The First Year Of A Paralympic Quad Is All About The Process For The Para Alpine Ski Team →

November 22, 2022 by Nicole Hensch in Sports, Features/Profiles

The Para alpine skiing calendar can best be described as condensed and relentless.

The highly competitive, almost non-stop schedule is not particularly conducive to focused, consistent and quality runs. The best-trained skiers spend nearly all four years in a Paralympic quad repeating their habits, refining their technique and honing in on the smallest details so that when they’re at the start gate in the Paralympic Winter Games, they are able to replicate their best personal performance under the most intense circumstances.

A New Winter Bring A New Rivalry Series For The U.S. And Canada Women’s Hockey Teams →

November 16, 2022 by Nicole Hensch in Sports, Features/Profiles, Women's Hockey

The U.S. women’s hockey team is coming off a brutal and unprecedented stretch in which it played three major tournaments in 53 weeks — and won silver in each.

From late August 2021 to the first week in September 2022, the Americans played in two world championships and an Olympic Winter Games, falling to rivals Canada in the final of all three.

With much of the sports world now settling into a post-pandemic normal, the days of playing three global championships in such short succession appear to be in the rearview mirror. For women’s hockey, though, one key uncertainty remains.

The next world championship — the pinnacle of any non-Olympic season — will be held in 2023 in Canada, but specific dates have yet to be announced. Typically, the world championship is held in March or early April.

Without that date fixed on the calendar, teams are left to put together a schedule of games and camps without knowing when they’ll need to be at peak readiness.

ESPY-Nominated Nick Mayhugh's Trip To The White House Was Also A Family Reunion

July 25, 2022 by Nicole Hensch in Sports, Features/Profiles

Paralympian Nick Mayhugh posing for a photo with his cousin Kim Schaeffer isn’t too rare of an event. Their families are close, and Mayhugh considers Schaeffer the little sister he never had.

What took this impromptu family moment over the top was the fact that it was taking place in the White House.

‘We Have To Keep Moving Forward:’ McKenzie Coan's Advocacy Goes Hand-In-Hand With Her Swimming →

June 06, 2022 by Nicole Hensch in Sports, Features/Profiles

Growing up in Clarkesville, Georgia, McKenzie Coan has vivid memories of attending sporting events at Clemson University with her father, an alum of the school. There were many football and men’s basketball games, but she said she wasn’t really exposed to a lot of women’s NCAA sports as a kid. In fact, she didn’t even really know they existed, or that playing sports in college was an option for women.

“I didn’t know what kind of opportunities existed for females who wanted to compete in college. I didn’t know what that looked like,” she said.

It wasn’t until Coan got involved with the U.S. Para swimming team as a teenager that she began to understand the importance of women’s college sports. Now 25, Coan is a three-time Paralympian and has six medals — four of them gold — to her name. Yet her college experience remains foundational to her, both in and out of the pool.

Hockey Humanitarian Award Finalist Spotlight: Adjusting to COVID times, RPI’s Price finds volunteering as outlet to ‘take back control over my life’ →

March 31, 2022 by Nicole Hensch in Sports, Features/Profiles, Favorite Pieces, Women's Hockey

Rensselaer junior defender Hannah Price was an outspoken advocate in her community long before she stepped on campus in Troy, N.Y.

But with the transition to college and the pressures of being a student athlete, heading into her sophomore year, she hadn’t yet explored opportunities to give back in Troy.

In the fall of 2020, RPI was under a policy of de-densification and Price and her classmates were not allowed on campus. But she felt it was important to be in town and close to teammates. Eventually, the team was informed their hockey season was canceled and Price found herself with time on her hands.

Ohio State's 'Cinderella story' started with hiring of Nadine Muzerall →

March 21, 2022 by Nicole Hensch in Sports, Women's Hockey, Features/Profiles, Favorite Pieces

STATE COLLEGE, Pa. — When the Ohio State women’s hockey team ended its season earlier than it would have liked in the 2021 national semifinal, coach Nadine Muzerall said, “We get so fixated on this last game, and your last game is miserable unless you win the whole thing.”

At the time, she was hoping to remind her players of all they’d accomplished that season. This year, she has no such problem. There are no platitudes and reminders to look for the good. This season, there is no being miserable, only bliss.

Upstart kitchen, in Sherman Park, has a line of entrepreneurs eager to start food businesses →

January 12, 2022 by Nicole Hensch in Food, Features/Profiles

At any given moment, the entrepreneurs who rent prep space in the shared commercial kitchen at Upstart Kitchen, 4323 W. Fond du Lac Ave., could be making barbecue, Nigerian cuisine, liquor-infused ice cream, baked goods, potato chips or community meals.

In the 15 months since it opened, Upstart Kitchen maxed out with 40 tenants using the space 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The wait list for entrepreneurs, which sat at an impressive 75 names about a year ago, has ballooned to more than 220 names.

Wisconsin chef is among the creators of new indigenous food publication →

November 29, 2021 by Nicole Hensch in Food, Features/Profiles

A groundbreaking Indigenous multimedia publication and cookbook has begun publishing, and a Wisconsin chef plays a central role.

Chef Kristina Stanley, an adjunct professor at Fox Valley Technical College in Appleton and former business owner in Madison, is project manager of The Gathering Basket, a new online indigenous community journal.

'Food is the connector': UW-Madison chef aims to reinvigorate traditional African meals →

October 26, 2021 by Nicole Hensch in Features/Profiles, Favorite Pieces, Food

On a warm Friday night in October, jazz music mingles in the air with the smell of collard greens at Cafe Coda, a Black-owned music venue in Dane County.

Out front, the Adem Tesfaye Band has patrons dancing, and in the back room, Chef Yusuf Bin-Rella is preparing collard greens for the musicians and VIPs to have at their set break.

Inside a pressure cooker, greens, Scotch bonnet peppers, onions and garlic that were pulled from the dirt at Troy Farm on Madison’s north side by Bin-Rella about an hour prior were blending with bacon and smoked turkey. The result was a mouth-watering scent that lured people backstage.

Bin-Rella hadn’t necessarily planned to cook. He was at Cafe Coda to see friends and unwind, but he can’t resist feeding people.

Living the Dream: Cheryl Reeve, Head Coach of the Minnesota Lynx →

January 09, 2020 by Nicole Hensch in Features/Profiles, Favorite Pieces, Sports

Name: Cheryl Reeve

Age: 53

Occupation: Head coach and general manager of the WNBA’s Minnesota Lynx

Location: Minneapolis, MN

Let's Eat: At Red Lion, a chef from Singapore makes the chicken rice and ribs of his childhood →

October 06, 2019 by Nicole Hensch in Food, Features/Profiles

Jeff Cui was cooking food from his native Singapore for friends of both Asian and American descent at a Chinese New Year celebration when they convinced him to share those dishes with the public.

Cui and his wife, Jessica, own Red Lion Singapore Grill & Japanese Cuisine on Cottage Grove Road, which opened about two months ago. They plan to draw customers in with foods they know while slowly introducing the dishes of Singapore as the restaurant gains a customer base.

Let’s Eat: The heart of Finca Coffee glows warm with Salvadoran specialties →

September 01, 2019 by Nicole Hensch in Food, Features/Profiles

Finca Coffee’s building in the new developments of the Novation Campus on Rimrock Road is modern and shiny. It’s sleek, with walls of windows and clean lines, a stark contrast to the warm and welcoming interior of this brand new Salvadoran restaurant and coffee shop.

Finca means “farm” in Spanish and this new addition to the South Madison neighborhood is part coffee connoisseur paradise, part cafe. The decor is meant to evoke the feeling general manager Todd Allbaugh felt the first time he visited the coffee farm Santa Leticia in El Salvador. It isn’t actually all that far from the feeling of a Northwoods cabin, he said.

Hidden in plain sight: UW Cinematheque is a small organization with a big mission →

August 15, 2019 by Nicole Hensch in Features/Profiles

Creating thought-provoking movies that are well before their time, Ohio-based documentarian Julie Reichert has been called the Godmother of American independent film. Her progressive documentaries have earned her three Academy Award nominations and in 2018 she was given the International Documentary Association’s Career Achievement Award. Known for challenging the status quo, it’s fitting that Cinematheque on UW-Madison’s campus will feature four weeks of her films in November.

Cinematheque is an art house cinema, open and free to the public, that is a vestige of a once-thriving film society scene on the UW campus that, at its height, had more than 20 different groups.

Let's Eat: Middleton connects with Common Ground cafe →

July 28, 2019 by Nicole Hensch in Features/Profiles, Food

It’s not easy to be everything to everyone, but Adrienne Hulburt-Stroud, owner of Common Ground in Middleton isn’t afraid of a challenge. In a rambling old house on the corner of Branch Street and Century Avenue, she’s certainly got the room to try.

Common Ground is first of all a restaurant, a diner/cafe and coffee shop with local beers on tap and an inventive menu. There are pastries and sweets and a full-on Friday fish fry that packs the place. Those who only ever venture here for the food will not be disappointed.

Let's Eat: Panini-pressed pudgey pies pull 'em in at Pudgey's →

June 09, 2019 by Nicole Hensch in Food, Features/Profiles

Tapping into the nostalgia of camping with family and a childhood spent outdoors, Jamie Scholl thought the pudgey pie (sometimes spelled pudgy or pudgie), a campfire meal staple, might just be the perfect food truck food for Madison.

Based on how quickly his event schedule has filled up, Madisonians agree. Despite being new to the mobile food cart circuit, Pudgey’s has already found success drawing on those flavor memories by providing savory and sweet goodies in a quick and easy fashion.

Let's Eat: Broasted is best at North South in DeForest →

April 28, 2019 by Nicole Hensch in Food, Features/Profiles

roasted chicken is a north woods supper club staple, but Madisonians don’t have to travel that far to find this delicious, juicy and uniquely Wisconsin meal. They just have to find the unassuming DeForest location of North and South Seafood and Smokehouse. Located at the end of a strip mall, North and South is easy to overlook, but this second outlet of a west side favorite is well worth the short trip.

Broasted chicken is pressure fried chicken made using a specialty piece of equipment. A restaurant can’t legally call their dish “Broasted” unless it’s made using the equipment, spices and marinades of The Broaster Company, founded in Beloit in 1954.

‘Hockey isn’t that important,’ Gophers’ Brad Frost says on eve of NCAA title game →

March 23, 2019 by Nicole Hensch in Sports, Features/Profiles, Women's Hockey

Minnesota’s Brad Frost is one of the most successful coaches in college women’s hockey. This is his 12th season, and his team has made the NCAA tournament every year he has been at the helm. This is the program’s ninth Frozen Four under his direction, and on Sunday the Gophers will be in their sixth title game in eight years.

Minnesota has won four of the past seven national championships and will face rival Wisconsin for an opportunity to win Frost’s fifth and the program’s eighth title.

There’s no arguing that Minnesota is one of the premier programs in the nation.

That’s why it’s so jarring, on the day before the title game, to hear Frost tell a room of reporters one of his coaching principles.

Hockey Humanitarian: Training Future Guide Dogs Continues Long History of Wisconsin's Annie Pankowksi Giving Back →

March 21, 2019 by Nicole Hensch in Features/Profiles, Favorite Pieces, Sports, Women's Hockey

Wisconsin redshirt senior captain Annie Pankowski is standing outside the Badgers locker room, giving an interview to a handful of reporters, when a she gets distracted for a moment and then pauses her answer to lean down and scratch the head of a dog that’s now happily wagging its tail and sitting at her feet. Pankowski gives the dog a quiet command and then stands up to pick up exactly where she left off in giving an answer.

It’s a scene that has become familiar around the Wisconsin women’s hockey locker room the past few years as Pankowski has become involved with OccuPaws, an International Guide Dog Federation accredited in-home program that trains and places fully trained guide dogs with visually impaired Midwesterners at no charge. She has logged more than 2,000 hours training guide dogs and readying them for a life as a service animal. These days, it’s rare to see Pankowski without a dog by her side, so much so that she said her teammates often express disappointment when she shows up at the rink without a four-legged friend.

The daughter of two veterinarians, Pankowski has been around animals her entire life.

For Gophers, women’s Frozen Four remains special →

March 21, 2019 by Nicole Hensch in Sports, Features/Profiles

HAMDEN, Conn. — There is no Division I women’s hockey team as successful as Minnesota. The Gophers have eight national titles and have made 12 straight NCAA tournaments.

So, in a lot of ways, Minnesota is exactly where it expects to be as they prepare to face Cornell in an NCAA semifinal Friday at 3 p.m. Still, the Gophers know none of this is assured. For nearly half the women on the roster, this will be their first Frozen Four.

Minnesota lost their NCAA quarterfinal game to Wisconsin last year, ending a string of six straight Frozen Four appearances, and senior Kelly Pannek is the only member of this team that has won a national title.

NCAA Highlight: Sarah Potomak →

October 24, 2018 by Nicole Hensch in Sports, Features/Profiles, Women's Hockey

Had she made the Canadian Olympic team, Sarah Potomak would have been the youngest player on the team by two years. Though making the team so young would have been a stretch, it's also something Potomak imagined was within her grasp over her last couple of seasons.

She made her debut with the senior team in 2015, winning silver with Canada at the Four Nations Cup. She was a fixture of the senior team in 2017, winning silver at the IIHF Women's World Championships and had high hopes – and expectations of herself – when she was named to the centralization roster prior to Pyeongchang.