MONROE — When Sydney Mathiason walked off the court in the WIAA Division 2 state semifinal loss at the Resch Center in Green Bay in March, she assumed her days as a competitive basketball player were over.
Now a freshman at Wisconsin, Mathiason, a 2018 Monroe graduate, unorthodoxly made her NCAA Division 1 debut in a 69-47 win over Marshall Dec. 4.
Mathiason’s father, Monroe girls head coach Sam Mathiason, said that Sydney had made the club team at UW but decided to pursue a managerial spot with the varsity program. After a slew of injuries to the Badgers’ roster, and one player leaving the program, head coach Jonathan Tsipis approached the freshman and her family about walking on right before Thanksgiving break.
Sam said that documents had to be signed, grades verified and a few other bureaucratic endeavors needed to be completed so that Sydney was available to play in Nashville for a three-game tournament set against Pittsburgh, Tennessee State and Arkansas.
“It was a really crazy 48 hours,” said Sam, who added that the family took a quick trip down to Nashville on Saturday to witness Sydney on the sidelines.
While Sydney only saw the court during pregame warmups in each of her first four games with the Badgers, her teammates had built a big enough lead against Marshall to allow her to officially enter the game with 1:07 left in the fourth quarter.
“It’s really exciting to be able to play college basketball in general, and at the Kohl Center,” Sydney said.
A biomedical engineering major, Sydney finished at the top of her graduating class. She was a four-time all-conference basketball player while with the Cheesemakers, twice earning first-team honors and helped lead her squad to the state tournament in her junior and senior seasons. Her teammate during three high school seasons, Sydney Hilliard, will be under scholarship with the Badgers next season.
Mathiason knows that her current spot on the roster is one of circumstance and that she’s not guaranteed a spot next season. She said she will work hard every day in practice and let the chips fall where they may after the season.
“I’m just trying to get everything out of it,” Mathiason said. “I’m going to work hard every day on the scout team. It’s a really big step from high school — a lot more goes into it.”
With her eyes on her schoolwork and scouting reports, Mathiason will soon be returning to where she thought it was all over. Wisconsin’s next game is at 1 p.m. Dec. 8 at the Resch Center against Green Bay, which boasts former local stars Jen Wellnitz (Black Hawk) and Carly Mohns (Brodhead).
