Former Marinette star Sam Sommerfeldt leads Badgers basketball managers

University of Wisconsin sophomore guard Zach Kinziger won’t be the only former local basketball star in town when the Badgers play an exhibition against UW-Green Bay on Oct. 15 at the Resch Center.

While Kinziger, who helped lead De Pere to the WIAA Division 1 state championship as a sophomore in 2023, will do his work on the court, Sam Sommerfeldt will do his just off it.

The former Marinette guard is in his first year as the head basketball manager for the Badgers, leading a staff of 19 who make life a whole lot easier for coaches and players.  

The days are long. The efforts come with little recognition outside the team.

Sommerfeldt loves every minute.

He attends classes in the morning and heads straight to the Kohl Center. He’s there until he goes home for the night, then prepares to do it all over again the next day.

Sommerfeldt is the latest in a recent line of former local athletes to serve as the top manager for the Badgers basketball team.

The list includes Ashwaubenon’s Brady Wittig and Bay Port’s Brett Frieder.

Like those two, Sommerfeldt was a talented player on the court during his prep days.

As a senior in 2024, he became just the sixth player in Marinette history to score 1,000 career points.

He averaged a career-high 16.3 points per game that season – it was the third straight year he averaged double figures – and was a first-team all-conference selection in the North Eastern.

Sommerfeldt had the talent to play at the collegiate level. There was interest from NCAA Division III UW-River Falls.

But he already had earned his associates degree from UWGB at the same time he graduated high school. He is majoring in education, and it limited the schools he could both attend academically and play basketball.  

As much as he pondered going somewhere to play, he also had in the back of his mind that he wanted to be at Wisconsin.

Wisconsin won out.

His journey to working with the Badgers actually started at UWGB in April 2024 when the school was seeking a new men’s basketball coach after Sundance Wicks left for Wyoming.

Former Kaukauna star Jordan McCabe had joined the Phoenix as an assistant for Wicks just a couple weeks before he departed, but he stayed with UWGB rather than follow Wicks out the door.

Sommerfeldt’s family have been longtime friends with the McCabe family.

McCabe’s father, Matt, served as an assistant for one season under Sommerfeldt’s father, Daren, for the Marinette boys basketball team when Jordan was a child.

Sam got up at 5 a.m. three days a week to travel from Marinette to Green Bay and help McCabe with whatever he needed, essentially working as a manager.

It continued throughout that spring and summer after Doug Gottlieb was hired as the Phoenix coach.

When Sam arrived as a freshman in Madison for the fall semester that year, he was hired as one of the Badgers’ managers. He hoped to start at the ground level and work his way up.

For the next two years, he put in his time. He did whatever was asked. Get up at the crack of dawn to help at the Kohl Center? Not a problem, he already did that for a summer at UWGB.

He simply concentrated on doing a good job, no matter how small the task.

Team managers are responsible for helping the basketball operation run smoothly. They work the clocks at practice. Clean the court. Pack or move equipment. Help break down film. Order the food.

Sam even had to jump into a basketball drill on occasion.

His responsibility grew his sophomore year after being promoted to a lead manager.

“I think all of that kind of culminated together to being where I am right now,” he said.

He took over the top spot this season from Taylor Yaklich, who graduated and is now a partnerships coordinator at ESPN Madison.

Being the head manager, of course, is about leading the group. Sam is the one who travels with the team for every road game and attends every practice.

He’s the one in charge of communicating with Wisconsin coach Greg Gard. It’s not uncommon for a head manager to be the shadow for a head coach during practices.

“It’s all worth it,” Sam said. “I love to be there. It’s great.”

Sam Sommerfeldt grew up a Badgers fan

It’s only fitting Sam has a job with the Badgers, considering he was raised to be a die-hard fan of the program. His aunt and uncle were longtime season ticket holders.

He doesn’t remember anything about the first game he attended in 2007. Gard was an assistant coach under Bo Ryan at the time and invited Marinette basketball player Ben Kitkowski to a game his sophomore year. Since Daren Sommerfeldt was his coach at the time, his family also was invited. It included Sam and his older brother, Jake.

Sam does remember another game eight years later, when he and his family attended the national championship in 2015 when Wisconsin played Duke in Indianapolis.

The title game against Duke was fun, up until Wisconsin’s nine-point lead in the second half evaporated in a 68-63 loss. Jake wept on the ride down the escalator.

“I’ve definitely been a Badgers fan my whole life,” Sam said. “I guess going to the 2015 championship game was a crazy experience, for me and my family. Growing up, up until that point, we always had been watching them on TV or going to games.”

Sam’s dream is to become a coach after he graduates from Wisconsin.

It’s not surprising, considering he grew up in a house with a longtime basketball coach for a father.

Daren was the leader of a Marinette team in 2008 that went 21-3 and won its first conference championship in two decades.

But Daren believes it was Jake who had perhaps the biggest impact on Sam’s passion for the sport. Jake played for DIII Carroll University after his own standout prep career.

“Like most sports families that have a favorite one, you spend so much time together involved in that sport, especially when one of the parents is a coach,” Daren said. “I do believe that only goes so far, though. When you have two siblings so close in age that are extremely dedicated to the same sport, it takes it up another notch or 10. Jake going on to play at Carroll University, in one of the top Division III conferences in the nation in the [College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin], exposed Sam to the college way of doing things.

“To be able to then look at the positive experience that his brother was having at that level and say, ‘Hey, I don’t care if it’s serving a college basketball program as a student-athlete or as a manager at a Big Ten school, that’s the next step and I want to be a part of that in some way.’”

For Sam to be part of the team he grew up rooting for makes it all the better. His family doesn’t think it’s too shabby, either.  

“I think his 20 cousins think it’s pretty cool that he has such a key role with the Badgers,” Daren said. “His brother probably just wants to still beat him in one-on-one.

“As a parent, I haven’t missed too many games that he’s worked the first two years. Now that he is the head manager and works every single game, I’ll be at every one home and away as a retired educator. It’s going to be a special season for all of us.”