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View Video on YouTube (Richard Telfer interview)
Part 1 – Football
Part 2 – Gymnastics
Part 3 – Men's Basketball
Part 4 – Baseball
The University of Wisconsin-Whitewater athletic department's 2013-14 academic year included national championships in football, gymnastics, men's basketball and baseball. Three former Warhawk administrators played major roles before, during and after the most successful season in school history.
UW-Whitewater finished second in the Learfield Directors' Cup standings that year, the school's highest-ever finish. It became the first school at any level of college athletics to claim football, men's basketball and baseball NCAA national championships in the same academic year. The gymnastics team finished a three-peat of NCGA national titles that same year.
Other national placers during the 2013-14 academic year included wrestling (runner-up), women's basketball (3rd), bowling (3rd), softball (3rd), women's outdoor track and field (3rd), women's indoor track and field (5th), men's indoor track and field (6th), men's outdoor track and field (13th), women's swimming and diving (T-24th), women's soccer (NCAA second round), women's tennis (NCAA second round), men's tennis (NCAA first round) and volleyball (NCAA first round).
Former UW-Whitewater Chancellor Richard Telfer (2008-15) played a major role in the growth of Warhawk athletics during the five years prior to the 2013-14 pinnacle. Under his leadership, UW-Whitewater made progress on or completed numerous facility renovations, including upgrades to the Kachel Multi-Sport Complex (Rex Foster Track, Fiskum Field, Prucha Field at James B. Miller Stadium, van Steenderen Softball Complex) and the Williams Center (Kachel Gymnasium, Russell Arena, Kachel Fieldhouse). He was inducted along with his wife, Roni, into the Warhawk Athletics Hall of Fame in 2016 under the Distinguished Service category.
Chancellor Telfer sat down for an interview with Warhawk Athletics in April. See the video above or click
here to view the interview on YouTube.
UW-Whitewater Athletics also spoke with former athletic directors Dr. Paul Plinske (2004-13) and Amy Edmonds (2013-16).
Leading up to 2013-14
Plinske, who was hired in 2004 by former Chancellor Jack Miller, saw the potential in UW-Whitewater before even stepping onto campus.
"I've always felt like UW-Whitewater was a sleeping giant with the facilities, the university, the administrative support, the town support and the proximity to Madison, Milwaukee and Chicago," Plinske said. "While I was interviewing for and researching the job, I just felt like it was an untapped gold mine."
In the spring of 2005, the baseball team captured the Warhawks' first team national championship in three years. Six months later, the volleyball team earned its second NCAA title in a four-year span.
Plinske cited the groundwork laid by several long-tenured coaches who retired prior to the start of his tenure, including Jim Miller in baseball and Kris Russell in volleyball. Bob Berezowitz retired from his position as head football coach following the 2006 season after serving more than 20 years in the position.
Plinske also lauded the leadership of Jack Miller, who served as chancellor from 1999-2005. Despite some growing pains, Miller and Plinske worked together with university and athletics staff to enhance and build upon the athletics facilities and reward programs for their successes in competition and in the classroom.
"We worked hard to bring an unselfish, collective group of energy together so that our coaches could be all for one and one for all," Plinske said. "You have the best facilities in the country, you've got a group of dedicated university administrators and community members, and you have a talented, passionate and selfless coaching staff who were all working together."
The football team started a run of four national championships in five years in 2007, capping the run in 2011. Three months later, the UW-W men's basketball team won the program's first NCAA championship since 1989.
While the success of the Warhawks' three highest-profile programs – football, men's basketball and baseball – received most of the attention, several other UW-W programs were on the rise. The women's basketball team made its first of three appearances in the Final Four over a seven-year span in 2008, and the softball team finished as national runner-up that same year. The gymnastics team claimed back-to-back National Collegiate Gymnastics Association titles in 2012 and 2013 in the first two-thirds of the program's three-peat.
Other programs reaching a high level of national success in the years leading up to 2013-14 included men's soccer (Sweet 16 in 2010), men's tennis (Sweet 16s in 2007 and 2011), men's indoor track and field (4th in 2013), men's outdoor track and field (3rd in 2006, 4th in 2013), wrestling (3rd in 2013), bowling (first-ever NCAA bid/7th place in 2013), women's soccer (Sweet 16 in 2011), women's swimming and diving (two individual national titles in 2013), women's tennis (three Sweet 16s between 2010-13) and women's outdoor track and field (7th in 2014).
"We had this theme of 'Powered By Tradition' really take hold," Plinske said. "Every group that was graduating carried that with them, and every group that was coming in said, 'we want the tradition to be ours.'"
The exposure from the success helped UW-Whitewater extend its reputation beyond Southern Wisconsin and reach into different areas around the region and the country to recruit blue-chip prospective student-athletes.
"It allowed all our sport programs to go and recruit not only in the state of Wisconsin, but across the state lines," Plinske said. "We saw tremendous influx in the Illinois population, which brought our campus revenue because of the out-of-state tuition fees."
When Plinske left UW-Whitewater for another AD role prior to the start of the 2013-14 year, he knew he left a department that had a chance to do something special.
"Those are my fondest memories as a professional, those nine years I was at UW-Whitewater," he said. "We had to go through some struggles and we had some internal difficulties, but what I learned was there's power in people. I think the people in Whitewater are what makes that place special.
"I'm just always going to be indebted to that institution and thankful for the experience they gave me, but ultimately proud of the people – the coaches, the student-athletes and the staff – that made it all possible."
In the Midst of 2013-14
Edmonds was named Interim Director of Athletics after previously serving as Associate Athletic Director for Compliance and Student Services and Senior Woman Administrator. She admitted the process was both exciting and nerve-wracking, especially as the school's 22 sport programs were primed for high-level success.
"My memory is both excitement and stress," Edmonds said. "We were ready for it in that you could see each of our sport programs building to that complete success of their programs. It was just that perfect wave of the students recruited over the last five years and how they all kind of fell into place during that time."
The football team, which had missed the postseason in 2012 for the first time in nearly a decade, won its fifth national championship in the fall of 2013. The gymnastics team completed its three-peat of national titles three months later, and the men's basketball team won its second NCAA championship in three years the day after the Warhawk gymnasts clinched their title.
The baseball team completed the run of national championships in late May to make UW-Whitewater the first college institution to win NCAA titles in football, men's basketball and baseball. The
New York Times ran an article estimating the odds of claiming all three titles in those sports in one year – the "Trifecta" – at more than 38 million-to-1.
"I get chills thinking about this, but I remember sitting at baseball and watching that last inning and hearing all the chatter with our alums and people paying attention to our success over the whole year," Edmonds said. "That is a vivid memory, that last baseball game and that last inning, and just seeing and feeling the excitement of not only baseball clinching that, but the success of the entire academic year."
Like Plinske, Edmonds credited the 10 years leading up as well as the people in place at UW-Whitewater for the historic achievements of the department in 2013-14.
"It was a great accumulation retention and involvement and caring about these students, and most importantly, getting the support for our sport programs to support those students and carry into postseason play," Edmonds said. "Everything relates to one another. You can't do it alone – you need an army of folks and supporters in order to get to that success level.
"I think internally we were all just very supportive of one another. People could agree to disagree, but in the end, they were there to support the institution and UW-Whitewater, and to get the best people there to carry out the mission of the institution and the goals of the department. I think what separated us is that we have great people who care about what they're doing."
The Aftermath of 2013-14
Five years after its most successful season in school history, UW-Whitewater continues to rank among Division III's most successful institutions, finishing sixth in the Learfield Directors' Cup in 2014-15, eighth in 2015-16, sixth in 2016-17, 20th in 2017-18 and 15th in 2018-19.
The football team won its sixth national championship in 2014 and has been to the semifinals two more times since then. The baseball team made a return trip to the Division III World Series in 2016, and the men's track and field program owns four top-four "trophy" finishes, including national runner-up in 2016 (indoor) and 2017 (outdoor).
On the women's side, the gymnastics team earned back-to-back NCGA national titles in 2017 and 2018, and the golf team finished 12th in its first-ever NCAA Division III Championships appearance in 2018 before placing 13th in a return trip this past spring. The bowling team recorded another third-place finish in 2015, and the women's soccer team made its longest postseason appearance that fall, when it reached the Elite Eight.
The Warhawks have won at least one team or individual national championship in each of the last 19 years, the second-longest known active streak in Division III. (Wartburg – 25 years.)
