{"id":89499,"date":"2023-09-26T09:58:24","date_gmt":"2023-09-26T14:58:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/engineering.wisc.edu\/?p=89499"},"modified":"2023-09-26T09:58:26","modified_gmt":"2023-09-26T14:58:26","slug":"baldvinsson-carries-engineering-soccer-pursuits-from-iceland-to-madison","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/engineering.wisc.edu\/blog\/baldvinsson-carries-engineering-soccer-pursuits-from-iceland-to-madison\/","title":{"rendered":"Baldvinsson carries engineering, soccer pursuits from Iceland to Madison"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

On a mid-August night, more than 4,000 miles from Madison, Birgir Baldvinsson felt the ire of nearly 17,000 Belgian soccer fans while playing in the biggest game of his life. The 22-year-old, representing his boyhood club from the northern fjords of Iceland, had managed to draw a foul against Club Brugge, one of the most storied teams in Belgium and a regular in the upper echelons of European men\u2019s professional soccer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI almost got a headache, it was so loud,\u201d Baldvinsson recalls, the memory a treasured souvenir from his final appearance\u2014for now\u2014with Knattspyrnuf\u00e9lag Akureyrar, a 5-1 defeat in the third qualifying round of the UEFA Europa Conference League. The tournament, two rungs below the glitzier UEFA Champions League, brings together clubs from all over Europe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Two nights later, he was landing in Chicago and driving north to start his American adventure as a master\u2019s student in industrial engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a member of the Badgers men\u2019s soccer team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Birgir<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

And a few weeks after that, he was sitting in a classroom on the third floor of the Mechanical Engineering Building, listening to Professor Shiyu Zhou outline ISyE 510: Facilities Planning<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s been an adventure for sure, coming to a new country,\u201d says Baldvinsson, who was born and raised in Akureyri, a city of roughly 18,000. \u201cI\u2019m adjusting really well.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Baldvinsson is part of the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering<\/a>\u2019s accelerated master\u2019s program in systems engineering and analytics<\/a>; he\u2019s particularly interested in applying optimization techniques and managing data. He earned his bachelor\u2019s degree in industrial engineering from the University of Iceland in Reykjavik, balancing school and playing soccer in the Icelandic second division with a pair of clubs. Soccer in Iceland remains semiprofessional, with day jobs the norm for many players.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI kind of have to grind in the evening, which is just something I\u2019ve been doing for the past three, four years,\u201d he says. \u201cSo I\u2019ll just keep doing that. It probably won\u2019t even change when I get older.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When he started considering American college opportunities, he wanted a university that offered both high-level soccer and academics. It helped that he knew fellow Icelandic player Aron Eli Saevarsson (MSIE \u201923), who started for two seasons at UW-Madison while pursuing the same graduate program. Not only do the two both play left back on the soccer field; Baldvinsson, it turns out, even took Saevarsson\u2019s spot at his Icelandic club team (UMF Afturelding) when the latter came to Madison in 2021.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(After graduating, Saevarsson is now back in Iceland, working as a project manager at an engineering consultancy and captaining Afturelding toward promotion to Iceland\u2019s top league.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMaybe he was biased, but he was saying he really loved being here and recommended it,\u201d says Baldvinsson, who\u2019s quickly bonded with teammates like roommate Eliot Popkewitz, a senior civil engineering major. \u201cI think UW was the perfect match, because I also wanted to do good academics.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Baldvinsson has also quickly settled in on the field, establishing himself as a starter at left back and playing 799 out of a possible 810 minutes for the Badgers, who have made a promising 4-2-3 start under second-year coach Neil Jones, including a 1-0 upset of then-second-ranked Kentucky on Sept. 1. Baldvinsson scored his first collegiate goal in UW\u2019s comeback 2-2 tie against Northwestern on Sept. 19 in Madison.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He’s hoping it\u2019s merely the start of a fruitful two-year stay in Madison that will net him a graduate degree and enhance his professional opportunities\u2014on and off the soccer field.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFirst and foremost, I really want to do well here with Wisconsin,\u201d he says. \u201cIf you do well here, other opportunities will come.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Photos courtesy of UW Athletics<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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