a new meditative practice each week and assigned a training plan for home. Although some of the former players were initially skeptical — particularly when they were handed a recruiting brochure titled “Love and Compassion Cultivation,” Borland says, laughing — many of them later reported that the practices helped them to sleep better and to manage stress and physical pain.

“One guy talked about how he trained as a football player at 1,000 miles an hour, maximum effort, all the time,” McGehee says. “But that same tenacity at all times didn’t serve him well [after] football. The way he put it is that [mindfulness] felt like a way of deprogramming some of those [tendencies], to become aware that they were there.”

Encouraged by the success of the pilot, Borland continues to collaborate with the UW’s center and also works with the Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute, which teaches a mindfulness curriculum originally developed at Google. He’s facilitated meditative programs for teams at the UW, Michigan, and West Point, aiming to help active athletes cope with pressures on and off the playing field.

“The mindfulness [work] has been such a release valve for me,” says Borland, who now lives in Los Angeles. “It’s such a pivot to positivity and to optimism.”

When he meets former players, Borland pays special attention to how they introduce themselves. Some who have been retired from the NFL for as long as four decades will start with their name immediately followed by their past team or position.

“There’s a cliché that athletes live two lives: athlete and former athlete,” he says. “I don’t think it has to ring true. But it takes work to create a new identity.”

“[Defenders] don’t always necessarily look at [the women], even if they’re standing wide open in the backfield,” says UW chaser Alison Pujanauski x’20 (pictured). “So it kind of makes you a secret weapon.”

On a chilly fall evening, the Wisconsin Quidditch team is trying to sell its game to the newest recruits: a pair of students who happened to be tossing a football on the Gordon Dining and Event Center lawn.

“It’s just like that, but with a volleyball,” one of the players shouts over to them. Her teammates chime in: it’s a combination of many sports, including rugby, dodgeball, basketball, and tag. They brag that a former UW football player has even joined their ranks.

Quidditch looks like organized chaos. Words can only start to describe it; YouTube videos do it much better. There are three chasers, who score points by passing and throwing a volleyball — or quaffle — through the opponent’s goals (three hoops propped up with PVC piping). There’s a keeper, who serves as the goalie and blocks scoring attempts. There are two beaters, who throw dodgeballs — or bludgers — at opponents to briefly knock them out of the game. Later on, there’s a seeker, who attempts to end the match and score a bounty of points by catching the snitch, a tennis ball wrapped in a sock dangling off the backside of an impartial runner. (Yes, quidditch is a contact sport.) Oh, and all the players must hold a PVC pipe — or broom — between their legs at all times.

“Wait.” One of the recruits reaches an epiphany: “Is this, like, the Harry Potter thing?”

Twenty years after the U.S. release of the first Harry Potter book, quidditch — sans the wizardry and magic — is still found on many college campuses. “We’re working on the flying,” says a deadpan Chris Noble PhDx’20, president of Wisconsin Quidditch.

The human — or muggle — version of quidditch was created in 2005 by imaginative students at Middlebury College in Vermont. In those early days, it stayed as true as humanly possible to author J. K. Rowling’s once fictional sport, with players using actual brooms and wearing capes. Quidditch has since evolved into an international phenomenon, with several governing bodies, a major league in the United States, and a world cup featuring nearly 30 countries. There are more than 150 college and community teams nationwide.

Quidditch is a rare coed sport. No more than four of the six active players (or five of the seven, when the seeker enters) can identify as the same gender. While intense and competitive on the pitch, the sport is known for its congenial spirit among players and teams. “There seemed to be so much animosity in some of the [other] sports that I tried to play,” Noble says.

The game first arrived at UW–Madison in 2009, when Nikki Powers ’10 and Mary Howard ’13 established a student organization. The club vanished after a year or two, but its Facebook page remained. Noble — who began playing quidditch in his native United Kingdom — arrived on campus in 2015. After posting on the Facebook page, he eventually mustered up enough interest to revive the squad. Around 20 players now make up the roster and compete against nearby schools, including Marquette, Loyola, and Columbia College. Last year, the team qualified for the Midwest regional tournament for the first time but fell short of nationals. The tournament was held at Breese Stevens Field in Madison.

As practice unfolds, it’s easy to tell the veterans from the beginners. Newer players often fall to temptation, channeling their inner Steph Curry and futilely chucking quaffles from 30 feet away. The veteran players strategically and patiently align, pass, and weave until they’re in Giannis Antetokounmpo dunking range. Skilled players can momentarily move with their brooms tightly tucked between their legs, freeing up two hands for catching and throwing.

It’s clear that the athletes take this game seriously, even if some passersby don’t. During practice, a few students on their way to the dining hall sneak a Snapchat or point and laugh with their friends. The Harry Potter charm comes attached with a nerdy stigma. But the longer you watch quidditch, the more you notice the feats of athleticism and teamwork and less the quirks of its fantasy origin.

Perhaps the best description for quidditch is that it’s simply a sport — as real as any other.

Pat Richter

To some Badgers, Pat Richter is remembered as the star of one of the most exciting football games ever: the 1963 Rose Bowl, which the Badgers lost 42–37 after a furious fourth-quarter comeback fell short. To others, he’s known for transforming UW–Madison into a sports powerhouse. When he became athletics director in 1989, the program had a multimillion-dollar deficit. He led an effort to hire coaches and build facilities that made the Badgers a national force. Richter retired in 2004 but has kept an active eye on the UW.

Vince Lombardi was one of your coaches. What did you learn from him?

I played for Lombardi for just one year, in 1969 [with Washington], but he taught me what it means to be a professional. I had a job to do, and if I did my job — if everyone did their jobs — we would be a successful enterprise. Now, football is just a game, but that outlook carries over to other, more important things: businesses, police and fire departments. Don’t just think about yourself. Think professionally about how your job fits with other jobs, and the enterprise will succeed.

After you left football, you became an executive at Oscar Mayer, but then you returned to athletics at the UW. How did that experience shape you?

Well, Oscar Mayer, athletics — you’re dealing with hot dogs at either place, aren’t you?

But did it affect the way you worked at the UW?

One of the things I brought with me to the UW was the belief that motivation is key. What motivates a coach or anyone else to be successful? I looked for people who were motivated by more than just financial reasons, and not people who looked at the job as a stepping-stone. [Basketball coaches] Dick Bennett, Bo Ryan — they had strong personal connections to Wisconsin. I looked for people who wanted to bring respect and a tradition of success to the UW.

And you recruited in similar ways as vice president of personnel at Oscar Mayer?

I often recruited from the UW because it provides future leaders. I remember talking to somebody who actually was getting a PhD in music (piano). Yet they wanted to be a salesperson at Oscar Mayer. And because of the breadth of their education, it turned out that they were perfectly qualified to do that and be very successful.

In retirement, you’re still involved with the university. What causes do you support?

[My wife] Renee and I have been targeted in our support, but Alzheimer’s is one area. It’s taken on a bit more meaning because of what’s happening with football players. You know, Lou Holland [’65] was a friend of ours. He was a teammate, and [years later], we’d see him at games, but unfortunately, that’s when he started having problems with dementia, and you could see him beginning to slip, and it was very sad to see him. Week to week, almost, a couple weeks between games, you could see his deterioration. He was a great teammate and friend who accomplished great things.

What makes the UW so special to you?

I think there’s a certain cultural aura about the University of Wisconsin. Obviously, it’s a huge school, yet with the wide range of things that you can experience, from athletics to academics, social activities, the Union, Hoofers — it’s not like this anywhere in the world.