The following story is from the Winter 2026 edition of the "Roar Report" that came out January 6. It is authored by Gary D'Amato, the former longtime sportswriter and columnist for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, who joined the staff as the feature writer for the Roar Report in the Fall of 2018.

A Black & Gold Family Affair
 
It happened very early — during just the second or third practice — in Payton Rechlicz's freshman season on Milwaukee's women's basketball team. And it happened just once.
 
There was a pause in the action on the court, and Payton had a question.
 
"Mom?" she said.
 
Mom?
 
"I don't think I even acknowledged her," head coach Kyle Rechlicz says with a laugh. "I didn't look at her. There are no moms out here. I don't know what she's talking about."
 
Payton's one-time slip, excusable as it was — after all, she is Kyle Rechlicz's daughter — illustrated the interesting dynamic of a parent coaching a child at the Division I college level.
 
As close as Kyle and Payton are off the court, their relationship on the court is strictly coach-player. It has to be that way, of course. Any hint of favoritism, of bending a rule, of excusing away a careless mistake, won't go unnoticed by others on the team. The reverse also is true. Payton's teammates must be able to trust that what they tell her in confidence won't be discussed over the dinner table that night.
 
"Payton is very good in that sense," Kyle says. "She doesn't tell me things that I don't need to know. She lets other people tell me. She'll encourage them, 'Hey, I think you should just go talk to coach.' I think she has a very good understanding of what's appropriate to tell me and what's not."
 
That trust is borne out by the fact that Payton's teammates voted her onto the Panthers' four-player Leadership Team, along with senior Grace Lomen, junior Jorey Buwalda and redshirt junior Jada Williams. Payton, a redshirt sophomore, is the youngest member of the Leadership Team.
 
"I'm honored to be in that role," she says. "But I think everyone's voice on our team is important."
 
There was never a doubt that Payton, a 5-foot-11 guard-forward, was going to attend Milwaukee and play for the Panthers. Her mother is in her 14th season as the head coach and before that held assistant coaching positions at Cleveland State, Dayton and the University of Wisconsin, where as a player she helped lead the Badgers to NCAA Tournament berths in 2001 and 2002.
 
Payton has been around basketball her entire life. That doesn't mean the journey has been easy.
 
Not long after she committed to Milwaukee as a sophomore at Menomonee Falls High School, she suffered a devastating injury — a torn ACL in her left knee — during an AAU game.
 
"I was at a different tournament," Kyle says. "My assistant called me and said, 'It doesn't look good.' That was really tough, because I wasn't there. That was really hard for me personally."
 
Payton went through the months-long rehabilitation grind and missed her junior year of basketball at Menomonee Falls. Almost exactly one year later, in another AAU game — her first game back, in fact — she again tore the ACL in her left knee.
 
"I happened to be at that game and when she went down she immediately looked at me when she was on the ground and said, 'I tore it again,'" Kyle says.
 
Another grueling rehab. Another season of high school basketball lost. Think about that — a college-bound student-athlete who didn't compete at all during her junior and senior years.
 
The physical challenge was difficult enough, but in addition to building back the strength in her knee, she had to build back her confidence.
 
"It was hard," Payton says. "It's definitely a mental journey, but I had a lot of people who were there for me. My family, my mom and dad, taking me to PT and doing all that stuff. I just really had the goal of playing in college and I wanted to get back and get stronger.
 
"I wish it wouldn't have happened, but I wouldn't be the person I am now if it wouldn't have happened. I grew a lot as a person, I think."
 
She redshirted that first season at Milwaukee. Though she had great intuition on the court, she was still building trust in her knee while at the same time negotiating a steep learning curve. The game was faster, the athletes better than what she'd ever experienced.
 
"It was a little hard to see where I would be at with not playing in high school and making that big jump," Payton says. "The game is so much faster. In the summer when I got here, I just kind of worked on not being afraid to make mistakes. Everyone makes mistakes and you've got to learn from them and figure out what your role is."
 
Says Kyle, "I think coming back after those injuries, knowing she was going to be coming into college, there was a little bit of fear. But we have a fantastic training staff and (assistant athletic trainer) Paige Borst is phenomenal. … She has gained so much confidence and so much strength in that knee. It has been fun watching her come back and grow."
 
By the start of the 2024-25 season, Payton was ready. She played in all 32 games as a redshirt freshman and started 23, ending the season among the team leaders with a .457 field goal percentage. She was sixth on the team in both scoring (4.2) and rebounding (3.0) and was named to the Horizon League All-Freshman Team.
 
Her biggest contribution though, was and continues to be on the defensive end.
 
"She is one of our best defenders by far," Kyle says. "She rarely gives up points on the floor. She just sees the game differently. I don't know if it's all the basketball she's watched over the years with me. But especially on the defensive side, she just visually sees the game differently. She's always in the right position, always willing to help somebody. She can guard one through four defensively and keep the ball in front of her. She just understands angles. Having somebody like that is extremely valuable to us."
 
This season, the coaching staff has worked with Payton to expand her game offensively. She can shoot from three-point range and can get to the basket, but tends to pass up shots she could, and should, be taking.
 
"Last year she was more of a role player for us," Kyle says. "Great screen setter, rebounder, does all the little things. This year we're asking her to score a little bit more and there's times she's passing up shots. She's kind of growing into that confidence of being a little bit more of a scorer."
 
Basketball is in Payton's blood, but she's far from a one-dimensional student-athlete. An excellent student, she plans to earn her degree in biochemistry and pre-med with a minor in psychology. She has her sights set on attending medical school after graduating.
 
Last summer, she had a seven-week paid internship in a virology lab co-sponsored by Harvard and MIT in Boston. As if there weren't enough on her plate, Payton started volunteering last fall at Ascension Columbia St. Mary's Hospital, not far from campus.
 
Despite her hectic schedule, she is all basketball when it's time to practice or play. And though mother and daughter say they are good at compartmentalizing what happens on the court, the hardest part is going home after a loss.
 
"If we lose a game and we're both upset, it's hard for me to be upset but it's even harder seeing that my mom's upset," Payton says. "You don't want to ever see your mom upset. We each see the game from a different perspective, too, and you have to take that into account."
 
When they do get away from the game, Kyle and Payton are just mother and daughter. They enjoy taking girl trips, shopping and exploring Milwaukee's diverse restaurant scene.
 
"She's a great role model," Payton says. "She's one of the strongest people I know. She's gone through a lot in life and she's taught me so much about how to respond to different things. Even watching her at work and seeing how she interacts with different people and how she coaches the team and handles hard situations is really inspiring. She does it all with grace. I've learned a lot from her."
 
Payton has two years of eligibility remaining after this season but whether she uses both remains to be seen, especially given her plans to attend medical school.
 
Still, there's one thing Kyle doesn't have to worry about when it comes to one of the best players on her team: the transfer portal.
 
"Now that," Kyle says with a laugh, "would be a surprise."