Wisconsin
Father and son preserve the legacy of Wisconsin’s effigy mounds
When Ho-Chunk elder Ritchie Brown started traveling around Wisconsin to see effigy mounds decades ago, he couldn’t have been in a better place.
“Wisconsin is unique in that we’re about the only place in the country that has effigy mounds,” Brown said in a recent interview on WPR’s “Wisconsin Today.”
Effigy mounds are constructions of raised earth built by Indigenous peoples of the region likely between A.D. 750 and 1200. While some of these mounds are burial sites, others serve ceremonial purposes.
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Mounds can have linear or organic shapes, but what makes effigy mounds unique is that they often take the form of different animals or spiritual entities.
“I’ve seen fox mounds, otter mounds, eagle mounds, bear mounds,” Brown said. “You name it, they’re out there.”
Brown took an interest in the mounds in the late 1980s after visiting the farm of the late Frank Shadewald in Muscoda. Shadewald had asked for help identifying unique shapes of raised earth he’d found on his property, and Brown came to investigate as a manager at the Ho-Chunk Department of Natural Resources.
“When I first started surveying these and looking at all these mounds, I was really interested and fascinated,” Brown said. “But I didn’t know half the story then.”
Since then, Brown has spent decades traveling all over Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa and even Canada to identify, survey and mark the mounds, which hold special significance to the Ho-Chunk Nation and other tribes.
And as often as he could, he took his son, Casey, along for the ride.
“I’ve been following (my dad) around since I was a little kid,” Casey said. “Other kids used to say, ‘Yeah, I played baseball with my dad or built things,’ but what we were doing was very different.”
Casey admits he didn’t fully appreciate the significance of the mounds when he was younger.
“I knew that it was important and that we were tromping around the woods for some reason,” he said. “As I’ve grown older, the mounds mean different things to me.”
After clinching a Midwest Regional Emmy last year, Casey is now working on a documentary film about the mounds and his father’s work.
Rather than focusing on the archaeology of the mounds, he wants to bring an Indigenous perspective to the project. For Casey, that means moving through the seasons because of how the visual experience and cultural meaning of the mounds changes throughout the year.
“A lot of these sites are aligned with different times,” the elder Brown explains. “And the interesting part about that is the stories that go with them.”
The father-son duo indeed have many stories to share, from traveling to the mounds with Ho-Chunk traditional court leaders on a casino bus to being at a mound site during a particularly spectacular sunset.
“The majesty of the mounds is hard to transfer just by a picture or even a film or video,” Casey said.
Despite that, he hopes the documentary will bring some of the experience to viewers and educate people about what went into creating these earthworks, as he calls them.
Ritchie and Casey’s latest work has taken them back to Muscoda, where they recently marked two mounds, including a rare and culturally significant ghost eagle that spans around 700 feet.
This moment has been a long time in the making.
“(My dad) has been waiting decades to mark these mounds,” Casey wrote in a Facebook post.
It can take a long time to do this survey work because the mounds are often found on the private property of non-Native farmers and landowners. Some of these landowners are very willing to work with the Browns and their team, but in other cases, it can be challenging to get direct access to the mounds for marking them or even filming them.
Casey says the work is about building relationships. Some of the farming families have been there for generations.
“They have their own stories now,” he said. “And those are just as important.”
For both Casey and his father, they see themselves as caretakers of the mounds, to preserve their history and legacy for current and future generations.
“We’re Bear Clan, so we take care of the Earth,” Casey explained.
“I want to be able to share this stuff with the younger generation,” the elder Brown said. “They need something to hang on to just to guide them through everything that’s going on today.”
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Wisconsin coach Kelly Sheffield shares his biggest spring takeaway
Wisconsin coach Kelly Sheffield shared his biggest takeaway from the spring following the Badgers’ four-set win over Northern Illinois.
MADISON – Kelly Sheffield has coached All-Americans, national players of the year, national champions and future Olympians in his 13 years as Wisconsin volleyball coach.
So Sheffield’s unique praise of Decelise Champion – a star pin-hitter from Puerto Rico who committed to the Badgers last fall – carries a lot of weight.
“Her highest-end potential is certainly as high as about anybody we’ve ever brought in,” Sheffield said. “She’s got a lot of work to get to where she’s capable of, and that’s on us as coaches and on her to help reach those dreams and goals. But when you’re watching people around her age, she’s different.”
That work is beginning earlier than initially expected after Wisconsin announced that Champion will reclassify from the 2027 recruiting class and join the Badgers as a freshman for the 2026 season.
Champion – currently 16 years old and turning 17 in September – will arrive with a resume that includes experience on Puerto Rico’s senior national team and the elite Italian club Volleyro Casal de Pazzi. That’s all while being strong enough academically to earn a GED degree and the necessary NCAA waiver for a few missing core classes.
“What made it really a lot better is that all of her grades at the different schools she’s been at have been fantastic,” Sheffield said. “She’s an excellent student. Was crushing it at a really, really good academic school in Italy in her third language.”
The timing of the June 12 announcement accounted for the second-last open roster spot for the 2026 season, but Champion and UW’s efforts to make the reclassification possible go back much earlier than that.
“We’ve known she’s wanted to do this since February,” Sheffield said. “We told our team in February that was the plan. And then we didn’t let anybody know publicly until she was done with her season. She just didn’t want to be a distraction for her team.”
Badgers have even more competition at pins
Wisconsin already had plenty of competition at the pin-hitting positions before Champion’s move to the 2026 class.
Grace Egan had a major role on the 2025 Final Four team, and Eva Travis had an impressive spring after transferring from UC-Santa Barbara. Others include Grace Lopez, Madison Quest and the highly-touted freshman duo of Halle Thompson and Audrey Flanagan.
Even with the upcoming addition of one more pin-hitter – and one with such a high potential – UW did not lose any players in the spring transfer portal cycle. Even the idea of someone leaving seemed outlandish to Sheffield.
“If they’re just going to get up and leave because somebody came, I would say that that person is probably chicken s—,” Sheffield said.
Sheffield’s praise of Champion’s proposal obviously does not come with a guarantee of playing time either at the crowded pin-hitting positions.
“I would say, yeah, she does have a chance of being out on the court for us this year,” Sheffield said. “But we’ve also got some other really talented people that play the pins.”
The outside and right-side hitters already on UW’s spring roster will have at least one key advantage over Champion in her freshman season – time.
Egan, Lopez and Quest are returning players (although Egan and Lopez spent their spring recovering from injuries). Travis, Thompson and Flanagan all enrolled in time to spend the spring with the Badgers and impressed in UW’s spring matches.
Champion’s arrival, on the other hand, will follow her participation in an Olympic-qualifying event for Puerto Rico. Sheffield expects that to be Sept. 2, which is the day before fall classes begin and already after UW’s first four matches of the season.
“She’ll be drinking out of a fire hose early on, no doubt about it,” Sheffield said. “Even though she’s been playing with her senior national team this summer, it will be a lot of things coming at her in her secondary language at 16, so there’ll need to be some patience along the way.”
His advice to Champion when she was on campus earlier in June was to “be where your feet are.”
“When she’s with her national team – even though we will have started our preseason, playing matches – don’t worry about us here,” Sheffield said. “Be where your feet are. Be the best you can be for your team there. … Then when you get here, you’re not thinking about your national team.”
Champion’s NCAA eligibility clock starts earlier
Champion’s reclassification comes with the drawback of beginning her NCAA eligibility one year earlier in her volleyball career.
Had she stayed in the 2027 recruiting class, she theoretically would have begun her college career shortly before her 18th birthday and exhausted her eligibility at age 22. Instead, she will begin her college career shortly before her 17th birthday and likely exhaust her eligibility at age 21.
Those scenarios take into account the NCAA Division I Cabinet’s unanimous approval on June 23 of a new eligibility model that will give players five seasons of eligibility in five years. (That replaces the current system with four seasons, redshirts and other waivers.) The NCAA noted that its decision is not final, however, until the meeting concludes on June 24.
“We’re certainly excited to have her this year, but if you kind of think over the course of five years, it’s probably worse for us that she comes a year early,” Sheffield said. “You expect her to be better at 20 and 21 than what she is at 16 or 17. … It really wasn’t something that we were pushing for, but she was ready.”
Of course, volleyball at age 16 or 17 looks different for someone like Champion who has been competing against much older players as a senior national team member and studying halfway across the world from her hometown of Dorado, Puerto Rico.
“When you talk to her, she doesn’t come across as somebody who’s 16,” Sheffield said. “She’s very mature, very easy to talk to, very driven. She’s independent. … She’s had a lot more life experience than most people her age, and that certainly comes across when you’re around her.”
Wisconsin
Cult-classic filmed in central Wisconsin returns to big screen, with enhancements, this weekend
STEVENS POINT, Wis. (WSAW) – A giant spider isn’t actually invading central Wisconsin this weekend.
But an enhanced, big-screen version of the cult-classic 1975 film The Giant Spider Invasion is crawling back into local theaters — and it’s bringing some central Wisconsin nostalgia with it.
The movie was famously filmed in Merrill and Stevens Point, and the updated 2026 release adds enhancements designed for a modern theatrical experience.
What’s new in the 2026 enhanced version?
Executive Producer J.B. Thompson says the team took the original 1975 film and enhanced it for the big screen in 2026, giving audiences a refreshed way to experience a movie that’s long been a Wisconsin oddity — and a point of pride.
Actor and Producer Dan Davies is featured in newly filmed scenes created specifically for this updated release.
Stevens Point’s role in the original film
While much of the film is associated with Merrill, Stevens Point Mayor Mike Wiza says Point also played a major role in the production — another reason the film’s return matters to local history buffs and movie fans alike.
Why does this movie still capture attention 50 years later?
Whether it’s the over-the-top creature feature story, the uniquely Wisconsin filming locations, or the nostalgia of seeing familiar places on screen, the group says the film’s staying power is real — even five decades later.
Screenings this weekend
The enhanced version of The Giant Spider Invasion is set for local screenings this weekend in Central and North Central Wisconsin. To purchase tickets for showings in Stevens Point, Marshfield or Waupaca, click here.
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