UW hockey: Mosinee senior verbally commits to Badgers
There was a bit of unfinished business keeping Chase Drake awake Wednesday night. He had something he really wanted to tell people, but he had to make things official first.
The senior defenseman from Mosinee was fresh off a visit to the University of Wisconsin hockey team in which a scholarship offer was extended. He didn't accept it on the spot, but it sounds like he knew he was going to be making that call.
By Thursday afternoon, word was getting out that Drake, an up-and-coming prospect, had called to give Badgers coaches a verbal commitment to join the team in the fall of 2010, and Drake was sounding pretty pumped.
"Growing up in Wisconsin, you pretty much bleed red and white," said Drake, an 18-year-old who is ranked 136th among North American skaters eligible for this summer's NHL draft. "You grow up rooting for them, and all of my relatives got me into them. It just stuck with me then.
"I just started receiving interest from them this year, so I was pretty excited to hear that. Then once we scheduled a visit, I was pretty confident that I would be playing with them in the next couple of years."
Considering that college attention started coming in the last year, that's a long way to go in a short time.
While quarterbacking Mosinee's football team to a 10-2 record, Drake played for Team Wisconsin last fall, before the high school hockey season started.
"Being on that team, the coaches really helped develop me into the player that I am today, and I owe a lot of credit to them," Drake said. "And also my high school coaches. They've been pushing me over the last two years, just telling me this is what you've got to do to make it to the next level."
Drake, admittedly undersize at 170 pounds on his 6-foot-2 frame, said the plan is for him to play two seasons for the Green Bay Gamblers of the United States Hockey League. He joined Green Bay for 10 games at the end of last season, after the high school campaign was over.
He was one of eight finalists for the state prep hockey player of the year award and led the Indians to the state quarterfinals, where they lost to Madison Edgewood. He had 12 goals and 30 points in 23 games as a senior for Mosinee.
"It was definitely a major step up from high school right to the USHL," he said. "I went and watched a game, and it didn't look like it would be too big of a step, but once you get on the ice with those guys, the speed and the strength is just so much more superior than high school. It was difficult, but it was a good challenge for me and I had a good time trying to keep up with the challenge."
The challenge over the next two years will be for Drake to get his strength and weight — that 170-pound figure is "on a good day," he said — to match his body size, he said.
He is the first defenseman known to have committed for the freshman class of 2010, and he could be the first player from Mosinee to skate for the Badgers since 1972. Gary Kuklinski played for UW from 1969 to 1972, while Ron Leszczynski played from 1963 to 1966.
Mosinee, a central Wisconsin city of around 4,000 people, hasn't produced a lot of high-level hockey players, Drake said. Troy Michalski played two years for Alaska Fairbanks in the 1990s and later went on to play briefly in the United Hockey League.
"No one ever made it pro or anything like that here," Drake said. "I'm hoping to be the first one."
He visited Princeton and Yale before accepting Wisconsin's offer, and he had visits scheduled with Notre Dame and Miami (Ohio) as well as discussions with Michigan State.
"But this is pretty much my dream school," Drake said of Wisconsin, "and once they offered me something, I had to take it."
Wausau Daily Herald
Mosinee's Chase Drake verbally commited to the Badgers as part of the 2010 recruiting class.
