In soccer, D-I success was immediate as Coach Aldo Santaga and his son, star forward Greg, led a highscoring 1983 team to the NCAA Tournament. Women’s basketball, still a few years away from seeking D-1 status, was beginning its run, including a third-place finish at the NAIA national tournament. In the make-or-break revenue sport of men’s basketball, however, positive results were elusive. Ambitious goals were set for fundraising and ticket sales. Donors, and sponsors for the most part, stepped forward. Ticket buyers did not. Without a conference and playing as an independent, UWGB had to
cobble together a mix-and-match schedule lacking in marquee home games. The Phoenix finished its first D-1 season under Buss (198182) a game over .500, but the coach ignited a firestorm with the unpopular, high-profile dismissals of local players Joe Mauel and Casey Zakowski. Buss was dismissed himself, and succeeded by assistant Dick Lien. “He (Lien) was a wonderful gentleman, and he had enjoyed some success in coaching, but the results weren’t there,” recalls Dan Flannery, then a local sportswriter and recent UWGB grad and later managing editor of the Post-Crescent of Appleton. “The first couple of years of Division I were just horrible.” When the team went 9-19, 9-19 and 4-24, the “rampant apathy” that Flannery had observed among UWGB students wasn’t limited to campus. “We (reporters) sat on press row and literally counted the people in the stands, and it wasn’t hard to do,” he recalls. “Zero interest from the students. And not much more from the community.”
Things began to change when Associate Chancellor Harden took the lead in pulling together a conference, the old AMCU-8. Cleveland State and Southwest Missouri broke out on a national level, attracting big crowds for their Brown County Arena visits. When Harden hired small-college coaching star Dick Bennett in 1985, the rise of the Phoenix was a matter of time. Bennett proved to be a perfect fit. His popular persona and hardworking teams drew capacity crowds to the “DickDome,” broke through with an NIT bid in 1990 and a first-ever trip to the NCAA’s big dance, with son Tony as star point guard, in 1991.
Then came 1994 and the Cal game. The opening round win by UW-Green Bay over the California Bears and future NBA players Jason Kidd and Lamond Murray is still recalled as one of the great upsets in NCAA tournament history. Guys named Grzesk, Nordgaard, Vandervelden and Ludvigson — as one national columnist memorably described them, “the blue-collar boys from The Land That Vowels Forget, or Distributed Unevenly” — had made the big time. And so, again, had UWGB.
Vince liked soccer UWGB plays soccer as its primary fall sport on the advice of the late Vince Lombardi, an athletics adviser to UWGB in the late 1960s. He said football would be costly and overshadowed by the Packers.
Hall of Fame Athletes Christian Akiwowo Tom Anderson Vicki Anklam Porter Sue Aspenson Sagal Nathan Barnes Jeanne Barta Stangel Tony Bennett Ben Berlowski Jerry Blackwell Bryan Boettcher Tom Brown Ivan Delbecchi Tom Diener Tim Dunne Philip Gallagher Dan Goltz Donna Gunville Lisa Hanson Dyer Nezih Hasanoglu John Hummel April Jensen Kocken Ben Johnson Tom Jones Candace Kaye Debbie Kind Urben Mark King Susie Klaubauf Bodilly Dawn LeClair Taddy Josh Lynk John Martinez Kathy Mertz Blake Middleton Leon Mitchell Chari Nordgaard Knueppel Jeff Nordgaard Ann Olin Lundstrom Zach Papanikolaou Nicole Paplham Benson Sue Pitroski Terry Powers Erich Quidzinski Ron Ripley Pamela Roecker Greg Santaga Cindee Schmalz Haider Terry Schott Richard Sims Chuck Stark Julie Steeno Horst Stemke Janelle Tomlinson Richard Dean Vander Plas Rick Voigtlander Mark Wehking Dennis Woelffer Kimberly Wood Jianas For the full list of Phoenix Hall of Fame inductees including coaches and contributors, visit http://www.uwgb. edu/alumni/phoenix-hall-of-fame/
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50 Years
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