Wisconsin
The mastery of Charlie Fuerbringer and four other takeaways from Wisconsin volleyball’s sweep of UW-Green Bay
Wisconsin volleyball unveils Final Four banner inside UW Field House
The Badgers unveiled the banner from their 2023 Final Four appearance before their exhibition match against Bradley on Aug. 20.
MADISON – Improvement, that is what you hope for at this time of year.
The Wisconsin volleyball wrapped up its spring schedule of matches Tuesday, April 22 at the UW Field House with a straight set victory over UW-Green Bay.
The 25-21, 25-23, 25-17 victory was a grind as the Badgers struggled with their passing and hitting accuracy, but the final set was their best. UW hit a match high .375 in the third set and had their highest side-out percentage of the evening (77%).
Rising senior Mimi Colyer battled through a tough evening in serve receive and hitting to grind out a match-high 13 kills with a .207 hitting percentage. Senior middle Carter Booth posted 10 kills and a .643 hitting percentage. Sophomore setter Charlie Fuerbringer finished with 35 assists.
This was the first spring in the program for 11 of the 12 players on the roster.
“There’s a lot of stuff there on film for people to get a plan of attack (for training) and get after it over these next few months,” Wisconsin coach Kelly Sheffield said. “I would guess that anyone that watched, including our players, would say there were some really good bright spots. There is definitely some talent out there on the court. Let’s put it all together.”
Here are five takeaways from the match.
Charlie Fuerbringer is moving the ball around
One noticeable change in the Badgers’ offense this spring was the use of the back-row attack. Fuerbringer fed players in that part of the floor often and Colyer, freshmen Una Vajagic and Madison Quest and redshirt sophomore Grace Egan showed the ability to score points from that part of the floor.
Working that part of the floor has been a focus of Fuerbringer, a third-team All-American last season.
“I thought Charlie had a great spring,” Sheffield said. “I think there is a different presence about her this spring than there was in the fall. Her knowing when to incorporate the back court has been something that she’s really grabbed on to.”
The passing must improve
If there is a point of emphasis for the Badgers between now and the start of preseason practice in August, it is probably on their passing.
Colyer and Maile Chan, who played libero for the first two sets, had a tough evening in that regard Tuesday, but it’s an area the Badgers are going to need to improve on across the board in the run up to the season.
“I would say is a work in progress,” Sheffield said. “Many of them are headed in the right direction … They’re going to have to put the work in to be able to trust that part because I think if we’re in system, like any elite team, we’re going to be a handful, especially with Charlie dishing the rock.”
Carter Booth gets dialed in at Field House
Since coming back from the team’s trip to Hawaii, Booth hit .609 in matches with Marquette and Green Bay. The goal is for her to be one of the anchors of the Badgers’ offense this season
“We’ve got to continue to pass the ball so we can get the ball to Carter a lot more,” Sheffield said. “She’s a huge part of what we’re trying to do and she is an absolute force at the next. I think she is moving better than what she’s ever moved before laterally.”
Grace Egan punctuated the night with impressive third set
Egan, a transfer from Ohio State, only served during the first two sets. In the final set she played outside hitter and posted six kills and a .385 hitting percentage. She can really thump the ball.
Working the errors out of her game has been a point of emphasis. Tuesday she had just one error in 13 swings and after that mistake she came back with her best stretch of hitting for the match.
“I think she had three kills out of system after that with some really good swings,” Sheffield said, “getting the ball in good areas of the court and getting up high and attacking space, which was really fun to see.”
Una Vajagic shows her versatility
Vajagic, a redshirt freshman from Serbia, spent last season rehabbing a knee injury. Sheffield said she is 85% back to her old self.
The 6-0 outside hitter finished with seven kills and hit .188 Tuesday. She also played the final set at libero.
“She’s worked very diligently in getting back and you can see it,” Sheffield said. “There’s some pockets of explosion that are becoming a little more frequent than it was even a month ago, so it’s starting to connect a little bit.”
Reaction to Shawn Eichorst as potentially the next Wisconsin AD
On the Terrace View podcast, John Steppe and Mark Stewart give initial thoughts on reported connection between Shawn Eichorst and open UW AD job.
MADISON – Shawn Eichorst will start as Wisconsin’s athletic director with a higher annual salary than his predecessor.
Eichorst will make an annual salary of $1.6 million along with built-in annual increases and incentives, a university spokesman told the Journal Sentinel.
That is above Chris McIntosh’s $1.5 million annual salary for the 2025-26 academic year. (That consisted of $1 million from the university and $500,000 from the UW Foundation.) McIntosh’s salary was set to increase by $50,000 for each year of his contract, which would have gone through June 30, 2029.
It also is well above Marcus Sedberry’s $875,000 annual salary for the nearly three months when he was interim AD. Sedberry’s salary is set to return to $334,805 “plus any intervening pay adjustments,” according to the offer letter from April.
An open records request from the Journal Sentinel for Eichorst’s contract, which will include more details about the increases and incentives, is pending.
Eichorst previously served as the deputy AD and chief operating officer at Texas for the last eight years. He also was Miami’s AD in 2011-12 and Nebraska’s AD from 2012-17. Before Miami, the Lone Rock native spent five years working with the Badgers under Barry Alvarez.
A 9-year-old child died Tuesday evening after drowning in a western Wisconsin water park.
The Polk County Sheriff’s Office says first responders were called to the Campfire Cove Aqua Park in Rural Balsam Lake, Wisconsin, around 8:15 p.m.
Though they attempted lifesaving measures, the child died at the scene.
The incident is under investigation, the sheriff’s office says.
A missing Wisconsin teen was found safe after mysteriously vanishing from home four years ago as her family had believed she was “lured away.”
Joniah Walker, 19, was safely discovered on May 25, the Milwaukee Police Department told WISN on Tuesday.
Police officials didn’t disclose where Walker was found or provide any further information on the case, including whether the teen was with someone else.
Walker, then 15, had disappeared from her Milwaukee home on June 23, 2022.
Walker’s mother, Tanesha Howard, said she last saw her daughter lying in bed when she left for work the morning of her disappearance, according to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children.
“Joniah was lying in bed because she had just finished school. I went in to give her a hug before leaving for work,” Howard told the organization.
The mother and daughter duo had talked on the phone several times throughout the day before Walker “suddenly stopped responding.”
Walker was supposed to meet her father to apply for a summer work permit but failed to arrive at the designated time.
“He called me and said that Joniah wasn’t picking up her phone,” Howard said. “That is when I immediately knew something was wrong. I left work right away.”
A nearby ring camera captured Walker leaving the apartment complex at around 2:30 p.m. in the Brewer’s Hill neighborhood, a mile-and-a-half north of Downtown Milwaukee.
Video footage showed the teen carrying a large green backpack.
It was the last known sighting of Walker until she was reportedly found last month.
Howard believed her daughter had met someone online after she deleted her digital footprint and never returned.
“Somebody stole her…that was my first instinct,” Howard said. “But when I saw that she left with a big backpack that I had never seen, that’s when I knew. I was like, someone lured her away.”
The protective mother issued multiple pleas for her daughter to come home, begging Walker to “call me,” WISN reported in July 2022.
“She is my youngest daughter, so I always call her by ‘baby girl’ because that is exactly who she is, my baby girl,” she said. “She is what I would describe as a perfect daughter. She is angelic, soft spoken and very intelligent.”
Walker was one of the faces of a legislative push by Wisconsin State Rep. Shelia Stubbs (D-Madison) seeking to pass a bill to create a Missing and Murdered African American Women and Girls Task Force, according to Fox6 Now.
Stubbs says she believed Walker was still alive, telling Howard to hold out hope for her daughter’s return.
“I believed Joniah was still living, and I said that to her – I don’t believe Joniah is dead, it’s only a matter of time,” Stubbs told the outlet.
“I think right now, the family needs their privacy,” Stubbs added. “I know there are so many questions, but I think as time goes by when they are ready to tell their story, they will tell it.”
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