"I wanted to make the best out of being a walk- on here,'' Wagner said. "I wanted to prove to them (the coaches) that I did de- serve a scholarship, and it worked out in two years.''
ner was grouped — however temporary — along with redshirt freshman Rob Korslin and true fresh- men Zach Davison and Jake Byrne. "I could tell they wanted me in the O-line,'' Wag- ner noted. "My high school coach (Scott Otto) al- ways said that I would make a good O-lineman. But
I was trying to fight to hold on to tight end.'' There was a good reason for that: he could actu-
ally catch the ball. In his final high school game at West Allis Hale, he had four catches for 148 yards in a 2007 WIAA playoff loss to Sun Prairie. "We really didn't pass the ball a lot,'' he said wist-
fully. "We ran the wishbone in high school, so we focused on the run. But when we did pass, they would pass it to me. "It worked out well in that game. We had about
three pass plays in our offense and I would usu- ally just run right down the middle of the field and there would be a jump-ball.'' That was fitting since he was drawing more re- cruiting traffic from college basketball coaches. That included scholarship offers from five schools, including UW-Green Bay and UW-Milwaukee.
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