Long before the day begins for the typical Northwestern student, Wildcat cross country runners are hard at work.
The life of the student athlete is busy and tiring. The members of the cross country squad, none of whom are on full scholarships, exemplify the concept of the student athlete and take on its burdens.
On a typical day of practice, senior Ashley Roberts gets up at 6 a.m. to get to the training room for treatment. Then there’s practice, which can last from 7 a.m. to 10 a.m.
After running enough to tire most people out for the day, Roberts heads off to class to fulfill the other part of her responsibilities.
If it’s early in the season, she might have to come back in the afternoon for another practice.
“The biggest challenge at Northwestern is having time to get enough sleep. We have as much homework as everyone else,” said Roberts, who often stays up well past midnight to finish her assignments before waking up early for practice. “Learning how to manage your time is really important.”
Like her teammates, Roberts isn’t just at NU because of her sport. She wanted to be challenged in the classroom as well as out of it and said she felt NU provided the best opportunity for this, even if the school couldn’t provide it for free.
Nobody on NU’s cross country team is on a full scholarship because of the lack of scholarship funds available for the sport. This shortage of financial help for the runners means that they are drawn to NU as much for its academics as they are for cross country.
NCAA rules for the sport allow 1.5 scholarships per year and six full scholarships on a squad at a time. These scholarships can be divided between multiple athletes. This is the case with NU.
The lack of scholarship money makes things difficult for coach Amy Tush.
“That’s the challenge with the sport,” Tush said. “It’s especially hard at NU with the high price tag.”
NU is the only private institution in the Big Ten and has the highest tuition by a substantial amount.
This means an athlete getting a 30 percent scholarship at NU has a much larger remaining bill to pay than an athlete getting a 30 percent scholarship at another Big Ten school.
“It’s hard asking a kid to come up with $30,000 when they could go to a state school and pay a lot less even if they aren’t on scholarship,” Tush said.
An additional obstacle for NU is its lack of a track and field program. Other Big Ten schools get six scholarships for indoor track and six more for outdoor track. This allows them to potentially give scholarships to cross country runners who are distance runners in track without using the six allotted cross country scholarships.
Tush said she would like to see cross country given a little more funding to work with. This would help student athletes like Roberts who already have to worry about their sport and their classes.
“Of course I would love to see cross country get more scholarships,” Tush said. “It would help our situation and we could help the kids to get a little more help and make it a little more affordable for them to come here.”
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