DE PERE / MARINETTE — The WIAA often makes very difficult decisions that impact student athletes, but now the state's governing body of high school sports is giving the students a voice to help influence their decisions forming a student athlete leadership team.
“It’s great they’re doing it — gives that buy-in," Marinette head football coach Nate Anderson said. "That involvement that their voice will be heard and when you have you’re going to see be more involved in it a put a lot of work into it.
Julianne Bradford, a senior athlete who plays multiple sports at De Pere High School, is on the committee.
“Julianne is what every coach wants,” said De Pere girl’s golf coach Kevin Dessart. “Super dedicated. She does everything that you want her to do and also has great skill and just a great person. Anything that you would need or ask, Julianne would do it for you. Great kid.”
Heading north to Marinette, junior Cooper Smith is grinding away on the gridiron. He is also a multi-sport athlete.
“Cooper is a model student-athlete,” Anderson said. “He not only excels on the field, but he excels in the classroom. He does things right. He’s looking for leadership opportunities all the time.”
Coaches said both players do things the right way; leadership is something they pride themselves on.
“I would like to lead by example and be a good role model so that my actions are modeled by the people that are watching,” Bradford said.
“Leadership is one of the key things at Marinette HS and just in my life in general,” Smith said. “Even from the littlest to the grown-ups, you still have to show your community and show your family that you can lead in anything you can dream of.”
Out of 289 applicants, Bradford and Smith were two of 27 selected to be a part of the first ever WIAA Student Athlete Leadership Team. Their involvement will provide a student-athlete voice in the WIAA.
“They’ve never had direct access to student athletes before so this is their way of having a group of students that they can easily ask questions, bounce questions off, get feedback from,” said Bradford.
The role is an advisory one with no rule making authority. One of their first tasks was giving input on contact days. How many such days should teams have? How much is too much? They then talk to their peers then give their input.
“Everyone has different ideas,” Bradford said. “It’s interesting to have different theories and be able to give our input.”
Bradford and Smith are two of the five representatives that represent District Four, which also has students from Ripon, Oostburg and Plymouth. They meet and discuss things they would like to see changed or improved within the WIAA.
“A lot of stuff we’re working on is raising awareness for mental health, increasing appreciation and respect for officials, bringing about more school spirit and increasing attendance at games and participation at WIAA sports – things like that we can influence in our peers,” Bradford said.
And being a part of the first ever group to do this, has brought the athletes close together.
“It’s just like another family to me,” Smith said. “Everybody's all agreeing with each other. We don’t argue. We may disagree sometimes, but we all disagree sometimes.”
Their coaches say they’re happy the students finally have a voice to be heard.
“Sometimes I think the kids don’t realize what goes into the decision making at the WIAA they just see oh this happened to us, even Julianne in the van was saying like now we’re on the flowchart, they’re going to ask the kids and the kids are going to have input which I think is amazing and good for the WIAA to do that,” Dessart said.
