In the days following the announcements of freshman Marcus Landry and sophomore Greg Stiemsma being ruled academically ineligible to compete for the Badgers during the second semester, it was difficult not to be disappointed. Besides losing the players, the Badgers' season began a dramatic plunge downhill. The team lost five out of six games, upsetting their impressive season. It was hard to believe what was happening and fingers were pointed'many towards those who could not play.
Fortunately, the remaining eligible Badgers have jumped back into the swing of things and won their last two games against Indiana and Penn State. In addition, junior forward Alando Tucker was named a mid-season candidate for the Naismith Trophy presented by Cingular Wireless. While things have appeared to return to the way Badger fans hoped they would, certain situations have been forgotten. In particular, the anger many felt when hearing that two Badgers were no longer eligible to play on the team. Without addressing the anger, many misconceptions will remain about the life of a student athlete.
Although athletes are often placed in a category apart from other students because of their incredible athletic ability, it is important to realize that they deal with the very same issues that affect every other student on campus. Alan Zussman, an advisor at the Office of Academic Services, described how he works with student athletes the same way that any other student does with their advisor. The Office of Academic Services' mission is to provide student athletes with the maximum opportunity for academic achievement. The only difference is that Zussman and the other advisors at his office incorporate the stressful sport's schedules into their advising.
'Being a student athlete is very demanding and time consuming,' Zussman said. 'It's a shock how much time goes into one sport.'
The athlete advisor's job is to get to know the athletes and help them with course selections, deciding a major, and with acclimating and getting acquainted with the university. The main objective is to create a course schedule for the athletes that maximizes their strengths and is spaced out in a way that is not overwhelming.
'For first-year athletes, the beginning is really hard because of the stress involved with the sport and class work,' Zussman said.
The Big Ten has set up both qualitative and quantitative requirements that every student athlete must meet in order to be eligible to play. The quantitative requirements deal with the number of credits they must take each year'for a first-year athlete the requirement is 24 credits. The qualitative requirement refers to the GPA a student athlete must meet to be eligible, which for a first year is 1.8 by the end of the year. Zussman explained that the only time they check between semesters is during an athlete's first year to make sure they are balancing work and their team. If a student is not meeting the requirements they are deemed ineligible to compete, which while upsetting, does take away some of the stress balancing entails.
While the Office of Academic Services is a facility committed to keeping all student athletes on track with their school work, the men's basketball team faces another source of motivation, their assistant coach Howard Moore.
Former University of Wisconsin basketball player Howard Moore began his first season as a Badger assistant coach this year. Moore played for UW from 1990-95 and graduated in 1995 with a bachelor's degree in African American Studies.
'I fell in love with this place right away,' Moore said. 'I obviously still am because I'm back here 11 years later.'
While Moore is one of the most popular figures in Badger basketball, his time as a student was not only marked with athletics. In 1993, Moore was the recipient of the University of Wisconsin African-American Alumni Association Student Leadership Award. Moore realized an important lesson back then that he passes on to the players today. He understood that while basketball was his passion, that it was just as important to take advantage of the other opportunities made available to him on campus.
'Coming from Chicago, my biggest thing was that I knew I wasn't guaranteed to go to the NBA and the one I wanted to make sure that I did, was take advantage of the free education I was going to receive,' Moore said.
Moore follows the same principles today and feels its unfortunate to leave here empty handed. He stands behind his beliefs and is happy to say that the universities he has worked at, especially Wisconsin, have made strong efforts to make sure that the priorities are set in place so athletes do not leave here empty handed.
'I think that the biggest thing to stress is for kids to leave here with a degree in his or her hand and has the opportunity to go on and obtain the goals they have set out for themselves,' Moore said.
Overall, it is important to understand how ineligibility is not due to laziness or something accepted by the athletic department or university. The situation is often a result of a struggle all students face at one point or another; the struggle to balance all aspects of their life.
