They first bonded on those 6:30 a.m. walks through the snow.
Senior Josh Ballard said that he and three of the other then-freshmen wrestlers — Paul Augle, Andrew Curran and Mike Little — trudged each morning from Elder Hall to Welsh-Ryan Arena for early morning lifting. The upperclassmen on the team wouldn’t give them rides to the stadium.
Four years later, their trudging days are over.
The Northwestern wrestling team’s five seniors — Augle, Ballard, Curran, Little and Nolan Walther — have two Big Ten dual matches left in their college careers. The Wildcats (0-6 Big Ten) will compete against No. 13 Wisconsin (3-4) on Friday night in Madison, Wis., and against No. 3 Michigan (6-1) at home on Sunday afternoon.
“It’s been a wild ride,” said Little, a heavyweight. “I’ve had my ups and had my downs. I think that’s the greatest thing I could pull out about being a Northwestern athlete. I’ve been at the bottom, I’ve been at the top and I’ve been in between. I think that just builds character.”
After a combined 16 seasons of college wrestling for the snow-trudging quartet (Walther took two years off to go on a religious mission), none of the seniors are Big Ten champions or All-Americans — yet.
“It’s not over yet,” Ballard (149 pounds) said. “Maybe I can do it this year and make up for the last three years.”
Little said that after going through the grind for three years, he knows what to expect from practices and competition.
But in the Big Ten, he said, wrestling never loses its excitement.
“Every year presents its new challenges,” he said. “Every year is going to be tougher than last year and it’s always going to get harder.”
Even without the accolades, the seniors’ four full years of wrestling at NU is an accomplishment in itself.
All of the senior classes that this year’s seniors have seen graduate did not all stick with the team for the full four years, Ballard said. His class is unique because they’re all crossing the finish line together.
“We’ve stayed together and that’s helped to build more of a team,” he said. “The younger guys see us together and that helps to keep the team unity. When we were first here, a lot of people were getting hurt and not finishing the season.”
Ballard, Little and Curran all said the friendships with the other seniors helped them to persevere through the long seasons.
“It’s the trivial stupid stuff — it’s a pain then, but I’m not going to be doing that anymore,” Curran said of the shared experiences of hard practices, cutting weight and long road trips.
Curran (174 pounds) won’t be wrestling this weekend. He has multiple shoulder injuries but is hoping they will heal before the Big Ten tournament, held March 6 and 7.
Coach Tim Cysewski said the four years with the tightly bonded seniors flew by.
“Year after year, they are with each other for a long time,” Cysewski said. “They definitely build a sense of closeness, rooting for each other, helping each other out. There is a camaraderie very unique to our sport.”
