After his men’s golf team won two out of their first three tournaments of the 2004-05 campaign, head coach Jim Schuman has every reason to be filled with confidence.

Sept. 13, the Badgers pulled up from third place to tie for first at the Michigan Radrick Farms Invitational. The following weekend, Wisconsin held off Penn State and Illinois to win the 2004 Northern Intercollegiate Invitational at University Ridge.

“We’ve had some success early at Michigan, winning a tournament there, winning our own event last week, the Northern Collegiate and posting a 12-under-par day (276), which is a school record for us,” Schuman said. “So things are moving along and looking up for us.”

Led by a group of young golfers, Wisconsin was not expected to start out quite so well this season. However, the quick start and the young nucleus should have Shuman excited.

Sophomore Garrett Jones has arisen as the star of the team, compiling an average 18-hole score of 73.0 through the first nine rounds of the season. The impressive average comes despite a poor showing at Iowa’s Hawkeye Invitational. Jones however wasn’t the only young Badger playing well to start the season as sophomore A.J. DeLawyer and freshman Jeff Kaiser have stepped up their play.

“I think we’ve surrounded guys like Garrett Jones with other great players like A.J. DeLawyer and Kaiser,” Schuman said. “All of a sudden, things have become really competitive among the team, in a healthy way.”

Kaiser leads the team with a 72.3 stroke average, which is especially remarkable considering it is his first year of competition at the college level. DeLawyer has shot the lowest round of the year for Wisconsin so far with a 68. The sophomore accomplished this feat at Wisconsin’s Northern Intercollegiate at University Ridge.

After the back-to-back victories, Jones and his teammates came out flat at the Hawkeye Invitational, finishing fourth. Wisconsin will get a rest this week before picking up the action again Oct. 11 at The Xavier University Invite.

“We needed a break to be honest,” said Schuman. “We didn’t have a good showing at Iowa. We have a couple guys who are a little bit sick and it gives us a chance to catch our breath.”

While the young Badgers have pulled their weight thus far, they have also provided some inconsistent moments, the kind of moments that will make any coach cringe.

“I’m losing hair,” said Schuman. “I’m pulling it out faster than I can grow it. They’re a young team and I sometimes forget that.”

-Adam Korn

Exasperated by his team’s lack of consistency and all-around disappointing play in the first weekend of conference play, Wisconsin head coach Pete Waite turned to his bench in search of answers. In dropping its first two conference matches of the season — 3-1 to Ohio State and 3-0 to Penn State — UW was unable to establish a rhythm, both in the attack and in passing.

“This is going to make us look at who’s on the court, when different people are on the court,” Waite said after the Penn State match. “You saw us today at times with four freshmen on the court and a sophomore. If we have to do that, we’ll do that. We’re searching for who’s ready to battle, who’s ready to bring their A-game and who’s ready to compete.”

Among the first lineup alterations Waite made was inserting freshman defensive specialist Meghan Mills to serve and play back row for senior outside hitter Jill Odenthal. Mills recorded just one dig in Friday’s loss to Ohio State, but saw increased action Sunday against Penn State and popped up nine digs. The newcomer from Portage, Wis., tallied one service ace, but also committed three service errors.

Freshman Amanda Berkley also got a chance in the back row against PSU. A walk-on who joined the Badgers via an on-campus tryout, Berkley recorded two digs, matching a career high.

As the offense struggled to find a compliment to Odenthal — who racked up 27 kills in the two matches, becoming the 13th UW hitter to accumulate 1,000 career kills in the process — Waite and the Badger coaching staff turned to a pair of freshmen for a boost. With freshman middle Taylor Reineke unable to get on track, sophomore Amy Bladow received playing time in both matches. The fiery middle blocker recorded a kill on her only swing against the Buckeyes and five kills and four block assists against the Nittany Lions. Bladow also hit for a .308 percentage in the match.

Maria Carlini replaced senior Marian Weidner in the lineup at several junctures and responded with four kills against Penn State.

-Joe Ziemer

The Wisconsin men’s soccer team is absent from the NSCAA/Adidas and Great Lakes regional rankings for the first time in 2004, following last Friday’s disappointing home defeat at the hands of IUPUI. The Badgers had been ranked No. 10 in the region for the last two weeks and prior to that were ninth in the Great Lakes.

Wisconsin played tough against talented teams such as Tulsa and Creighton, defeating the Golden Hurricane 3-2 while losing to the Blue Jays 2-1, but has struggled to find consistency this season.

“I think one of the things that we have to do … our attitude has to be there for every game, no matter who it is we have to come in with the same approach,” head coach Jeff Rohrman said. “In a couple of games, in Penn we had a tough first half, I thought we started off slow at Creighton. We have to take each game for what it is and go at it the same way, the same approach, the same mindset and the same attitude, and I think then maybe we’ll get some of those slower starts out of the way.”

Wisconsin will look to gain some momentum with a win against Northern Illinois this afternoon before it begins the Big Ten season Sunday at Ohio State.

-Tom Ziemer

The UW women’s soccer team (6-3-1), (0-3-1) has struggled in scoring goals lately. Over the past three games the team has managed to score only one.

The squad had chances to come away victorious in all three contests, but the lack of goal scoring is preventing it from capitalizing on these opportunities.

The team first played Ohio State to a scoreless tie. This was followed by a 2-1 defeat at the hands of Northwestern in overtime. Then, this past Sunday afternoon, it fell to Illinois 1-0.

The defense and the stellar play of freshman goalkeeper Lynn Murray has kept it in games, the offense just fails to capitalize.

The ladies continue on the road this weekend with games in the Hoosier state. They travel to Purdue Friday to challenge the Boilermakers, followed by a trip to Bloomington Sunday to face off against Indiana.

If the Badgers can somehow regain their offense from the pre-conference schedule they may be able to try to edge back into the Big Ten race this weekend. Without a few wins soon they may fall too far behind in the conference standings.

-Brent Neevel