8 — Friday, April 14, 2017
Sports
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

Unwanted, unconventional and unrelenting

NCAA 
Division 
I 
football 

programs 
can 
give 
just 
85 

scholarships per year.

Those 
85 
recipients 
are 

considered the lucky ones. They’ll 
receive a free education, provided 
they stick it out long enough, and 
they’ll also receive stipends that can 
ease the burden that comes with 
being a student-athlete.

That scholarship is also sign 

of status. It means that player 
was wanted. It means that player 
didn’t just receive the customary 
letters detailing interest, but that 
they were wooed by the coaching 
staff — perhaps even invited on an 
all-expenses-paid official visit. It 
means that player was seen as part 
of the future of the program — that 
hopefully one day, they would play 
a crucial role for a winning football 
team.

Michael 
Wroblewski 
didn’t 

receive any scholarships coming out 
of high school. He was never invited 
on any official visits. He didn’t even 
have the guarantee of a spot on the 
roster that some non-scholarship 
players — deemed “preferred walk-
ons” — are given.

Yet, on Saturday, Wroblewski 

will run onto the field at Michigan 
Stadium for his final spring game, 
four years after his first as a member 
of the Michigan football team.

Now entering his final year and 

on a full scholarship, he is expected 
to be one of the leaders of a defense 
littered with young but talented 
players — nearly all of whom were 
highly-touted 
prospects 
offered 

scholarships by either the current 
or previous coaching staff.

Wroblewski was not one of those 

prospects. He took the less-traveled 
path.

When Wroblewski arrived in 

Ann Arbor, all he had was a lifelong 
affinity for the Wolverines, his 
conviction and the opportunity of a 
general tryout.

As it turned out, that was enough.
It didn’t take long for the 

Wroblewski family to instill a 
passion for Michigan football in 
their son. His father, Mike, bought 
him a winged helmet from a garage 
sale when he was just three years 
old. It hardly fit Wroblewski. But 
the budding young athlete insisted 
on carrying it with him everywhere 
— even wearing it for pictures.

During the fall, the family would 

drive to his great-grandmother’s 
house by Lake St. Clair on the 
weekends to pick grapes and make 
wine while listening to Michigan 
football games on the radio.

So Wroblewski quickly grew to 

love football and the Wolverines. 
He convinced his parents to sign 
him up for flag football, where he 
got his first taste of playing the 
sport.

He began playing other sports, 

too: basketball, baseball, soccer — 
anything he could get his hands on.

Football, though, remained his 

primary focus. His goal had been — 
and always would be — to play it at 
Michigan.

Even when he became one of 

the better players in the state after 
arriving at the University of Detroit 
Jesuit, that didn’t change.

By Wroblewski’s junior and 

senior year, he had achieved All-
American status in lacrosse and 

was one of the most decorated 
players to ever emerge from the 
program. It was around then that 
he began fielding overtures from 
the Michigan lacrosse team, as well 
as hearing interest from several 
Division II and III football teams.

The only problem was that 

Wroblewski 
had 
no 
interest 

in listening to anyone besides 
Michigan 
— 
to 
the 
slight 

consternation of his parents.

“It was kinda funny because 

I couldn’t believe there were no 
offers coming in, so I had talked to 
the athletic director, and I asked 
him, ‘Nobody’s interested in him for 
playing football?’ 
” 
said 
Laura 

Wroblewski, his 
mother. “And he 
said, ‘Oh yeah, we 
can get offers, but 
Michael said if it 
wasn’t Michigan, 
he didn’t want 
to entertain any 
of them.’ And I 
was furious! I 
thought, you’ve got to at least hear 
what they have to say!”

Added Mike: “He had finally said, 

‘I like lacrosse, but I love football. 
I’d rather play in front of 100,000 
people than 1,000 people.’ ”

Yet there remained zero contact 

between 
Wroblewski 
and 
the 

coaching staff he really wanted to 
hear from, then led by former head 
coach Brady Hoke.

His high school team’s on-field 

struggles may not have helped 
matters, either — Detroit Jesuit’s 
football coach resigned the summer 
leading up to Wroblewski’s senior 
season, and despite Wroblewski’s 
best efforts (he played both ways 
at running back and linebacker), 
the team struggled against a loaded 
schedule and finished 2-7.

“Mike was everything to us,” 

said Nick Kocsis, Wroblewski’s 
athletic 
director 
and 
football 

coach at Detroit Jesuit. “He’s just a 
throwback, gritty, blue-collar, tough 
kid, who happens to be — from what 
I remember — a brilliant student.

“We used to joke because he 

was so aggressive and so big and 
physical, we used to kid him that 
one day he was going to end up 
being a doctor and save one of our 
lives, but we’d be scared to death 
to see him in that room because of 
the way he acted on the football and 
lacrosse field.”

His high school career was over, 

and Wroblewski had yet to receive a 

modicum of interest 
from Michigan. The 
other 
options 
— 

lacrosse or playing 
at a lower level — 
had dried up, too, 
after the programs 
figured Wroblewski 
wouldn’t 
budge 

from his plan.

Only one door 

remained: 
attend 

the university as a normal student 
and make the team through tryouts.

“I 
knew 
I 
could 
do 
it 

academically, but I was really 
coming 
here 
for 
football,” 

Wroblewski said. “I didn’t even 
think about (a backup plan). I just 
had the one mindset of ‘I’m going to 
do this,’ and no plan B.”

He spent the rest of his senior 

year grinding through nightly 
three-hour workouts. Most didn’t 
know what he was up to — after 
coming across several naysayers, 
Wroblewski had stuck to confiding 
his plan with just his parents and a 
few close friends.

In the fall, he stepped foot 

on campus with the rest of the 
general student body as yet another 
nondescript freshman enrolled in 
the College of Literature, Science, 

and the Arts.

Then 
came 
the 
tryout 
— 

essentially what he had spent most 
of his life preparing for.

Wroblewski had no way of 

knowing in real-time whether 
he was impressing the coaching 
staff enough to earn a spot. He 
was confident afterward that he 
performed well, but then came a 
period when he didn’t hear back 
from anyone.

“He was nervous, but he was 

trying to be confident like, ‘I gave 
everything I could on that field,’ 
” Laura said. “So he never said he 
was worried they wouldn’t pick 
him, 
(but) 
we 

could 
just 
tell 

that 
he 
was 

worried 
about 

it because we’d 
ask him, ‘Did you 
hear 
anything? 

Did 
you 
hear 

anything?’ 
and 

he’d 
say, 
‘No, 

no, but I’m sure 
I will.’ He was 
confident within himself, but still a 
little nervous.”

After 
a 
long 
two 
weeks, 

Wroblewski received a phone call. 
He picked up, and a voice asked if 
he wanted to play for the Michigan 
football team. 

His parents had an inkling of 

what had happened when they 
received a call from their son.

“Whenever he wants to have 

us on speakerphone, we know it’s 
usually something pretty good — 
or bad,” Mike said. “But this time 
it was, ‘Yeah, I’ve got some good 
news.’ ”

Added Laura: “The first (call) 

when he made the team, that one 
totally made us cry because it’s your 
kid achieving his dream at such a 
young age. This was his lifelong 
dream, and he made the team. It 
was almost surreal.”

Wroblewski had dreamed of 

making the team for much of 
his life. His next two goals — of 
earning a scholarship and finding 
playing time amongst a talented 
and experienced linebacking corps 
— would take longer to come to 
fruition.

Two years later, his parents were 

on the other end of a much more 
unpleasant phone call.

It was the spring entering what 

would have been his redshirt 
sophomore season, and Wroblewski 
was participating in a fullback-
running back position drill. He was 
tackled, and his left knee twisted 
the wrong way.

Wroblewski told them he was 

walking into the hospital and said 
he was going for an MRI because 
his knee didn’t feel right. Then he 
said he couldn’t talk anymore, and 
hung up.

It took some time for the swelling 

to 
subside 
before 
Wroblewski 

returned to the hospital, this time 
with his parents.

The diagnosis was as feared: 

a torn ACL, one of the more 
catastrophic injuries a football 
player can suffer. It is an injury that, 
at the minimum, typically means a 
six-month recovery period.

Newly-hired head coach Jim 

Harbaugh, then in the midst of 
conducting his first spring practices, 
and Jim Minick, the associate 
athletic director for football, visited 
Wroblewski in the hospital while he 
recovered from surgery. Harbaugh 
told Wroblewski he really enjoyed 
having him on the team and that he 
liked his work ethic.

That conversation helped at 

first. But then a few days later, 
Wroblewski was on crutches back at 
home in St. Clair Shores, watching 
as his team played its spring game 
without him.

It was as if he was back to square 

one all over again.

“He didn’t say 

one word (during 
the game),” Laura 
recalled. 
“We 

didn’t say anything, 
either. It was just 
the hardest game 
to 
watch. 
And 

afterwards, 
he 

just went into his 
bedroom and shut 

the door. That broke our hearts.”

His parents helped take care 

of him for a few days before they 
drove him back to Ann Arbor. 
Football was a secondary concern 
at that point — simply reaching 
his bedroom on the second floor 
became an ordeal.

“It was very hard to just leave 

him there,” Laura said. “We took 
care of him after the surgery and 
then to just drop him off and be like, 
‘Well I hope you can get around,’ 
was just very hard. His story is 
inspirational but hasn’t always been 
all fun. To get so far and to tear 
that ACL and have to go back to the 
bottom of the list — it was just very 
heart-wrenching.”

Once 
again, 
Wroblewski’s 

parents were faced with the same 
uncertainty they had experienced 
when he went unrecruited by 
Michigan. They didn’t know how 
their son would physically recover 
from the injury, and they worried 
about how he would respond 
mentally, too.

It was only after several trips to 

Ann Arbor to check on Wroblewski 
that they realized everything — like 
before — would turn out okay.

“We would come and take him 

out to dinner, and we’d run into 
some of (his teammates’ parents) 
just walking around Ann Arbor,” 
Laura said. “These kids would come 
up to him and say (to us), ‘Your son 
is so good in that rehab room. All he 
does is try and pump us up, and he 
tries to get us all excited to work our 
hardest, to get back out there, to be 
our best.’

“As parents, that made us feel 

good. He didn’t make it all about 
himself. He was like, ‘We’re all 
going to get better, and we’re all 
going to get out on the field.’ ”

Wroblewski 
recovered 
fully 

from the injury. He remained with 
the team, working his way onto the 
depth chart as a MIKE linebacker. 
And then last year, during fall camp, 
Harbaugh called him into his office 
and said, “We’d like to put you on 
scholarship.”

Wroblewski is usually stoic. His 

parents said that themselves. But 
even he admitted feeling emotional 
during that meeting and during the 
subsequent phone call home.

After all, he had not only achieved 

his lifelong goal of playing for the 
team but also earned a mulligan 
on the recruiting process, proving 
himself worthy of a full scholarship 
nearly four years after the first 
go-around.

Things were going much more 

smoothly for him now.

Wroblewski went on to see his 

first-ever game action last season 
as part of the nation’s No. 1 defense, 
appearing in nine games and 
tallying four combined tackles.

Along with fifth-year senior Mike 

McCray and sophomore Devin 
Bush Jr., Wroblewski is expected 
to lead this year’s linebacking corps 
— due in part to his comprehensive 
knowledge of the defense, especially 
as a group of mostly inexperienced 
Wolverines 
continue 
to 
learn 

defensive coordinator Don Brown’s 
scheme.

“Wrobo helped me a lot last 

year,” Bush said. “He helped me a 
lot with the calls and understanding 
the defense. He was there when I 
needed him. If I was feeling out of 
place in the defense or I felt like I 
wasn’t getting things done, he was 
there to stay in my ear and tell me to 
keep pushing.”

Added 
Brown: 
“Mike 

Wroblewski is another guy that 
I’m watching in practice last year … 
can’t even believe it’s the same guy, 
you know? You talk about a self-
made football player. But a guy that 
knows it all. I’ve never had to do this 
before — he’s telling the secondary, 
making their on-rights and lefts 
call ... he’s making the tight call, 
he’s making the detach calls for the 
outside linebackers, and it’s finally 
like, ‘Hey Wrobo, you need to shut 
up and let those guys make those 
calls themselves.’ ‘Oh yeah, coach. 
Yeah, yeah, yeah.’ That’s how well 
he knows the scheme.”

Wroblewski said it himself: It 

has been a long road — and the 
journey is still incomplete, with 
13 more games and the chance for 
a championship season looming 
several months ahead.

Yet no matter what happens 

during his final season, that journey 
will be looked upon as remarkable.

There are thousands of kids who 

hope to one day wear a winged 
helmet and touch the banner 
at midfield amidst a hundred 
thousand cheering fans.

There are much fewer who 

achieve that goal — and even fewer 
than that are the ones who do so 
after being passed over the first time 
around.

“It just speaks to his drive,” 

Kocsis said. “Mike’s done that all 
himself. It speaks to his work ethic, 
his ability and his ability to get the 
most out of what he has, because 
he’s excelled there beyond any 
expectations I would have have.

“That’s not selling him short. It’s 

that rare to be that kid. That kid who 
walks on and then ends up playing 
in nine games last year on a Big Ten 
(contender) and this year is looked 
at as a team leader.”

AMELIA CACCHIONE/Daily

Fifth-year senior linebacker Michael Wroblewski came to Ann Arbor as a regular member of the student body, but he turned his dream of playing for the Michigan football team into a reality.

“I didn’t even 
think about a 
backup plan.”

“It’s that rare 

to be that 

kid.”

ORION SANG

Daily Sports Editor

