Waukesha High School Orientations Begin; Roundabout Remains Unconquered

WAUKESHA — Freshman orientations are underway at all three Waukesha high schools this week, with Waukesha West's Freshman Ignition Day scheduled for Wednesday, and incoming ninth graders across the district are discovering that the toughest opponent of the young fall sports season isn't on any schedule. It's the East Avenue roundabout, which sits directly between Schuetze Recreation Center and campus and has yet to be defeated by a single member of the class of 2030.

Cross country has emerged as the program most affected, since preseason conditioning runs route directly through the traffic circle on the way from Schuetze's parking lot to the practice fields. Coach Wendy Bratz, entering her sixth season, said she added five minutes to Tuesday's session specifically to account for "roundabout stragglers," a category that as of this week includes roughly a third of her incoming freshmen.

The most extreme case belongs to Kayleigh Torbert, a 14-year-old incoming freshman who reported spending 18 minutes circling the roundabout's outer lane before her mother pulled over, got out of the car, and physically walked her to the correct exit on foot. Torbert, who ran the 800 meters in middle school and considers herself "pretty good with directions," described the experience as "scarier than conditioning drills" and said she took two full laps before recognizing a Culver's cup she'd dropped on her first pass.

"Scarier than conditioning drills."

— Kayleigh Torbert, 14, incoming freshman

A Rite Of Passage, Reluctantly

Bratz said the roundabout has become an unofficial but consistent part of the freshman experience, one that upperclassmen have started to treat as a hazing ritual they no longer have to participate in. Senior co-captain Mitchell Ruzicka, 17, said he still remembers his own freshman-year roundabout ordeal, a nine-minute detour that ended when he simply parked on a side street and jogged the remaining half mile. "I don't even look at it anymore," Ruzicka said. "I just know which lane to be in by feel."

Athletic director Tom Krause, whose office has fielded at least four parent phone calls about the roundabout since orientation began, said the district does not currently plan to adjust the route or post additional signage, calling the traffic circle "a known quantity" that new students "generally sort out by the second or third week." Krause noted that the roundabout has never caused a player to miss the actual start of practice, only to arrive "with a story."

The city, for its part, has not backed off its long-standing offer of a symbolic key to the city for the first driver confirmed to navigate the roundabout correctly on the first attempt. City spokesperson representatives did not respond to Tuesday's inquiry about whether a Waukesha West freshman cross country runner would qualify under that offer if the attempt occurred on foot rather than by car.

The Rest Of The Schedule

Orientations continue through Wednesday at Waukesha West, East, and North, with fall sports practices already underway for football, volleyball, and soccer in addition to cross country. Bratz said she has started printing a small hand-drawn map of the Schuetze-to-campus route for incoming runners, though she conceded the map "does not fully capture what the roundabout does to a 14-year-old's sense of direction in real time."

Torbert said she has since successfully completed the route three days in a row and no longer considers the roundabout a threat, though she added that she still takes the long way around a full block out of habit. "I know the short way now," Torbert said. "I just don't trust it yet."