Unintimidated: Two come-from-behind goals by Talafous (left) sent the Badgers into the finals. UW Archives

Life on campus was dramatically different a half century ago. The football team had only two winning seasons in 17 years, including a stretch of 23 consecutive winless games, while the men’s basketball team finished above .500 just three times from 1968 to 1988. Antiwar protests regularly roiled the university.

From such a time sprung a new men’s hockey contender. Over one improbable weekend in Boston in March 1973, the Badgers captured their first NCAA hockey title. In the 33 years that followed, they added five others — more than any other college program in that span.

Most remarkable about the achievement is that it came just seven years after Coach Bob Johnson arrived like a dynamo from Colorado College, and just three years after Wisconsin was admitted to the powerhouse Western Collegiate Hockey Association (WCHA), which had won 16 of the 22 NCAA titles up to that point.

The Badgers had been to two of the previous three NCAA tournaments before 1973, but they had never played for the title. Merely reaching Boston required a gauntlet of six games in nine days.

Wisconsin finished the regular season with a weekend sweep at home against Minnesota, completing a 17–1 record at the Dane County Coliseum. The team swept two games against the Gophers in the first round of the WCHA playoffs, the last punctuated by a wild brawl with 39 seconds left. The Badgers followed a tie against Notre Dame with a 4–3 victory, punching their ticket to Boston.

Back then, the NCAA tournament was a small affair, with just four teams. Against Eastern champ Cornell in the semifinals, the Badgers fell behind 4–0 in the second period, then 5–2 early in the third. Yet the 3,000 UW fans who trekked to Boston kept cheering. “They never allowed us to die,” Johnson said.

Goals by Gary Winchester ’74 and Jim Johnston ’73 got Wisconsin within one, and with five seconds left, sophomore Dean Talafous ’74 scored. With 33 seconds left in overtime, Talafous scored again, sending the Badgers into the finals against high-powered Denver, the number one team in the country.

The Pioneers had two all-Americans and the WCHA’s top freshman, “but we weren’t intimidated,” said Wisconsin captain Tim Dool ’73, a puck-hounding dervish.

The UW fell behind early, but Dool’s second-period goal tied the game 2–2, and Talafous earned a place in Badgers lore with another game-winner. The celebration carried deep into the night in the streets of Boston.

Upon their return to Madison, the Badgers were greeted by more than 8,000 supporters at the Field House. A new dynasty in college hockey had begun.

UW Athletics

The Washington Wizards scooped up Badger basketball star Johnny Davis x’24 with the number 10 overall pick in the 2022 NBA draft, making him the first UW player drafted in the first round since 2015 and the 10th in history. The sophomore from La Crosse, Wisconsin, helped the team win a share of the Big Ten championship last spring and was named the conference’s Player of the Year. We’ll miss Davis’s competitive fire at the Kohl Center but can’t wait to see how far it takes him in the pros.

“I am especially thrilled for our West Coast alumni,” UW athletic director Chris McIntosh said of the expansion. Bryce Richter

If you enjoy catching some rays while cheering on the Badgers, we have good news: the University of Southern California (USC) and the University of California–Los Angeles (UCLA) are soon joining the Big Ten Conference.

On June 30, the council of Big Ten leaders voted unanimously to admit the California schools effective August 2, 2024. The criteria for admission included academics, competition, diversity and inclusion, and financial sustainability.

“UCLA and USC are two of the premier athletic and academic institutions in America,” UW athletic director Chris McIntosh ’04, MS’19 said in a statement. “Their addition further strengthens the Big Ten’s stature as the nation’s most impactful athletic conference, on and off the fields of play.”

There was a mixed response from fans of Big Ten teams, though many acknowledged that consolidation into “mega conferences” appears to be the future of college athletics. In August, the Big Ten cemented its status as a powerhouse conference by reaching a new broadcast-rightsagreement with Fox, CBS, and NBC for more than $7 billion over seven years.

The Big Ten Conference has expanded several times in recent years. It admitted Penn State in 1990 as well as Nebraska, Maryland, and Rutgers between 2011 and 2014. The addition of USC and UCLA in 2024 will increase membership to 16 universities.

“I am especially thrilled for our West Coast alumni,” McIntosh said of the expansion. “They will now be more connected than ever to the conference and to their alma mater.”

UW athletes will be able to earn $5,980 per year for academic awards. Jeff Miller

In July, the UW Department of Athletics committed to providing academic-based financial awards to student-athletes for the 2022–23 school year and beyond.

Under the plan, all UW student-athletes — regardless of whether they’re on an athletic scholarship — will have the opportunity to earn up to $5,980 per year. That dollar amount represents the maximum allowable award for academic performance following the landmark NCAA v. Alston Supreme Court case last year. The court ruled that universities may not limit education-related benefits for student-athletes, opening the door to direct financial payments for academic achievement. However, the ruling allows the NCAA to cap the amount proportional to the financial value a student-athlete can receive from athletic-performance awards.

“As soon as the Supreme Court ruling was determined, we knew we wanted to commit the full allotment to our student-athletes,” says UW athletic director Chris McIntosh ’04, MS’19. “I’m really proud of the fact that we can provide our athletes with a significant amount of money to start their postgraduate lives.”

In April, ESPN reported that Wisconsin was the first Big Ten school to have a plan in place to provide academic bonus payments in 2022. At that time, only 22 of the 130 schools that ESPN surveyed had committed to such payments this year.

In addition, the UW’s approach to disbursing the payments will incentivize the completion of a degree. Student-athletes who are academically eligible for the award will receive $980 per year until their athletic eligibility has expired. Once they graduate, they will receive the additional $5,000 for each year, up to $25,000. The university’s commitment totals more than $3.8 million per year.

“This is a game changer for Wisconsin,” says women’s soccer coach Paula Wilkins. “For me to be able to offer every athlete, including walk-ons, this award money can’t be [overstated]. I think about this from my own personal perspective as a former student-athlete and the impact $20,000 upon graduation would have had for setting up my future. I’m thrilled for our players.”

The south end zone keeps fans connected to the action in the stands rather than separated into a luxury box. Bryce Richter

At the end of the UW football team’s 2021 home schedule, the athletic department sprang into action. Shortly after staffers cleaned out the last of the debris following the Badgers’ victory over Nebraska, crews moved in and began deconstructing and reconstructing Camp Randall’s south end zone, aiming to have the stadium ready for play again when the 2022 season began nine months later.

In spite of supply chain issues that affected many construction projects, Camp Randall met its schedule. The firm JP Cullen completed its work just ahead of deadline, and the Badgers unveiled their new seating section when Illinois State arrived on September 3. Well, mostly.

“We had one set of basically 150 chairs that were not here for the first game,” says senior associate athletic director Jason King, “but we were able to rent chairs temporarily. And I don’t think, frankly, anyone knew [the correct chairs] weren’t there.”

The south end zone adds a new section of premium seating to the stadium, an area that keeps fans “inside the bowl,” in King’s terms — connected to the action in the stands rather than separated into a luxury box. The new section also connects Camp Randall to the Field House so that fans can experience both of the UW’s historic sports facilities at the same time.

“People are impressed by the Champions Club Bar, which really ties the Field House into the space,” King says. “The backdrop to the bar is actually the facade of the Field House. And above it are the windows that allow you to see from the bar area into the Field House.”

King notes that fans seem intrigued by the new south end zone, but many will have to experience it from afar. Season tickets sold out this year.

UW Marching Band director Corey Pompey ushers in a new era for the Badger Bash at Union South. Bryce Richter

Fifty years ago, Badger Bash — the ultimate pregame festivity for Wisconsin football fans — was born.

When the original Union South opened in 1971, former Wisconsin Union manager Merrill “Corky” Sischo noticed a sea of Badger fans passing through the building for food and drinks before home football games. He connected with Mike Leckrone, then the fresh-faced director of the UW Marching Band, and together they threw the first official Badger Bash outside Union South in 1972.

The event started as a low-stakes opportunity for the marching band and pompon squad to warm up in front of a small audience. But by 1974, more than 3,000 fans were packing Union South’s grounds. They came for increasingly razzle-dazzle performances as well as brats and beer. In the early years, the event extended to after the game, with polkas and jazz by the Doc De Haven ’58 band in the Carousel room.

“As the crowd continued to grow, the performance became more ‘formulated’ but was still very relaxed,” Leckrone said shortly before his retirement in 2019.

Today, Badger Bash’s recipe largely remains the same. The free tailgate begins two and a half hours before every home football game, hosted by local celebrity emcees. Classic Wisconsin tailgate fare is still served, alongside more than 100 food and beverage options. (Bloody Mary bar, anyone?) The marching band, UW Spirit Squad, and Bucky himself take the stage around 90 minutes before kickoff with a preview of the halftime show and a plentiful helping of hip-swinging UW hits. The event is rounded out with kid-friendly activities and rivalry-related competitions. And fans without a ticket to the game can stick around and watch on the big screen at The Sett.

Badger Bash has become so beloved that the new Union South was practically built for it. The southwest plaza is roughly double the size of its predecessor, and architects specifically designed the space to accommodate the band’s staging needs.

In 2019, Corey Pompey made his public debut as the marching band director at the home-opening Badger Bash. The band delighted the crowd with the usual Badger hits, including the “Beer Barrel Polka.” But Pompey also introduced contemporary songs from the likes of Adele, The Killers, and Cardi B. Welcome to the new era of Badger Bash.

YouDub Marketplace is helping players like Badger football’s Graham Mertz navigate the new landscape of college athletics after the NCAA adopted a policy to allow student-athletes to profit from their use of name, image, and likeness. Jeff Miller

Good news, Wisconsin sports fans: you can now book your favorite Badger.

In April, UW athletics launched the YouDub Marketplace, where businesses and Badger fans alike can pitch profitable opportunities to UW student-athletes. The online marketplace is helping players and the public navigate the new landscape of college athletics after the NCAA adopted a new policy to allow student-athletes to profit from their use of name, image, and likeness (NIL).

While companies can use the platform to arrange formal sponsorship and advertising deals, fans can pitch any concept — a social media shout-out, an autograph, a special appearance — at a starting rate of $30. The student-athlete then has seven days to review the pitch. UW athletics recently partnered with Altius Sports Partners, an NIL education firm, to provide guidance to student-athletes. The players also have access to free campus resources, including legal advice and contract review from the UW Law & Entrepreneurship Clinic and business coaching from the Wisconsin Small Business Development Center.

YouDub Marketplace visitors are greeted with a photo grid of Badger student-athletes, and clicking on each profile brings up a biography, links to social media accounts, and a list of personal interests. Quarterback Graham Mertz x’23’s profile displays his personal logo and his interest in food, gaming, and music. Volleyball star Devyn Robinson x’24’s profile notes she’s a pet owner.

The marketplace, developed by NIL technology company Opendorse, is one of the first of its kind in college athletics.

“When you slide over those 18 inches [on the bench] … all hell may break loose,” Gard half-joked during his introductory press conference.

It’s a saying that has proven true several times over during his seven-year tenure as head coach of the Badgers. Adversity has become a fact of life for Gard: his father’s death from brain cancer, an unimaginably tragic car accident involving an assistant coach, a confrontation with a rival coach that led to a slap heard ’round the basketball world, a pandemic, and a leaked locker room recording that threatened the program’s viability.

It’s ironic that drama follows Gard these days. His personality is measured and understated. He prefers a low profile. For more than two decades, he served quietly in the background for Ryan, following his mentor from UW–Platteville to UW–Milwaukee to Madison. Despite opportunities to seize the spotlight elsewhere, Gard stuck around as college basketball’s most loyal soldier. Loyalty runs in his DNA. So do his addiction to hard work and his close attention to detail, traits that trace back to his hog-farming childhood in rural Wisconsin.

Through it all, Gard’s ever-steady approach has helped the Badgers sustain nearly unmatched success in the NCAA under his leadership: five March Madness appearances, two conference championships, two Big Ten Coach of the Year awards, and a 144–78 record.

“I tell my players, ‘If you haven’t faced any adversity, you will,’ ” he says. “You can read all the books you want. You can have the greatest mentors. But the best lessons in life come from experience in adversity.”

And in that regard, Gard may be the most experienced coach in college basketball.

Feeling the Pressure

As I sit down with Gard in his Kohl Center office, he points to a large white pillar across from his desk. It’s peppered with decals chronicling the program’s achievements: a national title, four Final Four appearances, 20 conference championships. It also lists the school’s NCAA Tournament bids, with Wisconsin earning a spot 22 out of the last 23 occasions. Something of a perfectionist, Gard admits the missing year — 2018 — still bothers him.

“You talk about pressure on the job? I stare at this every day,” he says.

This past year, Big Ten media picked the team to finish 10th in the conference. But the underdog squad led by emerging star Johnny Davis x’24 and fifth-year guard Brad Davison ’21, MS’22 scrapped its way to a 25–8 record. They became Big Ten cochampions, earning a No. 3 seed in the NCAA Tournament.

“We’ve embodied what Wisconsin is — blue collar, hard hat, lunch pail, put your best foot forward,” Gard says. “You don’t get bonus points for how a victory looks. I always told them, just keep that same fight, that grittiness, that togetherness, that will, that look in your eye. And it will serve them well for the rest of their lives.” Fans will remember an ugly incident from a February game, when Wisconsin and Michigan came to blows over a late time-out with the game already decided. With 15 seconds left and a 15-point lead, the Badgers’ bench players were struggling to break Michigan’s full-court press. They had just turned the ball over the previous possession, so Gard took a time-out to realign his untested players and reset the half-court clock. Michigan coach Juwan Howard was visibly upset with the move.

“Those guys deserve to be coached with my same intentions and effort as my starting five do,” Gard explains. “He has every right to coach his team. I felt my guys deserved that, too. That means they deserve to get every opportunity to have success. Success was getting the ball across half-court without another turnover.”

When Gard approached Howard in the handshake line, Howard pointed at him and said, “I won’t forget that.” A heated confrontation between coaches and players ensued. Howard swung and hit Wisconsin assistant coach Joe Krabbenhoft ’09 in the face, which resulted in a five-game suspension and a $40,000 fine. Gard was fined $10,000 but not suspended.

When I ask Gard whether he’s spoken to Howard since, he offers a one-word response: “No.”

It’s little wonder that Gard’s players have bought into his hard-nosed style. Their coach, after all, has become living proof of the power of grit in the face of adversity.

A Maturity beyond His Years

The village of Cobb, Wisconsin, 60 miles west of Madison, has a population of 400. Growing up, Gard and his two younger brothers got their hands dirty at their grandparents’ farms, with humbling tasks such as scooping out hog manure from the stalls. Any job not done perfectly had to be repeated. Hard work and attention to detail were simply the ways of life in Cobb.

“You understand what it’s like to get up early in the morning before the sun and work until it’s dark. And then, hey, guess what, we’re doing it again tomorrow,” Gard says.

His parents also modeled loyalty. From the age of 18 to her retirement 44 years later, his mother, Connie, served as a secretary at the county high school. His father, Glen, worked for the same agricultural loan company for more than four decades, helping local farmers keep their operations running through increasingly difficult conditions.

It’s no coincidence, then, that their son has shown such loyalty to Bo Ryan and the UW. Gard first met Ryan as a college student at UW–Platteville, where he helped to run the coach’s summer basketball camps for extra cash. After Gard was cut from the college baseball team as a sophomore, he responded to a local newspaper ad seeking a junior high basketball coach.

“The teaching, the competitive nature of it, all those things came very natural to me,” he says.

Before long, Gard was recruited to help coach the varsity teams at Southwestern High School and Platteville High School. Still a college student, Gard made an outsized impression with a maturity beyond his years and a farmer’s work ethic. Observing him stay late at camps and take on increasing responsibilities with ease, Ryan asked Gard to join his college coaching staff as a student assistant. When Gard graduated in 1995, Ryan convinced him to stay on at Platteville despite opportunities elsewhere. He would stay with Ryan for 23 years, following him to Milwaukee in 1999 and Madison in 2001.

“His ideology of how to play the game aligned a lot with what I was learning and believed in,” Gard says. “He kept things simple, but you had to do it right.”

Gard’s reputation grew alongside the Badgers’ success. After Wisconsin upset previously undefeated Kentucky in the 2015 Final Four, Ryan told the media: “Greg Gard had an incredible scouting report. If he isn’t the best assistant in the country, I don’t know who is.”

Gard had plenty of chances to defect. He went deep into the head coaching interview process with several schools, but it never felt like the right time to leave. When he was recruited by Wayne State College in Nebraska, his now-wife, Michelle, told him: “If you go to Wayne State, you’re going alone.”

Family — both off the court and on it — always came first.

“Bo told me 100 times when I was working with him at Platteville, ‘Make the job you have the best one.’ And I’ve always been able to see the value of that,” Gard says. In July 2015, a few months after the Badgers lost the national championship game to Duke, Ryan announced that he was going to coach one more season and then retire. In his statement, he noted that he was doing so with the explicit “hope that my longtime assistant Greg Gard eventually becomes the head coach at Wisconsin.”

But on December 15, with a rebuilding Badgers team scuffling to a 7–5 record, the winningest coach in Wisconsin history decided to step down early and give Gard an extended job audition.

Ryan’s reciprocation of loyalty proved to be the ultimate validation for Gard, who’d lived out his favorite coaching and life mantra: Be where your feet are.

“I never worried about being a head coach by 35 or 40,” he says. “There were more things to enjoy as part of this journey than worrying about where I wasn’t. I tell our players all the time, ‘Enjoy your time here in college. If you’re thinking about what’s next all the time, you’re missing the best part.’ ”

For Gard, the best — and worst — was yet to come.

The Opportunity of a Lifetime

Before his first game as interim head coach against UW–Green Bay, Gard tucked a folded-up piece of paper into the breast pocket of his suit jacket. It was his father’s funeral program. Glen Gard, 72, had passed away six weeks earlier from brain cancer.

For six months, Gard had stayed up late poring through treatment literature and had accompanied his father on flights around the country in a desperate search for the best cancer treatments.

Still grieving the loss of his lifelong role model, Gard threw himself into the career opportunity of a lifetime. One of his first official moves as head coach was to fill his own vacancy. He convinced his old colleague Howard Moore ’95 to leave a broadcasting gig at the Big Ten Network and join him as an assistant. Moore’s familiarity with the program — having played for the Badgers from 1990 to 1995 and served as an assistant from 2005 to 2010 — proved to be a luxury for a midseason hire. After the Badgers stumbled to a 1–4 conference record, Gard made a key adjustment: getting back to the basics with an inexperienced roster. At practice, he drilled fundamentals. He also reintroduced core tenets of the swing offense, an equal-opportunity system that he and Ryan first perfected at Platteville.

“We gave the guys tracks to play on,” Gard says. “It gave them a plan. It gave them some absolutes.”

The changes worked, and the team won 11 of its last 13 games. As the No. 7 seed in the NCAA Tournament, the Badgers advanced to the Sweet 16 on a buzzer-beating Bronson Koenig ’17 three-pointer that remains one of the most memorable plays in Wisconsin sports history. Gard became the second rookie coach to win the Jim Phelan National Coach of the Year award.

“I’ve had an extra assistant coach all year — my guardian angel,” Gard told USA Today after the season, referring to his father and the funeral program in his jacket pocket. On March 7, 2016, Gard was named the permanent head coach of the Badgers. For the first time in his career, he received a multiyear contract. He promptly confirmed the wisdom of that decision by leading the Badgers to another Sweet 16 appearance in 2016–17.

But the good times did not roll forever. The 2017–18 team finished 15–18 and missed the NCAA Tournament. The following year, the Badgers bounced back to a 23–11 record but were upset by No. 12 seed Oregon in the first round of the Big Dance.

And in May 2019, tragedy struck the program.

The Worst Day

In the early morning of May 25, 2019, Howard Moore and his family were driving to the Detroit area to visit his in-laws. A wrong-way drunk driver collided with Moore’s vehicle at high speed. His nine-year-old daughter, Jaidyn, died at the scene. His wife, Jennifer, was in critical condition and taken off life support at the hospital later that day. Moore suffered severe burns on the left side of his body. His 13-year-old son, Jerell, escaped with minor injuries.

Gard still gets emotional discussing the incident. One of the hardest conversations of his life was telling his children that their friend Jaidyn was gone. He also had to console his players about an unspeakable tragedy.

“We cried together and prayed together,” says Davison, who had just finished his sophomore season. “It was a very dark and sad day.”

A month later, the situation went from bad to worse when Moore suffered a major heart attack. Still in recovery, he returned to his Madison home this past December from a long-term rehabilitation facility. During our conversation, Gard has his cell phone face up next to him. I notice him tap it periodically, checking notifications with an almost obsessive impulse.

“I tell my players all the time, I have an open-door policy,” Gard says. “You can come in here — this door never locks. And my cell phone never shuts off. I had my phone off the night of Howard’s accident. And then I vowed, it never goes off. So it’s by my bed, on, 24/7.”

The 2019–20 Badgers dedicated their season to Coach Moore and welcomed his son as an honorary member of the team. They won their final eight games and a share of the Big Ten regular season championship.

“Tragedy and adversity can either draw you apart or draw you together,” Davison says. “That was one of those cases where it really brought us together. We were playing for something bigger than ourselves.”

Coming Apart

But before one of the hottest teams in the nation could prove its mettle in March, COVID-19 shut down the country. The Big Ten and NCAA tournaments were canceled.

And the pandemic wasn’t done wreaking havoc on the program. After sending his players home, Gard didn’t see them in person for five months. The 2020–21 season eventually tipped off with strict pandemic protocols. Players had to eat meals alone in their rooms. There were no off-court team activities.

“Everything we did was anti-team,” Gard says. “You agree with the protocols to keep everyone safe, but looking back, you see the erosion that it created within a team.”

After starting the season ranked No. 7 in the nation, the Badgers had fallen to 9–7 in conference play by mid-February. The day after a blowout loss at home to Iowa, the team’s seven senior players asked for a closed-door meeting with the coaching staff. What followed was an emotional two-hour discussion. The players aired their grievances. The word “disconnect” came up often. They told Gard that they felt he didn’t care about them off the court and didn’t have their backs on the court.

“I don’t know if I’ll ever talk to you again after this [season],” one player said.

Gard listened to the players vent without interrupting and later addressed their concerns.

“It was a very healthy meeting, and it was beneficial for all parties,” Davison says. “Everyone got criticism, everyone got encouragement, everyone got coaching. And when we left that meeting, everyone was feeling good.”

The Badgers responded with some of their best basketball down the stretch, and it seemed that the meeting had achieved its purpose. The only problem was that someone had secretly recorded it.

Restoring Trust

On June 23, 2021, the Wisconsin State Journal published a story with excerpts from the previously private meeting. An anonymous email account had sent the reporter an audio recording that was edited down to 37 minutes, cutting almost everything but the criticisms of Gard. The source of the recording is still unconfirmed.

“I felt hurt and betrayed,” Davison says. “The locker room is supposed to be a safe place where you have tough conversations.”

Gard immediately worked to restore trust in the program, reaching out to all players and recruits individually and holding a team discussion about it. And he adapted, too, with an assist from his college-age children. He knows that students today seek more frequent communication and closer relationships with parental figures.

“I had a coach tell me a long time ago, ‘You’ll become a better coach the day you become a parent.’ He was right,” Gard says.

“I’m Here for You”

When I ask Gard how he’d like to be remembered, his mind goes back to Cobb and the core values that his parents passed down to him.

“That he was a guy who gave his best every day, and he tried to help a lot of people, and he made it better for the people coming behind him. He did it the right way. Didn’t take any shortcuts. Prepared people for what was going to be next. And they always knew they had somebody they can lean on.

“I tell our players all the time, ‘Hey, I’m here for you. Until they shovel dirt on me, I’ve got your back.’ ” •

Robinson helped lead Badger volleyball to the program’s first national championship in December 2021. Julia Kostopoulos

If you ask Devyn Robinson x’24 to describe herself at the outset of her time as a Badger, she uses words like “quiet,” “shy,” and “reserved.” If you know anything about Robinson now, this may be hard to believe.

The right-side hitter and middle blocker made a name for herself on the court, joining Dana Rettke ’21, MA’22 and Anna Smrek x’25 to form the Badgers’ nearly impenetrable block last season, attacking the ball with the ease of swatting away a fly (and with far more finesse).

Off the court, she’s notorious for hamming it up on TikTok, where she shares behind-the-scenes volleyball tidbits and snapshots of life as a student-athlete with more than 11,000 followers. Visibility is important to Robinson, and it’s a spotlight she’s seeking to grow and share, though she picked up hard-learned lessons while getting there.

Robinson graduated early from high school in January 2020 to start training with the Badgers. At 17, she had already won several national and world volleyball championships before arriving at the UW. She was also the team’s youngest player.

“I’d never been in a position where I wasn’t the best in the gym. I automatically had that respect from people [in high school], so I felt like I just always had a voice,” Robinson says. “Then I come here, and everybody’s good. I’m playing with Dana Rettke. I was like, ‘I’m just going to sit back and watch and maybe speak up if I have the chance.’ ”

That chance was cut short by a pandemic that sent all Badgers home. Three months later, the team returned to campus to give training a tentative go. Around the same time, George Floyd was killed in Minneapolis. Age was no longer the most salient part of Robinson’s identity.

“I couldn’t just separate what was going on outside of volleyball from volleyball,” Robinson says. “It gets to the point where it actually affects how I’m feeling and how I’m playing.”

In a meeting convened by head coach Kelly Sheffield, the Badgers discussed the gravity of the news and their respective roles within the growing Black Lives Matter movement. Robinson, Sydney Reed x’24, and Jade Demps x’24 led the conversation, encouraging their teammates to get involved.

“It gave me a voice that I feel like I didn’t have initially,” Robinson says. “It was a chance for me to speak up, and the way [my teammates] responded made me feel like they do care what I have to say. There’s no point in being small when everyone is respecting everybody.”

Instead of kicking up their feet after practices, the Badgers traded their jerseys for poster board and joined the thousands of people marching on Madison’s streets. Afterward, some of the players, including Robinson, painted murals on boarded-up shop windows.

Gone were her days of holding back. When the Badgers got the green light to play their delayed 2020 season during the spring of 2021, Robinson made a strong debut: her performances in her first matches were featured among NCAA Women’s Volleyball’s top plays of the week, and she went on to be named to the all–Big Ten first team. Later that year, their 2021 season culminated in a historic win for Wisconsin volleyball with the program’s first national championship title.

“I was on the sidelines when we won, and I literally couldn’t breathe,” she says. “I don’t think I took a breath until the game was over.”

Robinson’s post-Wisconsin career is never far from her mind. Sure, she’d love to play professionally — maybe in Spain or Brazil — but when her time on the court comes to an end, she’d rather pick up a microphone than a clipboard and a whistle.

“I want to be a sportscaster because I don’t see enough representation of women’s sports on TV, especially volleyball,” Robinson says. “I want to be someone little Black girls can look up to and see that, ‘Oh, if she can do it on TV, then I can do it.’ ”

Fortunately, Robinson is with the Badgers for a few more years. You should catch a game while she’s here. If she’s not on the court, you’ll surely spot her on the sidelines. She’ll be the one dancing like no one’s watching, though all eyes are on her. She didn’t wait this long or work this hard for them to be anywhere else.

Burruss was inspired to pursue a career as a sports reporter by football Saturdays at Camp Randall and buzzer-beaters at the Kohl Center. Courtesy of Sherree Burruss

Sherree Burruss ’12 was a young teenager visiting a museum in down-town Chicago when the seed of her future career was planted. Burruss’s eighth-grade class was touring the Chicago Museum of Broadcast Communications when their guide pointed to a small, simulated news desk and said, “Does anybody want to try anchoring?”

Burruss raised her hand. “I read the prompter,” she says. “A little fake anchor read.” The tour guide said, “That was good. Have you ever thought about this as a career?”

“No,” Burruss replied. “I will now.”

Burruss refined her goal while studying journalism and strategic communications at UW–Madison. It wasn’t a classroom revelation, but rather experiencing football Saturdays at Camp Randall and buzzer beaters at the Kohl Center that inspired her. Burruss wanted to report sports.

“It was that game-day atmosphere,” she says. “The passion Wisconsin people had for it and how smart they were as fans. I try to bring that to what I do now. I know there are fans watching, and I’m their voice.”

Burruss currently reports and anchors for CBS Interactive, the CBS Sports Network, and CBS-TV and has worked as a sideline reporter for the network’s major college and NFL football coverage. The sideline role, she says, is “much harder than I ever imagined. It’s like an iceberg — the amount of work you see is the tip. There’s so much more that goes into it.”

Burruss’s first broadcasting job was at the ABC affiliate in Columbia, Missouri. She also met her husband, David Cruse, there; they now have a young daughter. Burruss’s rapid professional ascendency included sports reporting and anchoring jobs in Atlanta and Washington, DC. She credits a fellow Badger at NBC’s DC affiliate, photographer Chris Kerwin, with helping her advance. “He was my rock,” Burruss says, “working with me on my scripts. He helped me get where I am now.”

The job includes, of course, being in the public eye. Burruss laughs recalling a grocery store checkout clerk in Columbia who recognized her and said, “You’re getting better.”

“People are pretty honest when they see you out,” she says. “But I love it. I think I’m approachable.”