WISCONSIN MEN’S HOCKEY - Scholl’s first year a success; team readies for NCAA tourney

WISCONSIN MEN’S HOCKEY

It took time, patience and a lot of hard work, but Medford native Sawyer Scholl is finally living his dream as a member of the University of Wisconsin’s hockey team.

Scholl, 22, is nearing the end of his freshman season with the Badgers, a year where he’s done well enough to earn ice time and a year that has gone extremely well from a team perspective as the Badgers wait to cap a remarkable turnaround season by playing in the NCAA tournament starting next week.

Appearing in 32 games, Scholl, a 6-2, 190-pound forward, has six goals and two assists for UW, who will enter the NCAA regionals at 26-11-2 overall. Wisconsin went 16-7-1 and accumulated 50 points in Big Ten play to finish second, just two points behind 16-6-2 Michigan State. The Badgers had a chance to catch the Spartans when they hosted them at the Kohl Center in the final weekend of the regular season March 1-2. Wisconsin needed a sweep, but only got a split.

The ninth-ranked Badgers were also unexpectedly bounced early from the Big Ten tournament, losing a best-of-three home series to seventh-seeded Ohio State two games to one over the March 8-10 weekend.

But, compared to where the Badgers finished last year, last in the conference at 6-18 and 13-23 overall, the first year under new head coach Mike Hastings and his staff, has been nothing but positive.

“Unbelievable,” Scholl said in a March 14 phone interview. “We’ve had such a great run. The new coaching staff has been unbelievable pushing us every day. More importantly guys have made it such an easy transition for me and all the freshmen. The older guys have been so good to us. It’s been super easy.

“Every year you feel like you’ve got a really good team,” Scholl added. “I knew coming into it we had great leaders, a great coaching staff, guys who could take us where we wanted. Then it’s just kind of up to us. We’ve put in the work and done all of the stuff behind the scenes. It’s nice to see it unfold in front of us the way it has.”

Scholl first committed to Wisconsin in the fall of 2020 but took the long route to Madison, playing three years of junior hockey to prepare to play at the NCAA D-I level. Before that, he raised his recruiting profile by playing his last three years of high school hockey at Notre Dame Academy in Green Bay, capping his career with first-team All-State honors in the 2019-20 season, which ended with Notre Dame falling 2-1 in overtime to Verona in the Division 1 state championship game.

Scholl played his freshman season with the Medford Raiders in the 2016-17 school year, scoring 10 goals and adding seven assists for one of the program’s better teams of the past 20 years. That squad went 8-112 under then head coach Eric Vach and led, in part, by the goal tending of Scholl’s older brother, Spenser.

“It’s been a dream come true obviously when the opportunity came after my senior year,” Scholl said of playing for the Badgers. “It was the easiest decision of my life, right, being a Wisconsin kid, that’s where you dream of going. After those three years (of junior hockey) and then it finally came. This year being on-campus has been nothing but the best. I’m just happy that it’s here and I’m trying to live every day the best I can.”

Scholl scored his first UW goal in his fifth game, a 5-2 win at Michigan Tech on Oct. 21. Three of his goals have come against the league-champion Spartans including two in a 4-1 Senior Night win at Kohl Center March 2. He has one gamewinning goal to his credit, which came in a 3-2 win over Notre Dame on Alumni Night Feb. 10. He scored Wisconsin’s only goal March 10 in the 3-1 loss to Ohio State that knocked them out of the league tournament.

“There’s a lot of good moments,” Scholl said when asked about the highlights of his first year. “All the weekends here at the Kohl where we’re able to put as many fans as we do in the building and then getting the wins for them has been unbelievable. Our Senior Night win against Michigan State was awesome. Seeing them on the ice before the game and seeing the path they built before us and being able to get it done for them felt really good. We had Alumni Night where we had a lot of guys in the building that night. They paved a path just like the seniors have, so it felt really good to get it done for them as well. Those two were really good nights.”

Obviously the first goal will be one Scholl will always remember.

“It was the third period,” he said. “I think I was having a good game and then I got a lucky bounce off the glass and it bounced out front and I was lucky enough to be coming in on the slot and I got a little bit of it and luckily enough it went in. It wasn’t too pretty but I’ll take it.”

The game-winner against Notre Dame put the Badgers up 3-1 with 6:08 left as he picked up the loose puck from behind the net and stuffed it in wrap-around style. In the finale with Michigan State, he scored just 1:29 in. He won a face-off with the puck bouncing right back to him off a Spartan’s stick and somehow got a shot through from a nearly impossible angle. He closed out the scoring with an emptynet goal with 2:42 left.

“It’s been awesome. As a freshman you want to come in, you know you’re probably not going to get all the playing time in the world, you just want to fit in where you can help the team the most,” Scholl said. “You go about your dailies every day. You make sure you’re giving it 100% and be ready whenever your name gets called. It’s been good that way. I’m just learning from these guys trying to soak in everything from the coaching staff and the older guys who have been through it. It’s been really good, I’m really happy with it so far.

“I try not to look at ice time,” he added. “I’m a lower fourth or third line guy, just whenever my name gets called be ready for it. Try to be on the penalty kill, get a few shifts at that. It kind of plays into my game, just kind of hard-working, competitive, play hard. It fits well for me. I just have to keep doing it.”

Grinding is something Scholl became accustomed to during two seasons with the USHL’s Green Bay Gamblers and last winter, when he split time with the USHL’s Sioux City Musketeers and the NAHL’s Minnesota Wilderness. He had 12 goals and nine assists in 21 regular-season games with the Wilderness and had two goals and seven assists in nine playoff games.

“It’s tough, it’s a grind,” Scholl said of junior hockey. “I took the longer path, I took the three years obviously. It’s tough on your body, tough on your mind, but there are a lot of things you can do. You have to go about your dailies, in and out every day doing everything you can. You can’t get satisfied. You try to look at the big picture.”

In that big picture, Scholl found a city he loves in Green Bay. “I tell everyone Green Bay is the place I want to live when I get older. It’s my favorite city in the world,” he said. He still has a place in Medford, the home of his parents Randy and Lisa, that he can come to and unwind, and, despite some uncertainty with the coaching change last off-season from the coach who signed him, Tony Granato, to Hastings, he’s playing the game he loves at the place he always wanted to do so.

While this year isn’t over yet, Scholl knows what the next steps are in his hockey development.

“Just getting more comfortable with the puck, getting more offensively skilled, defensively skilled,” he said. “Working on being a center, being a wing. I want to be a guy who can be used all-around. A lot of that is going to come off-ice in the weight room and then just the mental game.”

The NCAA’s 16-team hockey tournament bracket will be announced Sunday with those teams aiming to get to the Frozen Four in St. Paul, Minn., April 11 and 13.

“We did a lot of good things this year that have given us this opportunity,” Scholl said. “It was unfortunate it didn’t work out for Ohio State, but now we’ve got two weeks to get ready and prepare for the tournament. We’re excited. It doesn’t matter where we’re ranked or whatever anyone says about us. We don’t think about that stuff. We know how good we are, we just have to go prove it.”

Sawyer Scholl