The military academies have no cap on athletic scholarships.
Ivy League schools don’t issue athletic scholarships, but they can compensate recruits with need-based or academic scholarships.
Ten Big Ten schools have large student populations and cheap in-state rates.
And then there’s Northwestern. The NCAA limits its athletic scholarships, and NU doesn’t have the same resources as Ivy schools. It’s the most expensive school in the Big Ten, as well as the smallest, making it difficult to field a championship wrestling squad.
No other wrestling program faces the same set of circumstances as the Wildcats. Last season was a perfect example: Facing Big Ten schools with lower tuitions and larger student bodies, NU went 1-7 in conference play.
This year has been more of the same. So far the Cats (3-8-1, 0-3 Big Ten) have lost their first three conference matches by a combined score of 113-15 to No. 3 Iowa, No. 6 Illinois and No. 22 Wisconsin.
Indeed, the Cats’ situation falls somewhere between Princeton’s and Purdue’s.
“The biggest thing is finding the right kid to fit the NU mold,” coach Tim Cysewski said. “We have to find the kid who wants to do well academically and also be an NCAA champion.”
But once NU finds the right athletes, it has to satisfy them with scholarships. That, Cysewski said, can be a problem.
The NCAA allows athletic departments to designate a maximum of 9.9 scholarships over a four-year period for the wrestling program.
The Cats divvy up the scholarships to reach roughly 12 to 15 players on the wrestling team. The scholarships range from a full ride to picking up the tab on books. The mandated limit prompts interschool bidding wars – wrestling staffs must weigh how much they want the recruit against how much they are willing to offer. The Cats consider a family’s income and its eligibility for financial aid before they make an offer.
But NU’s tuition is steep – $32,119 is the latest figure – and that puts the Cats at a major disadvantage.
“Tuition is a big factor,” Cysewski said. “The bottom line is economics.”
NU is the only private school in the Big Ten and carries a significantly higher price tag than its rivals. State schools can also offer reduced rates to in-state students. For the sake of comparison, Michigan charges the most for in-state students attending Big Ten schools ($12,936); Iowa is the cheapest ($7,798).
Teenagers, Cysewski said, will gravitate toward the cheaper tuition price to save their parents’ money.
Big Ten schools aside, NU is also limited in flexibility compared with other private institutions that use creative financial aid or scholarship packages to entice recruits.
“There’s not another school in the country that has the same economic constraints as us,” Cysewski said.
But NU faces an equally big obstacle – a lack of walk-ons. Because of the NCAA’s limit on wrestling scholarships, walk-ons play a vital role for a wrestling program. But NU’s smaller student population shrinks the pool of potential talent.
Cysewski, for one, still strongly encourages walk-ons.
“For us, you never know what you have – maybe there’s a diamond in the rough,” Cysewski said. “It’s always good to have kids come in because they love the sport.”
Roughly a third of NU’s roster is composed of walk-ons, and in the past some have excelled enough to merit a scholarship. Frequently, Cysewski said, a high school wrestler will notify the NU staff in advance of his arrival, but sometimes a wrestler unknown by the staff will join the team.
NU listed 20 wrestlers on its opening-day roster, a far cry from Michigan State’s 42 or Iowa’s 45. NU aside, Big Ten schools have the luxury of a large student body, which means more available wrestlers and a cheaper tuition to attract them. Larger rosters give the coach more leeway and provide fiercer competition within the team itself. As a result, the 10-man starting roster represents the best of the best.
NU’s small roster hurts the team in competition. For instance, the Cats entered this season with two 133-pound wrestlers, but lost both over the course of the schedule and now forfeit six points each match. By contrast, Illinois has three or four wrestlers at each weight class.
Typically, Big Ten schools redshirt incoming recruits, giving their athletes another year to mature physically. No. 1 Minnesota, for example, redshirted all 10 members of its current starting lineup their freshman year. The Cats cannot afford to keep their recruits waiting.
Nevertheless, Cysewski – who didn’t redshirt as a wrestler at Iowa – said that if the wrestler is good enough as a freshman, he should compete right away.
“I don’t (redshirt) just to do it,” he said.
On the other hand, No. 1 Doug Schwab and No. 1 Eric Juergens – both current Hawkeyes – redshirted their freshman year.
NU’s most immediate obstacle is the strength of the conference it plays in. The Big Ten currently has five teams ranked in the top seven and nine in the Top 25. Year in and year out, the conference boasts the best wrestlers in the nation and last year earned spots for 72 wrestlers at the NCAAs. The next closest conference had 36 invitations.
Despite the pitfalls in the Cats’ path, they’ve won before. In his rookie season Cysewski guided the 1989 team to a third-place finish in the Big Ten and a fourth-place spot at the NCAAs. Over the last nine years, at least four Cats have qualified for the NCAAs each season.
No other coach in the country is in Cysewski’s shoes. He has no room for error on the recruiting trail. He also needs a healthy roster to compete, an element that has been missing this season because of injuries to NU’s two best wrestlers, Tom Ciezki and Matt Huebner.
It’s often a demanding task, but Cysewski said he doesn’t mind coaching at a small, expensive private school that regularly wrestles the nation’s elite.
“That’s why it’s a fun challenge – we have to do it differently and smarter,” Cysewski said. “We’ve beaten (the best) before, individually and as a team.”
