ANDY BAGGOT Insider

BY ANDY BAGGOT
UWBadgers.com Insider

MADISON, Wis. — It's one thing to have talent and Maggie (Meyer) Fergusson had that in spades. You don't do what she did as a member of the Wisconsin's women's swimming and diving program without having some sort of a built-in knack for excellence.

Fergusson is the first swimmer in UW history, men or women, to win an NCAA individual title. She prevailed in the 200 backstroke in 2011, creating a distinguished club that has since grown to four.

That breakthrough performance is why Fergusson is included in the latest class of inductees to the UW Athletic Hall of Fame, but talent is not the only variable that elevated her to the top of the podium that March night in Austin, Texas, a decade ago.

Kari Woodall, a Wisconsin assistant coach from 2000 to '08, made note of several critical personality traits while recruiting Fergusson out of White Bear Lake (Minnesota) High School.

"She had the demeanor of somebody who's very coachable," Woodall said. "Talent will get you so far and clearly she was very talented. But she was really, really coachable. When you get that mix — you can only see so much of it on the surface — we also got lucky.

"With Maggie, every time she got in the pool and raced, she got better. There aren't a whole lot of athletes like that. At some point you assume somebody's going to level off and you just kept wondering if this young athlete was going to level off. I feel like she could keep swimming 10 more years and would keep getting better."

Woodall described Fergusson, a two-time Minnesota state champion at White Bear Lake High School as a senior in 2006, as an extrovert who brought a consistent level of energy, focus and calm to every workout and meet.

"With Maggie, what you see is what you get," said Woodall, an assistant during the Eric Hansen coaching regime. "For college women in general, they're complicated beings. The more open they are, the luckier you are as a coach. There's a lot going on not just with school and swimming. It's all the dynamics."

Carrie Hickman can relate. She tried to recruit Fergusson to Notre Dame when she was an assistant there then, coincidentally, wound up working with Fergusson when Hickman became an assistant at UW from 2008 to '13. Hickman added another item to the list of variables that defined Fergusson.

"One of her greatest strengths was that she was very analytical about her strokes, her training, her races," Hickman said. "She'd come back after a race and she'd say, 'OK, let's cut that apart.' For better or worse — great swim or terrible swim — she wanted to break it down and learn from it every time. That was the case in practice. That was the case in races. That was in the weight room cross-training. She was constantly trying to prove herself."

Fergusson showed up on campus with a lanky 5-foot-10 frame that had never been exposed to weight or resistance training. During her time at UW, she not only became a workout devotee, she grew to 6-2 and cultivated a sense of commitment to preparation.

"What you don't know, or how it's going to work out, is a person's desire to win," she said. "I definitely had that drive to be better and that drive to be the best and that drive to push toward new goals."

Hickman said Fergusson came to swim for the Badgers with the goal of becoming an NCAA champion. The moment it happened, Hickman said, "was magical" even though no one in the UW entourage was surprised.

"That night she was just filled with confidence," Hickman said of Fergusson. "She just went out and executed her race. She was spot on where all of us thought she would be. She swam the perfect race.

"We knew it was possible. You know what your swimmer can do. You've seen it in practice. You've rehearsed it. The X factor is what all the other coaches have seen their swimmers do."

When Fergusson finished off her historic triumph, hitting the finish line in 1 minute, 50.26 seconds, she immediately cast an eye toward her cheering sections inside the Texas Swim Center.

"That's the best moment in coaching," Hickman said.

Fergusson promptly threw open the door to a UW champion's club that now includes Drew DeDuits (2015) from the men's side, and Beata Nelson ('19) and Phoebe Bacon ('21) from the women's team. Oddly, all four prevailed in the same event, although Nelson added titles in the 100 back and 200 IM in the NCAA meet in 2019. She also set the U.S. collegiate record in the 200 back in 1:47.24.

Fergusson said she checked Bacon's winning time of 1:48.32 and saw that her clocking now would have put her in sixth place. The fact that all four UW national champions won the same event is remarkable.

"Isn't that wild?" she asked rhetorically.

Everyone has a measure of potential. What force enabled Fergusson to fulfill hers?

"Gosh, I'm not sure," she said. "I always think back during that time (at Wisconsin) and I was just so relentless with how I used the resources that I had at my fingertips. I really felt like I had the mentality of trying to be the first in (the pool) and the last out and tried to make sure that when I stepped up to the block to race that there was no question that I had trained as much, if not more, than my competition."

Fergusson said it helped that she had great parents, Fred and Lisa, and quality coaches to help her on her journey that includes 11 All-America citations and seven Big Ten Conference titles.

"I had a really strong support system of people who believed in me and knew how to push me the right way," she said. "They all believed in me and had seen something greater that I could do than I thought possible."

Fergusson was the Big Ten Swimmer of the Year and was the school's female recipient of the Big Ten Medal of Honor in 2010-11. She said becoming the sixth UW Hall of Famer from the women's swimming and diving team was "a pretty big accolade" that was "really important for the program."

"Being 10 years removed from the success that I had as a college athlete, it definitely is an accomplishment to be celebrated," she said.

Fergusson met her husband, Johno, while both lived in Tucson, Arizona. They moved to Carbondale, Illinois, in late 2019 where Johno is an assistant coach for the men's and women's swimming teams at Southern Illinois University and Maggie is a sales manager, overseeing a staff of nine, for Republic Services, a waste removal company. The couple has a 180-pound English Mastiff named Winston.

"A nice, mellow life," Fergusson said.

During her time at UW, Fergusson was a team captain and vice president of the Student-Athlete Advisory Committee, which meant attending meetings of the school's athletic board. She graduated with degrees in English and Religious Studies and was a three-time Academic All-Big Ten selection.

"I just always like to be involved and I always like to be engaged and I always like to be learning," she said. "I like to be busy.

"I look back on my time in college and I'm like, 'I had such a full plate.' But I've always thrived in a fast-paced environment."

Hickman said Fergusson was one of those kids who went out of her way to introduce herself to recruits, parents and visitors. She made everyone from the student managers to newcomers feel welcome.

"She was pretty consistently one of the happiest kids on deck," Hickman said.

Fergusson will no doubt bring that kind of energy to the UW Athletic Hall of Fame.