While no one was watching, or paying attention for that matter, a Wisconsin team has achieved perfection.
It’s not the football team, obviously, with its .500 record.
And it’s not either one of the soccer teams, as both the men and the women seemed to have forgotten how to score.
It’s not the basketball teams. Although their seasons haven’t started yet, both teams will be far from perfection this year.
It’s not hockey — they lost to Wayne State last weekend.
The team I’m referring to, the only UW team to find any success this season, is the volleyball squad. With a 10-0 record in the Big Ten, the Badgers are proving once again why they are the best team this campus has to offer. After beating all of their conference opponents this year, Wisconsin is sitting on top of the Big Ten and is No. 6 in the nation.
And they are not just beating the conference competition; the Badgers are dominating the Big Ten.
As of Oct. 15, Wisconsin leads the conference in three statistical areas — they average a Big Ten-high 17.84 kills, 15.79 assists and 15.32 digs per game.
And the accomplishments don’t stop at team feats — the volleyball team houses strong individual successes as well.
Lizzy Fitzgerald ranks second in the nation with 14.23 assists per game, and Sherisa Livingston ranks 11th in kills per game with 5.07.
Livingston even made her way into the UW record books last weekend when she broke the record for career kills, with 1,662 in her tenure at Wisconsin.
Yet the team’s success has gone virtually unnoticed this season. While an average of 3,367 faithful fans pile into the Field House to watch the volleyball team, over 70,000 crowd into Camp Randall to watch a sub-par football squad — a team that is in the middle of the pack in the Big Ten — struggle against its competition.
While volleyball obviously doesn’t have the national draw that football, basketball or hockey generate, some respect needs to be given to what this UW team has accomplished.
I, like many UW followers, have kept track of the yardage needed by Anthony Davis in order to become the next 1,000 rusher. I noticed when Lee Evans broke the UW record for receiving yards in a season last weekend. I didn’t know that Livingston broke the kills record — I didn’t even know that she was close to making the milestone. But that’s the reality of what happens in sports — the bigger teams get noticed and the smaller teams are forgotten.
However, in a couple of months, volleyball will be guaranteed its day in the spotlight. When all of the other Badger teams have failed to qualify for postseason play, the volleyball team will be making its way through the NCAA bracket, marching back toward another national championship matchup.
Unless it finds a miracle, football will not make a bowl game this year. The soccer teams will be lucky to survive their Big Ten tournaments, and basketball’s and hockey’s seasons will be over before they even begin.
If you want to see a successful team this year, don’t hold your breath thinking that the Rose Bowl is still an option. Don’t plan your spring break around possible NCAA tourney sites. Don’t make reservations for the Frozen Four.
Simply walk over to the Field House and watch the volleyball team continue its quiet quest for perfection.
