Divine Savior Holy Angels senior Katie Rolfe picks up Athletic Director Peggy Seegers-Braun during a medal presentation following a 2016 victory over No.1 seed Brookfield East in the WIAA Division 1 volleyball sectional final. (Submitted photo)
Visitors to the athletic director’s office at Divine Savior Holy Angels High School immediately notice more than 100 works of art that cover most of one wall.
These aren’t paintings, portraits or sculptures of fine art.
The artwork is the simple but profound pictures of just some of the thousands of young women whose lives Peggy Seegers-Braun has helped mold as DSHA’s athletic director for 37 years.
“To know that I’ve touched a lot of lives, sometimes you lose track of that because (my job is) so busy all the time,” Seegers-Braun said. “That’s why I like to look at them when I walk in. This is my ‘why.’ This is why I’m here,” she said.
But the final whistle will sound for Seeger-Braun — who has been recognized repeatedly at the state and national level for outstanding leadership — as she enters retirement next week after nearly 40 years in education and athletics.
A graduate of Catholic Memorial High School, Waukesha, and the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, Seegers-Braun began teaching and coaching at University School in River Hills.
But she missed the faith aspect of her own high school experience. Then God knocked on her door, through a newspaper job listing.
“I was not looking for a job. My husband was looking through the newspaper and saw there was an opening for an athletic director at Divine Savior Holy Angels,” said Seegers-Braun, who belongs to the Catholic Community of Waukesha.
“He’s like, ‘What about this?’ I said, ‘I suppose I could go in for an interview.’ So, I went in, and they offered me the job on the spot, which I wasn’t quite prepared for. I totally see the hand of God just moving me here. ‘This is where you need to be. You need to go.’”
Initially struck by the challenge of the job, the mother of two sons found an incredible advocate in her own mother — a sports lover who didn’t have the opportunity to participate due to the lack of girls’ sports programs when she was young.
“I could not have done this without her. She just said, ‘Okay, let’s go. Let’s clean your office. Let’s do this. We’ll get you going,’” she tearfully said of Carol Seegers, who passed away in September 2024.
“She’d watch the kids for me. She made it possible for me, as a woman who still is in charge of her family, to be able to do all the late nights that I had. She’s the first person I’d call after games and say, ‘We won!’ She’d come to state championships with me. She was a big part.”
Seegers-Braun also credited her husband, Don, with many late nights of solo parenting after working his job.
“Not many husbands are okay with their wives doing a job like this because it’s a lot of late nights,” she said.
“When we were first married and had the kids, it was like a family affair. The boys were always at the gym. As they got older, they had their own stuff, and he helped with that. It really helped me become who I am, so I think we both mutually benefited from it.”
Seegers-Braun has made her focus at DSHA the teenagers she encounters each day, the lives she prays for on long walks before work.
“I see freshmen come in all the time, not really knowing who they are, what they want to do and who they want to be,” she says.
“They just leave these confident, capable young women who really go out and change the world.”
In part, that process happens because she has focused her career on growing opportunities to participate. Expanding the athletic profile to 39 teams in 15 sports has allowed her to steer girls who didn’t make the roster for a particular sport to pivot to a different one so they can still use athletics to grow as a person.
“There was a junior who had never played volleyball before, and she was in my sophomore physical education class. That girl could jump like crazy,” Seegers-Braun said. “She came and she made the team. We really used her as a middle (player) to block opponents’ spikes. We taught her some basic skills, and that girl went on to play college volleyball.”
DSHA alumnae regularly stop by to thank her. Some of them are children of students that she coached and mentored in the beginning of her career. Some of them make it to the pros, like three-time All-WNBA star Arike Ogunbowale.
In the end, the greatest legacy Seegers-Braun leaves is the works of art she’s helped mold, the young women lovingly plastered all over her office wall.
“I’m so proud of all of them,” she shares with emotion.
“I like to think that I’ve had a small part in helping them discover who they are, to really encourage them to use their God-given talents to the fullest, and to always keep God in the forefront of what they do.”
