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I found out another relative of a Dodgeville High School graduate who is still shining in football this season. Will Hagerup, a senior at the University of Michigan, is a 6'4" 227 lb. punter at that school. He is a graduate of Whitefish Bay High School, Milwaukee and is the grandson of Eric Hagerup, a 1954 Dodgeville grad. Eric was inducted into the Dodgeville High School Athletic Hall of Fame as a member of 2013 induction group.
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While I'm talking about football, the area will be well represented at the WIAA State Football Championships the end of the week at Camp Randall Stadium in Madison. Black Hawk (13-0) of the Six Rivers Conference (South Wayne) will be playing for the gold ball in Division 7 Thursday at 10 a.m. when they take on Glenwood City (12-1) - Darlington (12-1) of the SWAL will be doing the same in Division 6 when they play Shiocton (13-0) at 1 p.m. as will Lancaster of the SWC in Division 5 when they take on Stanley-Boyd, in a battle of 13-0 unbeaten teams and surprising Platteville (9-4) of the SWC will play another surprise team in Winneconne (8-5) in Division 4 at 7 p.m. Having those teams represent four different divisions in the seven-division system speaks loudly about the quality of football play in southwestern Wisconsin!
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I've got to talk a little bit about "THE BOOK" - that's "DODGEVILLE - Capturing Hearts", the book by Rick Birk, a Wisconsin native who played his high school basketball at Kettle Moraine (near Milwaukee). It is, of course, very dear to me since it is about the years I went to high school in Dodgeville, mainly 1963 and 1964. Brother Pat was a captain on the 1963 state championship runner-up team and I was a senior in 1964 when we won the state championship with an unbeaten record. This was when there was a "no class" playoff system - we had to play against the "BIG BOYS"! I was friends with every player on both teams and am even invited to attend the 1963 class reunions. Those two years were special times - we felt like kings and were treated such by pretty nearly everyone in Madison during the tournaments. It's amazing when you meet someone even yet today and say you're from Dodgeville and they reply "didn't your school beat the big boys in state tournament basketball awhile back?" In the book are not only photos of both teams, but a series of photos leading up to and after the tournaments, some diagrams of "Weenie Wilson" plays and photos of other memorable DHS sports teams during that time, especially that of the first golf team (1962) that I was a part of. I hope people accept this book as well as I did - it's great reading and you can learn something about what took place those years, from how much they practiced to how the community came together and was pretty much a ghost town during the tournaments those two years. The book tells a part of Dodgeville history that should be preserved! Above is a photo of neighboring Barneveld showing their support to the Dodgers during those years!
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Because of my "attachment" with the Quality Bakery in downtown Dodgeville I stopped in to congratulate them on being named southwest Wisconsin's "Best Bakery", but I just had to say - "I was looking for 'the Best Bakery in Southwest Wisconsin' - can you tell me how to get to Stoughton!