Editor’s note: In Wisconsin’s last four matches, Danielle Hart has 36 kills with no errors in 51 attacks, an incredible stretch for the No. 3. Badgers. For the season, she is hitting a Big Ten-leading .443 and is third in the NCAA at 1.57 blocks per set. We are excited to have this feature about her from Dennis Punzel, who covers Wisconsin volleyball for the Wisconsin State Journal and is the author of “Point Wisconsin,” which chronicles the Badgers’ 2021 NCAA-championship season:
By Dennis Punzel for VolleyballMag.com
Danielle Hart, the artist, traveler and big-time middle blocker, is living one of those classic silver lining tales.
Flash back to the start of the 2021 season, one in which Wisconsin would go on to win the NCAA championship. Hart, a 6-foot-4 product of Virginia Beach, Virginia, couldn’t have had a better start to the season. She had 19 kills in the first six matches, was hitting .427, and had 20 blocks.
But in practice on September 14, she tore her right ACL and was lost for the season. She could only cheer from the sidelines as her teammates won it all.
Now comes the silver lining part.
Hart has ascended to a leadership role in the absence of her more acclaimed former classmates as she attempts to pick up her career where it left off last fall.
No longer overshadowed by All-Americans like Dana Rettke, Sydney Hilley and Lauren Barnes, she is a mentor for the next generation of Badgers as they seek to build on last season’s accomplishments.
“She’s out of the shadows,” coach Kelly Sheffield said. “Everybody here in this program knows how important of a player she’s been, but I think some others are going to be able to see how important she is.”
Hart has emerged as a dynamic force for the Badgers, who are in the midst of a 16-match winning streak that has left them in sole possession of first-place in the Big Ten with two matches left. They’re tough ones, for sure, at No. 5 Nebraska on Friday and at No. 8 Ohio State on Saturday.
When Sheffield looks at Hart now he sees a player who not only has picked up where she left off.
“If you just disappeared and went on vacation for a year and came back you wouldn’t know that she had major knee surgery,” Sheffield said. “She’s worked very hard. I think that was really important for her, not to just play but to be able to do everything that she’s able to do and to…
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