A new football team in central Wisconsin is giving adults a second shot at the gridiron — along with a strong sense of purpose, belonging and community.
The Wisconsin River Muskies, a nonprofit adult amateur football team based in Wausau, is preparing for its inaugural season this year. The organization is the brainchild of D.J. Berens, a Wausau native who fell in love with the model of minor professional football while living and working in Texas.
In a conversation with WPR’s Shereen Siewert on “Morning Edition,” Berens said the team’s mission is focused on creating opportunities for local athletes to stay active, build camaraderie and develop life skills that extend far beyond the field.
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“It started as an exploratory effort based on a passion I had in Texas and has now evolved into an organization where we’re looking to hit the ground running, start playing some football and give back to our community at the same time,” Berens, the team president, told WPR.
Players must be at least 18 years old to participate, but age isn’t the only variable on the field. Some team members are fresh out of high school, while others haven’t played in decades.
And while physical performance matters, so does mental wellness. At its core, Berens said the team is about connection — especially for those who might otherwise lose touch with the structure and camaraderie of team sports.
The team’s season is expected to begin later this year. In the meantime, tryouts continue this spring, with hopefuls lacing up cleats, chasing dreams — and building something bigger than themselves, one down at a time.
The following interview was edited for brevity and clarity.
Shereen Siewert: Let’s start with the origin story. What inspired you to launch this program in the Wausau area?
D.J. Berens: I was born and raised here in the Wausau area, but eventually wound up going down to Texas, which is the national hotbed for football. After completing grad school, I was introduced to minor professional football down there, which is more than just a recreational league. It’s a very serious form of competition in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. I want to say we had something like 30 teams just in that area alone. I absolutely fell in love with it. I ended up serving as an assistant general manager for one organization based in Arlington, and then after that served as the general manager and team president for a nonprofit minor professional football team out of McKinney.
When I decided to move back to central Wisconsin I wondered if there was an opportunity for us to take a model that was very successful in Texas and use it up here. It started as an exploratory effort based on a passion I had in Texas and has now evolved into an organization where we’re looking to hit the ground running, start playing some football and give back to our community at the same time. Since we’re structured as a nonprofit, our goal is to benefit the community. We’re not going out there to make money. … As a nonprofit, every dollar we take in goes back into the program. It all stays within the organization itself.
SS: You’re in the middle of recruiting right now. What type of athletes are you hoping to bring into your roster?
DB: Our team is for adults age 18 and over. I’d say our primary demographic is young men from 18 to 29, so it really encompasses young men who have recently graduated from high school all the way to being out of college for a decade or more. That’s not to say that we don’t get players that are older. We do have some current players on our roster that are in their late 30s. I think men especially tend to think very fondly of their time playing high school sports. It’s one of those things that we kind of revel in as we age, with those old “back in the day” stories. We want to give these players an opportunity to continue doing some of that. Some still remain active, whether they play adult softball or are in a rec basketball league or enjoy golf. I think for some of these young men, they always have in the back of their minds that dream that they could have gone pro, made it to the NFL and made a career out of it. Maybe that’s a delusion, but that delusion allows them to go out and act on it. They want to get into the weight room and train. They want to do conditioning, do the work. It’s not easy work, but then again, doing things that benefit your overall health or your mental well-being are always going to be worth it.
SS: How do you prepare your players for the season?
DB: We have players undergo a psychological exam at the beginning of training camp that helps us understand how they’re feeling, what they’re going through, what their personalities are like, and then we give a similar exam at the end of the season to see how they benefited from the program. We see if they’re making progress. We also do it physically with cardiovascular testing at the beginning and end of the season to show them that yes, you’re getting in better physical shape. There are some pitfalls to living in this area when it seems to be winter so much of the year. That means maybe people aren’t as active as they could be for six months out of the year and cumulatively that can have an effect on our local health care systems.
We come across people from a wide spectrum. Some players are former college athletes fresh out of school and they’re ready to roll. Others haven’t played football for 20 years. But we ask them to do all of the same things together, as a team. That’s probably the coolest thing to see, the progress players make as the season goes on.
SS: What kind of game day experience are you hoping to create for fans?
DB: We want to offer a low-cost experience for fans. When we have games, we don’t want to require a cover charge to get in. We have a very talented group of leaders that guide this group and one who is very adept at writing grants. We’re hoping we’ll be able to subsidize all of our costs through grant funding, which means we won’t need to take in a cover charge at the gate. We just want people to come out, show up, have fun and support our guys on the field.
SS: What do you love most about this?
DB: The thing I love most has to be the people. We garner interest from people from all sorts of backgrounds. Often, they are men who are fresh out of high school. Maybe they’re not going to college or technical school and are just entering the workforce. We want to give these young men that sense of community, a sense of belonging, a sense of brotherhood. We want them to come into an organization without drama. We don’t want them to experience the headaches that often arise when you gather people with different opinions and views, especially in a politically-charged climate like we have today. We want it to be all about the football.
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