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