Local family shares involvement in UW sports
By Jason Piddington
University of Wisconsin-Platteville junior golfer Markie Ash is no stranger to the Wisconsin Intercollegiate Athletic Conference.
While attending Waupaca High School, her oldest brother, Jake, was golfing at UW-Stout and another brother, Beau, was playing football at UW-Oshkosh.
Markie, a civil engineering major, first followed Jake to UW-Stout to play golf before changing majors and transferring to UW-Platteville in 2019.
“I knew I wanted to be an engineer and thought it would be manufacturing engineering,” she said. “After a year at Stout, I knew I wanted to be a civil engineer and it was a no-brainer transferring to UW-Platteville, where I could major in civil and still play golf.”
Markie finished fourth or better in five tournaments in her first season with the Pioneers, including a fourth-place finish at the 2019 Fall WIAC Championship to earn her all-conference honors. She also holds the program record of best individual stroke average for the 2019-20 season at 80.85.
Legacy begins with parents
Three siblings in the WIAC and Markie’s success on the golf course is one chapter of this family tradition.
It started in the mid-1980s when Markie’s parents were both student-athletes. Jim Ash played football for UW-La Crosse while Lisa swam at UW-Stevens Point.
Five WIAC athletes grew to six after the youngest family member, Cadie, joined the UW-Eau Claire women’s golf team last fall as a freshman.
That adds up to six student-athletes at six different WIAC schools.
As each of their four children went off to college, Jim and Lisa’s closet became more colorful with other school colors.
“I am rooting for our kids now,” said Jim, a paraprofessional in the special education department at Clintonville Middle School. “I feel I have more allegiance to their schools than my own.”
Markie and Cadie will eventually compete in the same golf invitational.
“I am sewing a sweatshirt, half UW-Eau Claire and half UW-Platteville,” Lisa said. “I am lucky that I got the sewing machine out to make masks. Now that I have it out, that is my goal.”
“We might have to split up and have Mom walk with one and I will walk with the other and after nine holes switch it up,” Jim said. “We may also have to split where we go, as they may be at different events.
“We are used to that,” he added. “We have done that for many years. I go one way and Lisa goes another way. We have done it for other sports, so we are kind of used to it. It is a blessing to have two girls at a golf course playing golf. That is a problem we like to have.”
Family affair
Sports have been a part of the Ash family for a long time.
“It has been a family affair,” Lisa said. “That is what our vacations were, traveling around to youth hockey, softball, golf, football, baseball, whatever it was.”
When the children started looking at colleges, Jim and Lisa were good sounding boards, but never forced their alma maters on them.
“We just hope for the best for our children,” said Lisa, a physical education teacher at the Waupaca Learning Center. “We encouraged our children to go to a state school of their choice, but it was always their choice and you really can’t go wrong with any of them. For them to end up all over the place was fun and unique.”
Were the parents ever worried about fighting between the siblings now that all four have ties to a different school?
“Not really,” Jim said. “I would actually enjoy that banter.”
“The only real banter now is when I ask Cadie, ‘What is a Blugold?’” said Jake, who graduated from UW-Stout in 2015 with a degree in applied math and computer science. He spent the past five years teaching and will be relocating to New York City for campus missionary work.
“Most of our banter is on the golf course,” said Beau, who graduated from UW-Oshkosh in 2019 with a degree in special education. He teaches and coaches at Whitnall Middle School near Milwaukee.
“It isn’t fun for me,” he said. “I am the worst player and normally lose by 10 strokes. I will argue with Dad because we did play the same sport. I like comparing the teams he played on to the teams I played on. Other than that, we have been pretty happy with each others’ success. I know it is fun for me to go watch my little sisters play golf.”
The competitive side really shows on the course, where Jake does not give any breaks to his sisters.
“We don’t really give strokes,” he said. “The last time out, Markie won by a few strokes. It was just recently, but my skills aren’t what they used to be since I don’t play as much as I used to.”
UW football players
Jim’s UW-La Crosse team won the NAIA national football championship in 1985 and in 2016, he got the chance to watch Beau and the UW-Oshkosh team make a run to the finals before falling in the national championship game.
“I never had to give Beau a lot of advice during their run,” Jim said. “He was such a hard worker and such a great teammate. I always just drove home (to) be a great teammate. I wanted him to win a national championship more than I ever wanted to win one. I would give mine away if he could have won one.”
The family agreed that Beau’s team would have beaten Jim’s team.
“It is just a different era,” Jim said. “The quality of athletes now is totally different. Beau was a 245-pound fullback. We had 245-pound lineman.”
Cadie wasn’t sure what sports she wanted to participate in at the high school level. Her first thoughts were volleyball, hockey and softball.
“I wasn’t even planning on golfing in high school,” she said. “Then Markie, the recruiter she is, said, ‘Come to this winter open gym with me.’ As an eighth-grader, I just went along with it and the coach made brownies. That was the deciding factor for me to go into golf. The brownies were really good.”
• Jason Piddington is a public relations writer with UW-Platteville’s Athletic Department.