In front of a packed crowd, seven Stevens Point Area Senior High School (SPASH) seniors signed National Letters of Intent during a ceremony in the schools’ south commons Wednesday, Nov. 8.

Emily Check, Liam Belson, Julia Stupar, Ally Miklesh, Maggie Negaard, Drew Blair and Joey Hauser each signed a National Letter of Intent during a ceremony at Stevens Point Area Senior High School (SPASH) Wednesday, Nov. 8.
(John Kemmeter photo)

With friends and family in attendance, Liam Belson (track and field, University of Wisconsin), Drew Blair (men’s basketball, Northwest Missouri State), Emily Check (women’s swimming, Western Illinois), Joey Hauser (men’s basketball, NCAA Division 1 Marquette University), Ally Miklesh (softball, University of Wisconsin), Maggie Negaard (women’s basketball, Drake University) and Julia Stupar (women’s swimming, University of Wisconsin) each made their college choices official.

 Joey Hauser

One of the top Class of 2018 college basketball recruits in the nation, the 6-8 Hauser has been on a starter on three consecutive WIAA Division 1 State Championship teams for SPASH and was named First Team Division 1 All-State last year for the second year in a row.

Hauser received scholarship offers from a number of NCAA Division 1 schools, including Marquette, Wisconsin, Michigan State, Virginia, Iowa State, Iowa, Notre Dame and Purdue, and also received interest from Duke, while he verbally committed last summer to play at Marquette, where his older brother Sam is a sophomore on the men’s basketball team.

“Just going through the process and having my brother being at Marquette, I think it made it more difficult, just because people obviously make a lot of assumptions,” said Hauser. “And having Wisconsin (offer), and being from Wisconsin, a lot of people think, ‘he’s going to go there.’

“But I definitely think I did all of the right things, going to see places, and I thought I owed it to myself to go see these other places,” he said. “But in the end, Marquette was where I wanted to go, and having my brother there was just kind of a side (benefit) for it.”

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