UW-P right where it expects to be

More news about: UW-Platteville

Dec 04, 2025

Trevor Syse, with 53 catches and 10 touchdown receptions, has helped UW-Platteville find new heights.
Photo by Ryan Coleman, d3photography.com

By Greg Thomas
D3football.com

From the outside, the story looks obvious.

UW-Platteville has strung together consecutive NCAA playoff appearances for the first time in program history and just won its first postseason game since 2013. A program that used to surface every few years now appears to be building something more durable. In a WIAC where staying above water is difficult even for established powers, the Pioneers look like a riser, a team stepping into new territory.

Inside the locker room, however, that premise gets dismissed before the question is even finished.

“As far as this year is concerned we are, we’re right where we thought we should be,” head coach Ryan Munz said. “Everyone kind of looks at that and says, ‘well, you didn’t do this or you didn’t do that.’ For us that’s not part of the recipe for success. It’s about doing what we’re supposed to do every single day and making every moment count.”

Platteville sees something different than the rest of us. Where outsiders see an upstart, they see a team finally playing at the level they expect every year. They see alignment, not breakthrough. And they see a future defined less by surprise than by continuity.

The facts are what they are. Platteville has reached the playoffs only four times in school history — 2013, 2016, 2024, and now 2025. This is the first time those appearances have come in consecutive years. The WIAC’s reputation as a gauntlet is well earned, and even good programs struggle to generate sustained postseason momentum. From the outside, it’s hard not to look at 2024 and 2025 as evidence that something has shifted.

That framing doesn’t resonate in Platteville, where Munz and his players push back on anything that resembles an “arrival” narrative. Munz won’t call this a breakthrough. The players won’t entertain the idea that they’re overachieving. Their message is consistent that this isn’t new, it’s just visible now.

Platteville gaining traction might be the story that fans see, but it isn't the one the program lives. Inside, they talk like a team that’s been building toward this for years, long before the external results caught up.

If there’s a temptation to explain the Pioneers’ continued success through philosophical shifts or major schematic changes, it evaporates quickly. Platteville didn’t reinvent itself after the 2024 championship season. It didn’t overhaul its offensive identity after losing 2024 WIAC Offensive Player of the Year Brandt Stare or shift its defensive approach after replacing nine starters from 2023. The staff didn’t redesign the wheel; they ran the same system with new players stepping into new roles.

Harrison Meyer, a junior defensive back and first-team all-WIAC selection, points to recruiting as the starting point of that continuity. “It all really starts with the recruiting process and just getting the right guys in the room, year in and year out,” he said.

The numbers reflect a program adjusting to personnel, not adopting a different ideology. Passing production dipped from 281 to 257 yards per game and from 41 to 24 touchdowns, a natural outcome of transitioning from record-setting quarterback Michael Priami to first-year starter Nathan Uselding. The run game grew from 133.8 to 165.6 yards per game as Zackary Bothun continued to stand out in the Pioneer backfield. Same structure, different faces, familiar results.

Munz was emphatic, “What we did to get to where we’re at now isn’t anything that just happened overnight. Through recruiting and through strength and conditioning and through coaching and through schemes and through everything that we’re doing here, this is part of the goal.”

The philosophy didn’t change, but the roster did. And Platteville believes the system did exactly what it was built to do which is to adapt and produce.

The players reflect that same internal confidence. There’s little sense of surprise, and even less sense of burden, when they talk about replacing stars or stepping into bigger roles.

For senior receiver and first-team all-WIAC selection Trevor Syse, the focus was simply responding to what the team needed. “I definitely wouldn’t say I expected to put up that stat line,” he said, having accumulated 848 receiving yards and 10 touchdowns so far this season. “We had a couple of good players go down earlier in the year, so I knew from that point I would have to step up and maybe have a bigger role than I expected within the offense.”

There was no talk of replacing Stare or replicating last year’s aerial explosion. There’s no narrative about proving outsiders wrong. It’s all internal — their system and their expectations.

Meyer sees the defensive side the same way. “I think this year, it’s just been more about building off of last year,” he said. “The connections that we have from playing together as one has really excelled, especially in these past few weeks.”

They also acknowledge how last year’s quick postseason exit shaped this season’s mindset. Syse called Platteville’s second-round 24-7 win over Alma a needed release. “I feel like it’s a sense of relief,” he said. “Last year we were all pretty disappointed. We had a really great team and we expected to go further than we obviously did. But having that first playoff win out of the way, I really think that we can compete with anyone in the nation.”

It’s a quiet confidence that’s earned, not proclaimed, and it’s one that runs throughout the roster. Uselding has been steady and exactly who the offense needed. Bothun leads a stable of reliable backs in the ground game. Syse has provided consistent production that nearly matched last season’s star receiver output. In Platteville, this is not a surprise. It’s the progression they count on.

Many programs describe success in terms of achievements: titles, trophies, rankings. Platteville’s internal scoreboard looks similar to what you might expect to see in many locker rooms.

Their annual goals are straightforward- win the national championship, win the WIAC, keep the Pickaxe, and be a top-five team in the nation. By those measures, they’ve missed two this year.

Yet the team talks like a group fully satisfied with its trajectory — because there are still goals, including the big one, still in play. They don’t describe their season through the missed opportunities. They describe it through what they’re still positioned to chase.

“Those have been the goals for the last four years,” Munz said. “Everyone focuses on the last two years, and that’s where people start the story. But I think they have to continue to turn the pages back a couple times and understand that what we did to get to where we’re at now isn’t anything that just happened overnight.”

To them, success is the ongoing execution of process, not the accumulation of hardware. It’s not a checklist. It’s a trajectory.

This is why the program is reluctant to embrace “arrival” language. Arrival suggests a moment. Platteville believes it is building something that stretches beyond any single season.

Munz pointed to the 2024 defense as an example of that continuity. “Two years ago we lost nine out of 11 starters on defense,” he said. “All we did was come out and win the conference championship. So this isn’t the first time that we’ve had to do something like that.”

For the players who have been in the program, the expectation is just as ingrained. Meyer said plainly, “It is the expectation of what this team wants to do every year. For the guys that have been here a while, this is what we’ve been working for. We’re not surprised at all.”

Platteville is not chasing a moment. It’s shaping an identity. One built on continuity, development, and the belief that making the playoffs isn’t a breakthrough but a baseline.

To the rest of Division III, Platteville’s consecutive playoff runs look like a program on the rise. Inside the program, those runs feel overdue. They see themselves not as emerging, but as finally reflecting the standard they set years ago.

“When you say, how do you continue to press this thing forward?” Munz said. “We already are. And we’re finally getting the benefit of the work that these guys and our coaching staff and everybody has put into this.”

Maybe the outside world is seeing a rise. Platteville is simply seeing itself.

And the Pioneers expect you’ll be seeing them here every year.