By Ben Rodgers
Editor
The Press Times is excited to announce another community partner to help better serve a deserving group, as well as our readers.
The Press Times is now the official partner of the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay Athletics.
We will now provide enhanced coverage on the students who don the green and white and represent the school and community in NCAA Division 1 athletics.
Though there is intrinsic value in covering community news, covering sports has its own merits and tends to captivate people in a different way.
Readers just don’t get as excited about the complicated world of school district tax levies in the same way as they do about a rivalry game.
However, with this new partnership, readers can get the best of both worlds.
Our sports and news coverage will remain award-winning as we branch out to tell more stories about the student-athletes who represent us on the largest collegiate stage.
As a UW-Green Bay graduate, I feel I’m allowed to say UW-Green Bay doesn’t get a fair shake in this community.
This is partly because the campus is located on the far northeast side of town, isolated in the middle of an arboretum.
That lack of connectivity means students don’t get out in the city as much as on other college campuses.
Green Bay is also a football town, through and through, and unfortunately, no amount of collegiate success will ever change that.
However, The Press Times aims to play a larger role in putting more of a spotlight on our local UW-Green Bay collegiate athletes.
UW-Green Bay is a world-class institution with exciting opportunities in the classroom and in D1 athletics.
College life isn’t for everyone, but those who go to UW-Green Bay, whether it’s to continue playing sports at a high level, pursue the performing arts or find their passion and calling, will find success starts there and continues for life.
Consider this when thinking about UW-Green Bay athletics: Every one of those student-athletes decided Green Bay is where they want to be.
Moreover, the NCAA will admit just how elite our UW-Green Bay athletes are.
In basketball, 1% of men and 1.3% of women make it to a D1 program.
Of the 540,769 high school boys’ basketball players in 2020, only 18,816 made it to the collegiate level.
Those who made it to D1 were even fewer.
In soccer, that number is 1.3% for men and 2.4% for women.
Swimming is top with 2.8% for men and 3.3% for women.
But, this is the most important part: 71% of those who play D1 sports across the nation will go on to earn a degree.
While UW-Green Bay isn’t known for producing professional athletes, it does its best to make sure they get an education that benefits them for the rest of their lives.
Northeast Wisconsin, as a region, is lucky to have one or two basketball players make it to D1 every season, but we have a college campus with two of these teams.
UW-Green Bay offers 14 programs that compete at the highest collegiate level.
This draws student-athletes from around the world.
Most have heard of the success of the women’s basketball team, and how the men are starting to rebuild, rise from the ashes if you will.
But there’s more.
The men’s soccer team has players from six countries outside of the U.S. and upset UW-Madison 2-1 earlier this season.
UW-Green Bay is also home to one of the 11 Men’s Nordic Skiing D1 programs in the country, a sport so small, the NCAA doesn’t provide percentages.
Volleyball, golf, swimming and diving, cross country, softball and more have teams filled with hopeful students who are elite in what they do, looking to continue playing the sports they love and represent Green Bay at the same time.
We have outstanding talent at UW-Green Bay, and it often goes unnoticed, but we hope that isn’t the case for long.
Thanks to our new partnership, our readers will get to know the faces behind some of these programs.
Because once we know who we have in the green and white of UW-Green Bay, and what they have gone through to get to college sports’ highest level, we’ll have another reason to hail to the Fighting Phoenix.