Wade AskewThe Daily Northwestern
National champion Jake Herbert will not wrestle for Northwestern next year. Instead, he will train for the 2008 Summer Olympics.
Because of a special NCAA rule that allows athletes to take an “Olympic Year” to train for the Games, Herbert will be eligible to come back to NU in 2008-2009 and wrestle for the Wildcats – even though he has already used his redshirt year.
Herbert planned on using 2008 to prepare for the Olympics from the day he was first recruited, NU coach Tim Cysewski said.
“(The) Olympic Year was brand new and not too many people were taking it, and he said, ‘Hey, I want to take that when it’s my turn,'” Cysewski said. “I said, ‘Well, we’ll talk about it when it gets closer, and if you reach those expectations, then we’ll consider it.’ So that’s kind of been the plan from the very get-go, and so as long as it’s not broken we’re not going to fix it.”
