Wisconsin Football Loses Critical Recruiting Staffer to Iowa State

With official visit season around the corner, Wisconsin football is down a key member of its recruiting staff.

Wisconsin's former director of on-campus recruiting Taylor Ewald has reportedly accepted the same position at Iowa State, leaving the gig vacant in Madison.

Ewald has yet to confirm this personally, but she's scrubbed her X profile of Wisconsin affiliations and her page on Wisconsin football's online 2026 roster has been removed. Meanwhile, she's already listed on Iowa State's online 2026 football roster.

Ewald's history with Wisconsin

Ewald joined Wisconsin as the director of on-campus recruiting in May of 2023 as part of head coach Luke Fickell's initial recruiting staff. She'll now return to the conference in which she began her career, as prior to joining Fickell's recruiting engine in Madison, she was the on-campus recruiting coordinator at Kansas State from April 2022 to May 2023.

The Hopkins, Minnesota native and former college volleyball player at West Texas A&M University continues her fast ascension in the college football recruiting world, now at her third Power Four lead recruiting role in five seasons.

Ewald didn't get as much of the credit as Pat Lambert (Director of Recruiting) and Max Stienecker (former Director of Player Personnel) when Wisconsin was hot on the recruiting trail. However, she played a huge role in signing some of the biggest recruits that've pledged to the Badgers in the Fickell era.

Ewald's impact

In this day-and-age, recruiting visits are absolutely crucial, especially for transfer portal prospects whom staffs often have one shot to impress. Creating a top-notch on-campus environment for visiting players is of the utmost importance.

Wisconsin hosts many of its high school official visits in June, when Madison is absoutely stunning. But make no mistake — Ewald deserves plenty of credit for facilitating the Badgers' winter transfer portal visits and helping Wisconsin emerge with a robust portal class, helping create enticing environments for recruits when Madison is often miserable weather-wise.

Wisconsin has suffered some attrition to its recruiting staff this offseason, as former Director of Player Personnel Ethan Russo also departed for a Big 12 gig (Oklahoma State) this winter. With one of the busiest times in the recruiting calendar quickly approaching, the Badgers have some re-staffing to do.