During the Fall 2025 semester, 20 interns worked with The Teaching Press to design, edit, and publish five projects. One of these projects, titled Golden Era: The Heart of Wisconsin Sidelines, is co-written by Tori Wittenbrock, an alumna of the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay. During the editing and production process, we’ve had the opportunity to interview Tori about her research and writing process, inspiration, and goals for Golden Era: The Heart of Wisconsin Sidelines.
You took an internship at the Press Times while studying. What would you say to students thinking about applying for an internship?
If you get an internship opportunity, take it!
How did you get involved in sports writing?
When I took my internship at The Press Time, I played soccer, and I started covering lots of sporting events. Combining my passion for writing, editing, and sports.
What was the inspiration to write Golden Era: The Heart of Wisconsin Sidelines?
I’m always looking for new, fresh angles on things to cover for the sports section, not just covering player injuries and other events. I was really interested in doing something on cheer because that’s kind of sports-adjacent. I was thinking about how there are so many NFL teams that have cheer teams, but the Packers don’t. Looking into their history, I found that there were many interesting things that happened, which is why we once had a cheer team and now don’t. So we decided to bring in some of the cheerleaders from that era and find out what happened.
How did you conduct these interviews? Was the goal always to make a book?
We invited them over to the Press Times office, where I’m the sports editor and my co-editor, Kris, works in news. We did a podcast interview with them, and we had so much interesting information on all of this history about them. It ended up turning into the possibility of putting a book together.
How long did it take you to write?
It took about six months to write the actual book, in which all of the segments of the three different parts about Mary Jane Van Duyse-Sorgel, The Golden Girls, and the Lumberjack Band all ran in the paper in the six months we were writing it, so it actually made it feel a lot faster.
What was your goal when writing?
The goal is to promote a sense of community and the history of local athletics, specifically empowering women in male-dominated fields.
Who do you see as your target audience?
It’s a wide variety, ranging from people who lived during that time and fans of historical football to people from previous generations to a new demographic of women. Bridging the gap of generational differences.
Golden Era delves into the history of the Green Bay Packers’ original sideline team from the 1950s to the 1970s. The Lumberjack Band and cheerleaders, aptly named the “Golden Girls,” took to the field to provide entertainment, support, and above all else, encouragement for their beloved team.
Golden Era: The Heart of Wisconsin Sidelines is now available for purchase through IngramSpark and wherever books are sold, in paperback and hardback.