Sports
Playing a New Tune
Badgers’ Anderson becomes a leader on and off the court.
Jolene Anderson has never been happy sticking to the same routine.
When she was a high school student in Port Wing, Wisconsin, she wasn’t content being the star of the basketball team, so she joined the band. She found the thought of playing just one musical instrument boring, so she switched five times in four years, learning to play the trumpet, the trombone, the tenor and alto sax, and the clarinet.
Now a junior at UW-Madison, Anderson still has that restless nature. It fuels her passion for basketball, turning the Badgers’ five-foot, eight-inch guard into a blur of constant motion. She enters this season as the team’s top returning scorer and the fastest UW player ever to reach one thousand points in her career.
But the need for activity defines her interests off the court, too. Ask her what she wants to do after college, and you get a definitive and surprising answer: she plans to become a prison guard, a job she feels will keep her interested every day.
“I just thought, I always have to be active in something,” she says. That’s been the case from Anderson’s earliest days. Growing up in Port Wing, a town of four hundred people near Lake Superior, she started dribbling a basketball as a toddler, and soon she was shooting baskets at a hoop in the family’s barn. Her mother, Julie, remembers her carrying a ball with her practically everywhere she went. “She was very active and a very happy child,” she says. “She was always willing to try anything always was outside.”
Jolene Anderson has never been happy sticking to the same routine.
When she was a high school student in Port Wing, Wisconsin, she wasn’t content being the star of the basketball team, so she joined the band. She found the thought of playing just one musical instrument boring, so she switched five times in four years, learning to play the trumpet, the trombone, the tenor and alto sax, and the clarinet.
Now a junior at UW-Madison, Anderson still has that restless nature. It fuels her passion for basketball, turning the Badgers’ five-foot, eight-inch guard into a blur of constant motion. She enters this season as the team’s top returning scorer and the fastest UW player ever to reach one thousand points in her career.
But the need for activity defines her interests off the court, too. Ask her what she wants to do after college, and you get a definitive and surprising answer: she plans to become a prison guard, a job she feels will keep her interested every day.
“I just thought, I always have to be active in something,” she says. That’s been the case from Anderson’s earliest days. Growing up in Port Wing, a town of four hundred people near Lake Superior, she started dribbling a basketball as a toddler, and soon she was shooting baskets at a hoop in the family’s barn. Her mother, Julie, remembers her carrying a ball with her practically everywhere she went. “She was very active and a very happy child,” she says. “She was always willing to try anything always was outside.”
As early as middle school, Anderson’s skills began to draw the attention of college coaches. And after a stellar career at South Shore High School, just about everyone who followed the sport knew her name. By the end of her prep career, she had become Wisconsin high school basketball’s all-time leading scorer with 2,881 points. She also set a state record by scoring fifty-eight points in a single game, helping her school reach the state finals and earning honors as the Associated Press Wisconsin Player of the Year.
The numbers, however, didn’t matter to Anderson, who says playing with her older sister, Jennifer, and experiencing the support of her small community are her fondest memories from home. “Everybody came and supported whatever you did,” she says. “There were definitely a lot of games where the whole community would come.”
When it came time to leave Port Wing, Anderson fulfilled a lifelong dream by joining the Badgers. She moved six hours south — and to a different world. UW-Madison’s enrollment alone was one hundred times larger than the population of her hometown. But she says the environment surrounding the familial Badger program made her feel instantly at home.
“The support that I got here from the coaches and all the players was just the same as I got [in Port Wing],” she says.
“She is a true smalltown girl,” says teammate Christine Spencer x’09. “She has a long list of accolades, but she is still just herself. She is all about hanging out with everyone on the team — going out to eat, going to study — and doesn’t show a hint of arrogance.”
The numbers, however, didn’t matter to Anderson, who says playing with her older sister, Jennifer, and experiencing the support of her small community are her fondest memories from home. “Everybody came and supported whatever you did,” she says. “There were definitely a lot of games where the whole community would come.”
When it came time to leave Port Wing, Anderson fulfilled a lifelong dream by joining the Badgers. She moved six hours south — and to a different world. UW-Madison’s enrollment alone was one hundred times larger than the population of her hometown. But she says the environment surrounding the familial Badger program made her feel instantly at home.
“The support that I got here from the coaches and all the players was just the same as I got [in Port Wing],” she says.
“She is a true smalltown girl,” says teammate Christine Spencer x’09. “She has a long list of accolades, but she is still just herself. She is all about hanging out with everyone on the team — going out to eat, going to study — and doesn’t show a hint of arrogance.”
“She’s a good role model on and off the court,” mom Julie Anderson says. “She’s willing to go out of her way at any time for anyone and always puts her own stuff aside.”
It didn’t take long for Anderson to make an impression on Badger fans. As a freshman, she averaged nearly eighteen points a game and was named the Big Ten’s freshman of the year. She returned last year to score a team-high seventeen points per game, while also leading the Badgers in rebounding and ranking second in assists. Those statistics earned her a spot on the Big Ten’s second-team all-conference list, and they also helped establish Anderson as one of the best young basketball talents in the country. Following her freshman year, she was selected to play for USA Basketball’s under-nineteen national team, which won a gold medal at the World Championship in Tunis, Tunisia. This past summer, she joined the under-twenty team, which won another gold medal at the FIBA Americas championships in Mexico City, Mexico.
The international competitions proved to be a challenge for Anderson, and not just on the court. “I never thought I’d be so far away for a month at a time, away from everyone else,” she says. “But it was something that I love doing, so that just kept me going.”
The knowledge that she wasn’t just representing herself also kept her going. Her presence among the top players in the world is a boost for the UW women’s basketball program, which hasn’t finished with a winning record or seen a postseason berth since the 2001–02 season. With the men’s basketball program thriving and both the men’s and women’s hockey teams winning national championships last season, the women’s team has slipped out of the spotlight, and there is growing pressure on Coach Lisa Stone and her players to keep up with the success of the other winter sports.
It didn’t take long for Anderson to make an impression on Badger fans. As a freshman, she averaged nearly eighteen points a game and was named the Big Ten’s freshman of the year. She returned last year to score a team-high seventeen points per game, while also leading the Badgers in rebounding and ranking second in assists. Those statistics earned her a spot on the Big Ten’s second-team all-conference list, and they also helped establish Anderson as one of the best young basketball talents in the country. Following her freshman year, she was selected to play for USA Basketball’s under-nineteen national team, which won a gold medal at the World Championship in Tunis, Tunisia. This past summer, she joined the under-twenty team, which won another gold medal at the FIBA Americas championships in Mexico City, Mexico.
The international competitions proved to be a challenge for Anderson, and not just on the court. “I never thought I’d be so far away for a month at a time, away from everyone else,” she says. “But it was something that I love doing, so that just kept me going.”
The knowledge that she wasn’t just representing herself also kept her going. Her presence among the top players in the world is a boost for the UW women’s basketball program, which hasn’t finished with a winning record or seen a postseason berth since the 2001–02 season. With the men’s basketball program thriving and both the men’s and women’s hockey teams winning national championships last season, the women’s team has slipped out of the spotlight, and there is growing pressure on Coach Lisa Stone and her players to keep up with the success of the other winter sports.
But instead of envying the attention earned by the hockey programs, Anderson looks to their example. She says she and her teammates have seen “all the hard work that they put on the ice — we just have to put [it] on the court.”
Anderson and the Badgers showed signs of breaking through last season. In February, the team pulled off a come-from-behind win over nationally ranked Minnesota before more than fourteen thousand fans in the Kohl Center. But the team also lost eight games by six points or fewer and finished the year with an 11-18 record.
If they’re going to improve on that mark this season, they will have to do it with a lot of new faces. Eight players have joined the roster, including a strong recruiting class of seven freshmen, meaning that the team will count on Anderson for more than points and rebounds. With no seniors on the team, it will be up to Anderson and fellow juniors Janese Banks and Danielle Ward to lead the young team on the floor and in the locker room — something Anderson says she is prepared to do.
“I talk to Coach Stone about it every day,” Anderson says. “It’s just a great challenge for me to take on. I will do anything to see each player succeed this year both on and off the court. I’m hoping that I’m a part of the program turning in the right direction.”
And that, she says, would mean a lot more than any personal accolades she has earned along the way.
“As soon as the team succeeds, then I succeed, too,” she says.
— Elli Thompson x’08
Anderson and the Badgers showed signs of breaking through last season. In February, the team pulled off a come-from-behind win over nationally ranked Minnesota before more than fourteen thousand fans in the Kohl Center. But the team also lost eight games by six points or fewer and finished the year with an 11-18 record.
If they’re going to improve on that mark this season, they will have to do it with a lot of new faces. Eight players have joined the roster, including a strong recruiting class of seven freshmen, meaning that the team will count on Anderson for more than points and rebounds. With no seniors on the team, it will be up to Anderson and fellow juniors Janese Banks and Danielle Ward to lead the young team on the floor and in the locker room — something Anderson says she is prepared to do.
“I talk to Coach Stone about it every day,” Anderson says. “It’s just a great challenge for me to take on. I will do anything to see each player succeed this year both on and off the court. I’m hoping that I’m a part of the program turning in the right direction.”
And that, she says, would mean a lot more than any personal accolades she has earned along the way.
“As soon as the team succeeds, then I succeed, too,” she says.
— Elli Thompson x’08
IN SEASON: Volleyball
The UW women’s volleyball team is coming off a strong 2005 season, in which the Badgers finished second in the Big Ten and advanced to the Elite Eight. But Coach Pete Waite says his players worked “even harder in the offseason in hopes that they can make it one more step” and reach the Final Four. The Badgers also hope to get a boost from a talented group of freshmen — including outside hitter Brittney Dolgner, who already has led the team in kills in several matches this season.
Circle the dates: December 1–2, NCAA Tournament first and second rounds; December 8–9, NCAA regional rounds; December 14–16, NCAA semifinal and championship matches, Omaha, Nebraska.
Keep an eye on: Junior Jocelyn Wack, a 2005 Academic All-Big Ten, who set an NCAA record by racking up double-digit digs in eighty consecutive matches. She had a career-high thirty-six in a game during last year’s NCAA regional final against Notre Dame.
Think about this: UW volleyball is accustomed to postseason success, having advanced beyond the opening round of the NCAA Tournament in each of the past ten seasons.
Circle the dates: December 1–2, NCAA Tournament first and second rounds; December 8–9, NCAA regional rounds; December 14–16, NCAA semifinal and championship matches, Omaha, Nebraska.
Keep an eye on: Junior Jocelyn Wack, a 2005 Academic All-Big Ten, who set an NCAA record by racking up double-digit digs in eighty consecutive matches. She had a career-high thirty-six in a game during last year’s NCAA regional final against Notre Dame.
Think about this: UW volleyball is accustomed to postseason success, having advanced beyond the opening round of the NCAA Tournament in each of the past ten seasons.
BADGER TICKER
Make it eight in a row for the UW men’s cross country juggernaut. At the Big Ten championships, the Badgers placed five runners in the top ten to win the conference title for the eighth consecutive year, a streak tied only by the Badgers’ run of titles from 1985 to 1992. The defending national champions were ranked first for most of the season and raced for another NCAA crown on November 20, after On Wisconsin went to press.
Badger quarterback John Stocco had a day for the record books when Wisconsin defeated Indiana, 52-17, in September. Playing only two-and-a-half quarters, the senior completed 15 of 17 passes for 304 yards and three touchdowns, which amounts to the most outstanding passing game in UW history. According to the complicated formula to calculate a passer’s efficiency, Stocco’s rating for the day was 296.7, a school record.
Senior goalkeeper Jake Settle did not allow a goal for more than 464 minutes to help the men’s soccer team climb into the national rankings and compile a six-game unbeaten streak, the program’s longest since 1995. Settle registered four straight shutouts during the stretch in late September and early October. UW finished the regular season with a 9-7-2 record.
Badger quarterback John Stocco had a day for the record books when Wisconsin defeated Indiana, 52-17, in September. Playing only two-and-a-half quarters, the senior completed 15 of 17 passes for 304 yards and three touchdowns, which amounts to the most outstanding passing game in UW history. According to the complicated formula to calculate a passer’s efficiency, Stocco’s rating for the day was 296.7, a school record.
Senior goalkeeper Jake Settle did not allow a goal for more than 464 minutes to help the men’s soccer team climb into the national rankings and compile a six-game unbeaten streak, the program’s longest since 1995. Settle registered four straight shutouts during the stretch in late September and early October. UW finished the regular season with a 9-7-2 record.
