Northwestern University Athletics
Dear Northwestern: Cooper Wetherbee
6/13/2017 8:42:00 AM | Baseball
Dear Northwestern,
There are a lot of ways to wear purple.
Coming to campus as a freshman in the fall of 2013, I wanted to find a deeper connection to the university that I had grown up hearing about. I had watched NU football games on TV every Saturday morning since the time I could talk with my father, a proud Northwestern alum, and "Go U Northwestern" had been beaten into my brain countless times. When I visited campus during my junior year of high school and saw the marching band parade down Sheridan Road during Homecoming, I made my decision. I wanted to bring my trumpet to Evanston and join the band.
At the same time, I didn't want one extracurricular activity to define my entire college experience. My friends and I fell into the typical freshman over involvement trap, signing up for every club or student group that caught our naïve eyes. While I didn't stick with everything that I tried out, I remember feeling grateful to attend a school where students took pride in reaching their highest potential in many areas of interest, and by the end of freshman year I had added Greek life, club baseball and membership in a student-run consulting group to my dance card.
Still, there was something else that was eating at me. Between school and extracurricular activities, I had no surplus of spare time to spend. But being busy and being fulfilled aren't necessarily equivalent. I loved the people and the passion of the Northwestern marching band, but suffice it to say that my marching was well short of top-class, and I didn't see myself continuing in the band for all four years. Meanwhile, pitching for the club baseball team, I formed friendships that reminded me of why I had started playing baseball in the first place. With relatively infrequent practices and just a few weekends of games in the spring, I was hungry for more. I began to feel an itch after our team captain accosted me during our spring break trip in Tampa during sophomore year. "Why wouldn't you try out for the varsity team?" he asked me, after a good day on the mound out in the Florida sun. "What do you have to lose?" I wracked my brain for justifications.
"I don't have the time."
"School is too important to me."
"I'm not sure I love the game enough to make that commitment."
This knee-jerk reaction got me thinking, though: Am I trying to convince him, or myself? I took the summer to think about it, and decided to give it a shot. Boy, am I glad I did. Walking on to the Northwestern baseball team is one of the best decisions I've ever made, not only in college but in my entire life. At first, I struggled with the practice schedule, the new challenge of early morning workouts, and the feeling that I had given up my freedom to be a part of something I didn't quite understand. I had a bad habit of showing up late – ask Coach Allen about that one! When that first weekend of the season in Arizona rolled around, though, the justification for months of hard work on the field and in the weight room became self-evident. To fly halfway across the country with this group of guys, to be a college student playing a game made for little kids, to get to come out to the field for practice on a beautiful spring day and say, let's get a little bit better as a team today – if you don't feel lucky to be a part of that process, I don't know what to tell you. I certainly did.
And now, it's over. Looking back, we had our ups and downs – both collectively and individually. The team went from a disappointing 15-39 season last year to a group that believed in itself when no one else would, and ended up challenging for a Big Ten championship for the first time since 1984. Individually, I had a similar progression, from my appearance in a college game when I bobbled a sacrifice bunt with nervous hands and felt like I didn't belong on a college diamond, to gradually building up confidence as a contributor to an improving team, to taking the rubber in the semifinal of the Big Ten Tournament and knowing – not believing, but knowing – that I was going to do something special in my last game as a Wildcat.
Talk to anyone around this program, though, and they'll tell you it's not just about the results on the field. Working to become a great baseball player is rewarding, but working to become a better teammate, a better leader, a better friend – that's priceless. I told our guys when we took the field against Maryland that I would take them over anybody, and that's absolutely true. Whether we're playing against a Little League team or the New York Yankees, I'll take my guys every day of the week. I'll take Joe Hoscheit, who hits baseballs to the moon like it's no big deal. I'll take Pete Hofman, the guy who looks 12 years old and pumps 90 miles per hour all day. I'll take Ryan Vukovich, who took a career-ending injury in stride to become the heart and soul of our team and the undisputed king of bullpen shenanigans. And the list goes on. I'd be remiss if I didn't mention how thankful I am for this fine group of men. From the moment I officially joined the team, not quite knowing what I had gotten myself into, they treated me as one of their own. As I settled into the team dynamic, I could only try to reciprocate some of the kindness and loyalty they had shown me, and pay it forward by attempting to create that same welcoming attitude towards this year's freshmen. I'm confident that the younger guys will do the same for the next class to come in this fall.
I also want to thank our coaching and support staff for helping me become the best version of myself, on and off the field. Thank you to coach Spencer Allen for taking a chance on me and not allowing me to settle for good enough, to coach Josh Reynolds for believing in me more than I believed in myself, to coach Dusty Napoleon for being a repository of baseball wisdom, and to coach Tad Skelley for always being willing to talk about the bigger stuff. Thanks also to Ally Darragh for general logistical wizardry as director of operations, and to Natalie Bumpas and Stephen Reich for helping me to stay healthy and get myself in shape to become a contributor to the team throughout my two years.
Finally, thanks are due to my family, my Sigma Chi brothers, and my friends, for keeping me grounded and being willing to listen when I needed advice, a sounding board, or an attitude adjustment. I'm grateful to have been the beneficiary of an incredible support network during my time at Northwestern, both within and outside of the athletics community.
Northwestern, if there's one overriding lesson I will take with me as I graduate next week, it's the importance of keeping doors open. If you're willing to work for something, nobody gets to tell you that it's off limits or you can't do it because nobody else does that. It's just not how things go around here. I'm thankful that, during my time at NU, the barriers I encountered to my aspirations as a student, as an athlete, and as a person were almost entirely of my own creation. Northwestern is a unique place because its culture of achievement encourages students to explore a broad range of interests and leave as many doors open as possible, and I consider myself exceptionally lucky to have benefited from this mindset.
The other day, on the bus back from the Big Ten Tournament, I was talking to Matt Hopfner about how we first met. Freshman year, Hoppy and I had a chemistry lab together. Suffice it to say that the class was not a strong suit for either of us. To pass the time as we watched our iron solution congeal, we swapped stories about our various baseball lives. He'd talk about how tough it was to be on the road week after week with the varsity team and stay caught up with class work, and I'd tell him about taking a minivan packed with nine club baseball guys up to Kenosha, Wisconsin on Saturday mornings to play home games because we couldn't even find a decent field in our own state. Back in the present, on the bus, we both chuckled at how fate had brought us together. "You'd talk about how hard you were throwing on club ball," he said, "and I'd just be thinking, This guy's just making stuff up. Who does he think he is?" That got a laugh out of me. Whoever I thought I was then, I'm someone very different now. And for that, I have Northwestern to thank.
I'm going to miss it here, but Northwestern will always be a part of me. Like I said, there are a lot of ways to wear purple, and I look forward to finding the next one.
Go 'Cats!
Cooper Wetherbee
Northwestern Baseball
There are a lot of ways to wear purple.
Coming to campus as a freshman in the fall of 2013, I wanted to find a deeper connection to the university that I had grown up hearing about. I had watched NU football games on TV every Saturday morning since the time I could talk with my father, a proud Northwestern alum, and "Go U Northwestern" had been beaten into my brain countless times. When I visited campus during my junior year of high school and saw the marching band parade down Sheridan Road during Homecoming, I made my decision. I wanted to bring my trumpet to Evanston and join the band.
At the same time, I didn't want one extracurricular activity to define my entire college experience. My friends and I fell into the typical freshman over involvement trap, signing up for every club or student group that caught our naïve eyes. While I didn't stick with everything that I tried out, I remember feeling grateful to attend a school where students took pride in reaching their highest potential in many areas of interest, and by the end of freshman year I had added Greek life, club baseball and membership in a student-run consulting group to my dance card.
Still, there was something else that was eating at me. Between school and extracurricular activities, I had no surplus of spare time to spend. But being busy and being fulfilled aren't necessarily equivalent. I loved the people and the passion of the Northwestern marching band, but suffice it to say that my marching was well short of top-class, and I didn't see myself continuing in the band for all four years. Meanwhile, pitching for the club baseball team, I formed friendships that reminded me of why I had started playing baseball in the first place. With relatively infrequent practices and just a few weekends of games in the spring, I was hungry for more. I began to feel an itch after our team captain accosted me during our spring break trip in Tampa during sophomore year. "Why wouldn't you try out for the varsity team?" he asked me, after a good day on the mound out in the Florida sun. "What do you have to lose?" I wracked my brain for justifications.
"I don't have the time."
"School is too important to me."
"I'm not sure I love the game enough to make that commitment."
This knee-jerk reaction got me thinking, though: Am I trying to convince him, or myself? I took the summer to think about it, and decided to give it a shot. Boy, am I glad I did. Walking on to the Northwestern baseball team is one of the best decisions I've ever made, not only in college but in my entire life. At first, I struggled with the practice schedule, the new challenge of early morning workouts, and the feeling that I had given up my freedom to be a part of something I didn't quite understand. I had a bad habit of showing up late – ask Coach Allen about that one! When that first weekend of the season in Arizona rolled around, though, the justification for months of hard work on the field and in the weight room became self-evident. To fly halfway across the country with this group of guys, to be a college student playing a game made for little kids, to get to come out to the field for practice on a beautiful spring day and say, let's get a little bit better as a team today – if you don't feel lucky to be a part of that process, I don't know what to tell you. I certainly did.
And now, it's over. Looking back, we had our ups and downs – both collectively and individually. The team went from a disappointing 15-39 season last year to a group that believed in itself when no one else would, and ended up challenging for a Big Ten championship for the first time since 1984. Individually, I had a similar progression, from my appearance in a college game when I bobbled a sacrifice bunt with nervous hands and felt like I didn't belong on a college diamond, to gradually building up confidence as a contributor to an improving team, to taking the rubber in the semifinal of the Big Ten Tournament and knowing – not believing, but knowing – that I was going to do something special in my last game as a Wildcat.
Talk to anyone around this program, though, and they'll tell you it's not just about the results on the field. Working to become a great baseball player is rewarding, but working to become a better teammate, a better leader, a better friend – that's priceless. I told our guys when we took the field against Maryland that I would take them over anybody, and that's absolutely true. Whether we're playing against a Little League team or the New York Yankees, I'll take my guys every day of the week. I'll take Joe Hoscheit, who hits baseballs to the moon like it's no big deal. I'll take Pete Hofman, the guy who looks 12 years old and pumps 90 miles per hour all day. I'll take Ryan Vukovich, who took a career-ending injury in stride to become the heart and soul of our team and the undisputed king of bullpen shenanigans. And the list goes on. I'd be remiss if I didn't mention how thankful I am for this fine group of men. From the moment I officially joined the team, not quite knowing what I had gotten myself into, they treated me as one of their own. As I settled into the team dynamic, I could only try to reciprocate some of the kindness and loyalty they had shown me, and pay it forward by attempting to create that same welcoming attitude towards this year's freshmen. I'm confident that the younger guys will do the same for the next class to come in this fall.
I also want to thank our coaching and support staff for helping me become the best version of myself, on and off the field. Thank you to coach Spencer Allen for taking a chance on me and not allowing me to settle for good enough, to coach Josh Reynolds for believing in me more than I believed in myself, to coach Dusty Napoleon for being a repository of baseball wisdom, and to coach Tad Skelley for always being willing to talk about the bigger stuff. Thanks also to Ally Darragh for general logistical wizardry as director of operations, and to Natalie Bumpas and Stephen Reich for helping me to stay healthy and get myself in shape to become a contributor to the team throughout my two years.
Finally, thanks are due to my family, my Sigma Chi brothers, and my friends, for keeping me grounded and being willing to listen when I needed advice, a sounding board, or an attitude adjustment. I'm grateful to have been the beneficiary of an incredible support network during my time at Northwestern, both within and outside of the athletics community.
Northwestern, if there's one overriding lesson I will take with me as I graduate next week, it's the importance of keeping doors open. If you're willing to work for something, nobody gets to tell you that it's off limits or you can't do it because nobody else does that. It's just not how things go around here. I'm thankful that, during my time at NU, the barriers I encountered to my aspirations as a student, as an athlete, and as a person were almost entirely of my own creation. Northwestern is a unique place because its culture of achievement encourages students to explore a broad range of interests and leave as many doors open as possible, and I consider myself exceptionally lucky to have benefited from this mindset.
The other day, on the bus back from the Big Ten Tournament, I was talking to Matt Hopfner about how we first met. Freshman year, Hoppy and I had a chemistry lab together. Suffice it to say that the class was not a strong suit for either of us. To pass the time as we watched our iron solution congeal, we swapped stories about our various baseball lives. He'd talk about how tough it was to be on the road week after week with the varsity team and stay caught up with class work, and I'd tell him about taking a minivan packed with nine club baseball guys up to Kenosha, Wisconsin on Saturday mornings to play home games because we couldn't even find a decent field in our own state. Back in the present, on the bus, we both chuckled at how fate had brought us together. "You'd talk about how hard you were throwing on club ball," he said, "and I'd just be thinking, This guy's just making stuff up. Who does he think he is?" That got a laugh out of me. Whoever I thought I was then, I'm someone very different now. And for that, I have Northwestern to thank.
I'm going to miss it here, but Northwestern will always be a part of me. Like I said, there are a lot of ways to wear purple, and I look forward to finding the next one.
Go 'Cats!
Cooper Wetherbee
Northwestern Baseball
Dear @NorthwesternU...
— #B1GCats Golf (@NUGolf_Live) June 15, 2017
3x All-B1G honoree Kacie Komoto reflects on NU on the eve of Commencement.https://t.co/g2qXT7Rfj5#B1GCats pic.twitter.com/pbXYEXYN3Y
Dear Northwestern,
— #B1GCats (@NU_Sports) June 12, 2017
Sincerely,
Melissa Postoll, @NUSwimDive#B1GCats
?? https://t.co/S9vR093Xjs pic.twitter.com/gIBnh6ZRlY
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