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BY ANDY BAGGOT
UWBadgers.com Insider
MADISON, Wis. — Getting comfortable in your own skin can take the better part of a lifetime or, if you're like Dana Rettke, it can be a product of an earnest childhood.
Long before Rettke became a 6-foot-8 middle blocker for the Wisconsin volleyball team — the tallest woman to ever compete in any sport at the school — she learned how to embrace the inevitable reactions to her size.
Double-takes on the street? Comes with the territory.
Strangers asking for pictures on a Florida beach? All righty then.
Acknowledgements from UW classmates? No biggie.
Slapstick photo shoots with junior teammate Amber MacDonald, a 5-4 defensive specialist? All good.
Rettke handles them all with an engaging mix of grace, patience, understanding and cool.
"I've learned that everybody's kind of curious about me, a genuine curiosity, so I don't want to be one to be disrespectful and shoot them down," she said.
"I've always grown up like that. I've always been taught just to be respectful."
Dana Rettke and Amber MacDonald
Rettke rejected the notion that her physical gifts are a burden in any way.
"I don't look at it as a challenge," she said. "It's a way of life."
Rettke is writing the latest chapter of her life under a large spotlight. She's a headliner in the second-rated recruiting class in the nation. She's a front-line force for the fifth-ranked team in the country. She's playing before sellout crowds at the UW Field House (capacity 6,102) that are almost as big as her quiet hometown of Riverside, Illinois (population 8,748).
Rettke has already been honored three times by the Big Ten Conference — Player of the Week and Freshman of the Week after her debut for the Badgers last month, and Freshman of the Week after she was named to the all-tournament team at the HotelRED Invitational — while helping to key an unbeaten start to the regular season.
Rettke couldn't be happier.
"I walk down the streets here every day just thinking about how much I love this place and how thankful I am for this opportunity," she said.
UW coach Kelly Sheffield initially pondered redshirting Rettke because he wasn't sure how the 18-year-old would adapt to the demands of her sizeable role, but those thoughts disappeared not long after Rettke enrolled in January with fellow rookies Sydney Hilley, a setter, and Mariah Whalen, an outside hitter.
"I think at times she's probably one of the more dominating players in the country with still an unbelievable amount of room to grow," Sheffield said of Rettke.
"We knew that we had a player that had the potential to be special and dominant, but she's probably touching into that a little bit more frequently at an earlier stage probably than what we reasonably expected."
Rettke was born to parents of above-average height — father John is 6-6; mother Kathy is 5-11 — and Dana was in elementary school when her pediatrician predicted she would grow to be at least as tall as her dad.
"She's been big ever since she was little," John said, chuckling at his unintended choice of words. "She was off the growth charts her entire life from when she was born."
Sitting in the near-empty Field House before a recent practice, Dana reflected on how her life has been shaped by the essence of her shape.
Being bigger than everyone else in her elementary school classes prompted the teachers to view her through a different lens than her peers.
"When you're much taller than the kids your age, people assume you're older and they deal with you as if you were a little more mature," John Rettke said. "I think she took that cue."
Dana was 6 when she began taking dance lessons at the direction of her aunt, a professional dancer. Dana focused on jazz and tap, lessons that not only cultivated a sense of balance and form, they led to annual stage shows that put Dana in front of an audience.
"That's a lot of footwork," Dana said. "That's only helped me throughout my athletic career."
Whalen said her first encounter with Rettke — it was during a club match when they were 15 — brought all her attributes to life. Even though Whalen is 6-1, she looked up and marveled at her future roommate.
"Oh, my gosh, you're super tall," Whalen said of her initial reaction.
That gave way to a lasting first impression of Rettke's presence on the court.
"In club I don't remember her being awkward at all," Whalen said. "She looks very athletic when she does things."
Rettke's athleticism was grown in the fertile soil of diversity. In addition to dance classes, which she continued through eighth grade, she played soccer and softball, swam, and was a high jumper in track in middle school.
"She was always super active," John Rettke said. "If there was a ball to be kicked or thrown, she was doing it."
Basketball was another focus for Dana. At one point she was playing on a high-profile AAU circuit — she was a 15-year-old on an under-17 squad — and drawing interest from the likes of Illinois, Iowa, Michigan State, Northwestern and Stanford.
There was a time when Rettke was attending volleyball camps while playing AAU basketball. She gradually came to the conclusion that she preferred one over the other.
"I loved all the basketball coaches," she said, "but I didn't think it was for me."
Volleyball wasn't always Rettke's thing, either. Her mother implored her to give it a try, but Dana was resistant and didn't give club volleyball a try until she was 15.
"I always felt that volleyball … it was too far out of reach — that I waited too long for that," she said.
Rettke changed her mind, and stumbled upon her passion, when one of her best friends went out for volleyball and coaxed Dana to join her.
"I gave it a try," Rettke said. "I had a lot of fun. That sort of sealed the deal."
Rettke said enrolling at UW for the spring semester and getting to know her new teammates was a critical development in her rookie season. A primary item on the agenda was cultivating a sense of rhythm with Hilley, the top-rated setter recruit in the nation.
"We really struggled with that at the beginning, but we worked through it," Rettke said of their timing in spring drills. "We got a feel for each other's style of play."
Rettke already knew Whalen from their club days. In fact, Rettke joined the Whalens for a trip to Naples, Florida, when the two girls were juniors in high school.
That's where Whalen got a measure of Rettke's grace. At one point a stranger approached them on the beach.
"Oh, my gosh," the woman said to Rettke. "You're the tallest girl I've ever seen. Can I take my picture with you?"
Whalen said Rettke complied.
"She was always super chill about it," Whalen said of Rettke. "You see the grace in that.
"It makes Dana who she is. She has different experiences than anyone else. We can go through the same thing, but she has it a lot more different because of how tall she is."
How hard would it be to walk in Rettke's shoes?
"For a girl I'm pretty tall, so people would come up to me and say, 'God, you're so tall,'" Whalen said. "I could easily see where she would get frustrated with it and kind of get annoyed with it, but she hasn't.
"That's just who she is. I don't think she'll ever change. She's a very confident person and that helps a lot."
Sheffield remembers a time in his 16-year head coaching career when taller players would purposely slouch or wear flats because they were reluctant to advertise their height.
"They did not want to stand out," he said.
When Rettke went from 6-7 to 6-8, she saw it as a milestone, waiting until she was on a visit to Madison to tell Sheffield in person.
"She came up and high-fived me," he said.
Sheffield noted that he's seen Rettke wearing heels. Why?
"I want to get to 7-foot," she told him.
Sheffield, the father of two young daughters, said Rettke loves it when little kids come up and want to take a picture with her.
"She's very, very comfortable in her own skin," he said. "She's told me she doesn't want to be like everyone else."
Ask Rettke for her biggest adjustment to college and she'll offer two; one on the court and one off of it.
"The speed of the game," she said of feedback from a 9-0 start, one that gives way to the gravel road that is the 20-match Big Ten schedule.
The Badgers are one of six league teams situated in the latest top-25 national ranking and will face another — No. 20 Michigan — at the Field House on Sunday. Wisconsin hosts Michigan State in both teams' Big Ten opener on Friday.
Rettke leads Wisconsin in hitting percentage (.479), kills per set (3.32) and blocks per set (1.57), but her personal assessment of her play is understated.
"When I go back and watch film, there's so much I need to get better at," she said.
Rettke has quickly made herself at home at the Field House, which is scheduled to host 15 sellouts this season.
"I always tell people that, even though there are 6,000 people here, it really doesn't feel like it," she said. "It just feels like you're playing in front of a bunch of friends."
The other adjustment Rettke mentioned is time management, something every UW student-athlete learns one way or another.
"Everything needs to be planned for," she said of her studies.
Rettke plans to major in psychology because "I love working with people and being around people in general, talking with them," she said.
Speaking of which, Rettke said she recently got into a casual conversation with one of her classmates. It turns out he knew who she was.
"I was at your game last week," he told her.
Her reaction to that dab of celebrity?
"Pretty cool," Rettke said.
Spoken like someone full of grace, someone who's found comfort in her own skin.
