Standing outside the Shell on a warm August afternoon, it was hard not to be taken aback by the nine prominent individuals inducted into the UW Athletic Hall of Fame. Of the six living inductees in attendance, each has their own interesting story of how they came to Madison, where they went after, and what this honor means to them.

To Sidney Williams, who in 1956 became the first African-American to start at quarterback in modern Big Ten Conference history, this distinguished honor is almost unbelievable.

"It is a great feeling to be back here on this great campus," Williams said. "This place gave me an opportunity to have a wonderful athletic career a great education, and a relationship with the school that is still in existence now. I am just overwhelmed."

Williams played two years professionally, in 1958 with the New York Giants and in 1959 in the Canadian Football League. In 1967, he graduated from George Washington University law school with honors and went on to become a patent lawyer for the Upjohn Company, a pharmaceutical manufacturing firm.

Rick Olson was a member of the Badger basketball team from 1983-86, and started all 112 games during his collegiate career. Olson was well known for his offensive prowess, and in 1984 was named Sports Illustrated "Player of the Week" after scoring 39 points against Michigan and 29 points against Michigan State in consecutive games, all while playing before the three-point line was permanently instituted into the game.

"It would have been nice, no question about it. But the way you see it today, with so many teams running their offenses out on the perimeter, sometimes I wish I would have been playing maybe 10 years later than I did because of the style so many of these teams are playing," Olson said.

"There would have been a lot more points, no questions about that. I didn't go into the paint too often."

A native of Madison, Olson was named Wisconsin's Mr. Basketball in 1982 and was immediately a fan favorite at UW, having attended Madison La Follette High School. Olson has worked for Prairie du Sac-based Mueller Sports Medicine Co. the last 12 years, and is currently the company's national sales manager.

For Olson, however, it's not necessarily the scoring accolades that he remembers, but accomplishing what he came to the UW to do.

"The one thing I will never forget is to give all my family and friends and relatives an opportunity to see me play for four more years, and to try and help a program that was in between new coaches and coming off of one of its worst years ever," Olson said. "To build this program over those next four years and to play with the people I had a chance to play with, those are things that you can never take away from me."

While all of the inductees are worthy of the honor, Megan Scott stands alone as the only woman to be a three-sport letterwinner at Wisconsin. Scott lettered in track in 1984, and played basketball and volleyball from 1983-84.

"For me, it took a lot of effort, a lot of time and energy, which I enjoyed, to letter in three sports because I was willing to do it, and if someone is going to do it they have to be willing to do it and make sacrifices," said Scott, who graduated with a degree in interior design and has a career in sales designing commercial kitchens and bars for restaurants.