The Athlete and the Artist: Being Both at Once

By Nancy Deneen

Say “varsity athlete” and a host of adjectives comes to mind: competitive, physically aggressive, confident. Perhaps even “meat eater” or at least “carbo loader.” “Art major” conjures different modifiers: sensitive, observant, quirky, possibly even (gasp!) “vegan.” For a handful of Northwestern students, the terms “athlete” and “artist” go together, as do an interesting mix of personal qualities, talents, goals, and ways of seeing.

These students straddle two very different worlds, two different student cultures which play out in different locales. Their athletic training takes place in north Evanston at Ryan Field; their art studios are on the south end of campus in Kresge Centennial Hall. In the space between the two—both the geographical space and the psychic space—the students have to resolve their passions’ sometimes conflicting demands. But they also have the privilege of delving deeply into two facets of themselves at once. They say Northwestern is a good place to do that.

In balancing the demands of an intellectually rigorous school with the demands of Division I athletics, Northwestern does as good a job as any school, and better than most. That’s the opinion of, among others, Laurence Schiller, who has watched students navigate both worlds as varsity fencing coach and a former lecturer in history. “Kids know when they come here, athletics is going to be a big part of their lives and they may miss some social life.… I don’t have to tell my team not to party. It’s more like I have to tell them not to stay up until 2 a.m. studying.” Committed professors, advisors, coaches, and the Academic Services department all provide support that works: An impressive 90 percent of student athletes regularly graduate from Northwestern, putting the University in the top ten schools in that category, according to U.S. News and World Report. Here are a few stories of those who combine sports with art.

A Gemini’s twin aspirations

Since the age of five, Milwaukee native Nick Roach has been drawing, starting with dogs, cats, elephants, giraffes. His mom still has the notebooks. He remembers playing with the shapes of each letter of his name, making a new design out of each. He can see himself using his graphic-design talents at an advertising agency some day. But when we met him last fall, Roach had a very different goal: helping lead the Northwestern Wildcats to a championship football season.

Roach, a linebacker known for speed and strength, was the media’s go-to guy when they wanted an insightful player’s take on Northwestern football. As a senior and co-captain of the team, he had been thrust into a spotlight no one could have anticipated. With the sudden death last July of head coach Randy Walker, Roach had been asked repeatedly by the media about Walker’s legacy. He said the loss made him even more determined to be a leader for the younger players. He told Crosscurrents he would remember how Walker applied football lessons to life. “He was interested in how we developed not just as players but as responsible men who were going to be husbands and fathers some day.”

New head coach Pat Fitzgerald, the youngest in Division I-A football, brought his own style to the team, says Roach, along with incredible energy and enthusiasm. “After he gave us a talk, I felt like I could run right through a wall.” In turn, Fitzgerald, Roach’s linebacker coach for three seasons, described him in a local paper as “one of the toughest players I’ve been around. He’s like Batman, he does it all.”

Through eight games, Roach led the Wildcats with 62 tackles. And then disaster struck. On October 21, against Michigan State, Roach broke his lower right leg during a punt, a play that, ironically, was later nullified due to a roughing-the-kicker penalty. The college football career of Nick Roach, the heart and soul of Northwestern’s defense, came to a sudden and painful end. And the Cats themselves finished eighth in the Big Ten—not what the team or Roach had anticipated at the start of the season, when, at Miami of Ohio, the team won an emotion-filled game in honor of Coach Walker.

Roach has undergone surgery and extensive physical therapy and can now walk and run with ease. At the end of March, he and fellow seniors showcased their talents before NFL coaches, who came to campus to evaluate them. Although fewer than three percent of varsity athletes turn pro, according to the NCAA, Roach will get his chance at a professional football career. He has signed a free-agent contract with the San Diego Chargers. But before trading in Wildcat purple for Charger blue, he is putting his energies into art classes including traditional Japanese calligraphy.

In fact, Roach first came to our attention not as a football player but as a Japanese brush painter. Pictures show the 6’2”, 240-pounder in class, sitting on a tiny stool, beside equally robust football safety and art major Reggie McPherson. Strong hands and rippled arms are engaged in the small motor skill of drawing tiny branches and leaves on rice paper with a bamboo brush. The incongruity is not lost on Roach, who says he has been a true Gemini, “creating Japanese brush paintings in class with delicate strokes and then going to practice and bringing people down.”

“Somewhere along the way,” he says, “it’s like someone flipped a switch and I’m a different person. Then after a game, I’m hugging my mom and my sister and all the aggression is over.”

Being an artist helped Roach relax from the rigors of four hours of daily practice. He says he loses track of time while painting. His art training also helps him see how pieces fit together to form a coherent whole—whether in a painting’s composition or even a game. “If football plays are executed perfectly, they are art,” he says. He appreciates everything from the works of Da Vinci to the graffiti art which pops up in murals all over Evanston. “Graffiti art has a raw energy,” he says, and the description could apply to himself as well.

Going to bat for a photographer who plays softball

“The time commitment was huge,” says Elizabeth “Biz” Piatt, recalling when she first came to Northwestern three years ago from tiny Monticello, Illinois. She was referring to varsity softball but she also could have meant photography. “It’s a completely different level of intensity, playing Division I in college versus playing high school softball,” she told us. “You spend an hour on the field doing defensive exercises, an hour inside the battling cages, then (most days) an hour each of weight lifting and running. And in spring, during softball season, things really heat up.”

Her other great love—photography—required a sequence of three-hour classes and long hours in the darkroom. But her voice rises with excitement as she talks about manipulating images into something new with a little added light here, a little more contrast there. “We didn’t have a darkroom in high school or any photography classes. I would go to bookstores and just pour through photography books. When I got to college, I thought, ‘Here’s my chance.’ I took a couple of classes and found that nothing stimulated me in the same way as art at Northwestern. I dove into the art scene and never looked back.”

As a pinch runner, Piatt is known for diving into bases as well. Although she has chosen not to play in this, her senior year, she was part of an unforgettable last season in which Northwestern went all the way to the World Series. It was unusual and particularly sweet to play for the championship, she says, because West Coast teams have dominated the sport. The Wildcats eventually lost to University of Arizona, but not before turning the stands into a sea of purple. “When we started beating and eliminating teams,” she says, “family members of former opponents starting wearing purple to support us. Little clumps of purple in the stands started to grow and grow as we won. It was thrilling.”

“For a Midwest team to have gotten so far, it’s huge, like a Division II team winning a national basketball title,” she contends. But with superb indoor facilities and more aggressive recruiting, Piatt thinks the Northwestern program has come of age. She credits head coach Kate Drohan and an incredibly supportive coaching staff with fostering cohesiveness and igniting the team’s will to win.

Being at the World Series during finals week exacted a price, however. A final critique by teacher and students was crucial to her color photography class at Northwestern. And she missed it. Here, she says, is where the University came to her rescue—and made it possible for her to succeed in both fields at once.

“Art is not an easy major,” says Piatt, who plans a future in art education. “When you miss a critique you can’t recreate that—your whole class looking at your work and telling you how they feel about it. But [senior lecturer in art theory and practice] Pamela Bannos, our instructor, was wonderful about it. This situation had never happened before. She had me keep her updated on our games: if we had lost earlier, we would have made it back to campus in time. But I kept e-mailing her saying, ‘We’re winning; we’re winning.’” Some classmates eagerly watched her team on television and then showed up when she returned for a rescheduled feedback session with Bannos. “That class turned out to be the best one I’ve taken at Northwestern. It was just a wonderful group, very open, and the critiques were awesome.”

For her part, Bannos finds that Piatt and other athletes bring an extra dimension to class: “I have always been impressed with the athletes’ stamina to be up before daybreak and to still be alert and productive in my classes. I’ve wondered if it was the discipline that is required for physical excellence that carries over into the other areas of their lives. Their perspectives in discussions and group critiques reflect aspects of life beyond the classroom—and I always find that refreshing.”

Softball coaches were flexible too, when practices coincided with lengthy art classes. Her coaches understood her late appearance at practice, says Piatt, allowing her to warm up on her own on the sidelines.

Her social identity was more athlete than artist during her softball-playing years, when she could be found hanging out with her teammates in a house on Sherman Avenue. Common goals and long hours together in weight rooms and on playing fields produce close ties. But now, she says, her artistic side has come to the forefront. “My time is better spent preparing for life after Northwestern and dedicating those long softball hours to art projects and finishing my academic endeavors.” However, team loyalty remains: “You can bet, if my teammates again make it to the World Series, I’ll be there,” she says. (Editor’s note: the softball team had another impressive season, making it to the semifinals but losing to Tennessee.)

Dueling Interests for a fencer

Sara Pecherek, a fencer since age seven, calls her sport “physical chess,” since mind and body are so interconnected. “When you’re on the strip, you constantly have to assess your opponent and figure out her weaknesses in order to take advantage of them,” she says. While modern fencing has three weapons (foil, épée, and sabre), each a separate event, Sara’s weapon, épée, is the only one in which the entire body is a valid target. But with first-rate masks and other equipment, she downplays any physical danger in the sport. She laughs in recalling a time when her pride was bruised more than anything else: “During one fencing tournament two years ago, I ran at this girl and fell and did a somersault on the strip. Everybody, about 300 people, just stopped and looked at me. I was so embarrassed. I had to get up and keep fencing and I lost on top of it! I am not a graceful creature.”

It is easy to see the grace in her paintings, such as an acrylic of peacock feathers floating on a salmon background or a nude figure with swirls of red, yellow and blue light. The art major loves oil pastels—not as messy as paint. Like Nick Roach, she has been drawing throughout her life.

“I like looking at everything, the entire history of art and how it’s evolved. I like modern art, message art, even comics which are commentaries on modern society, like Calvin and Hobbes.”

Combining art and athletics has been tough at times, she says. One can study for a political science test while on the road to fencing matches but preparing an eight-foot canvas on a bus or plane ride just isn’t going to happen. “The time you put into art is very clear. Being an athlete [on frequent weekend trips], you are sacrificing those extra two days you would normally have to spend on a project.”

Art and fencing bring out different qualities in Pecherek. A fencer needs quick feet, determination, discipline, and a willingness to sacrifice in order to achieve goals. Art requires patience and constant reassessment of a work in progress.

“There are some things they share, like problem-solving.” she says. “Figuring out how to improve a lunge in fencing or how to solve a visual problem in a drawing—both require working until you get it right.”

Being taken seriously as an artist and athlete hasn’t always been easy for Pecherek. Even with the success of Northwestern’s fencing team [seventh place at NCAA Championships in March] a fencer’s audience is usually significant others and best friends. And fellow artists sometimes consider that a painting done by an athlete “can’t be very good,” she says. Consequently, she is careful to keep her athletic side out of art class, eschewing sweat pants and plastic sandals in the studio.

Still, with all the challenges, Sara Pecherek, Nick Roach, and Elizabeth Piatt seem to have thrived with their dual identities. Through the rigors of athletics they have continually pushed themselves to a higher level, on the field or on the strip. And in the studio or dark room, they have learned to look beyond a blank canvas or dull negative to see what is positive and possible.

“I couldn’t give up art even if I wanted to,” says Pecherek. She will go to law school in the fall, perhaps to pursue an interest in intellectual-property law as it relates to artists and museums. Along with her law books, she’ll be toting her pastels and her paints.

Luke Donald, Golfer-Artist Sees Winning a Major in His Future

We held our breath when Luke Donald ’01 was first after three rounds in last year’s PGA Championship. Tiger Woods finally prevailed but such a close brush with major victory has made Luke somewhat of a tiger himself—hungry and confident. The last time Crosscurrents interviewed Donald, he was a senior art theory and practice major and NCAA golf champ, “hoping to get my degree and then turn pro.” With all that has happened since then—he’s now ranked 10th in the world—we thought it high time we revisited Luke.

What’s happening with your career?

My game has continued to feel good and progress in 2007. I know I am getting closer to that first major and another win as I finished top 10 at the Masters and have had two good chances to win regular Tour events (Byron Nelson and Sony Open).

Has what you learned here helped you on the links?

I think the most valuable lesson I learned at NU was to pursue my goals with effort and fervor and to persevere to achieve those goals.  I am very proud to be a Northwestern alumnus and am always amazed at the strength of the Northwestern alumni family.  Living in Evanston and being engaged to a Northwestern alumna (Diane Antonopoulos, Medill ’04), has given me a strong tie to the University. I have especially remained close to the golf program and have been able to stay in good contact with many of my Northwestern classmates, teammates, and fraternity brothers.  In fact, it meant a lot to me to have four very good Northwestern friends on hand when I won the Honda Classic: Jess Daley ’00 (golf teammate), Eric Gleacher ’62, Peter Bilecki ’95, and Eric Epstein ’02.

This is a very exciting time for me as my wedding to Diane is scheduled for June. I am looking forward to a great honeymoon and then getting back to work for the British Open.

Where does painting fit into your schedule?

I do find a little time to paint, but it is difficult to practice continually due to my travel schedule.  However, the last two years I have done a painting for the Western Golf Association of the previous year’s Western Open winner [one is pictured above].  They have used the painting for the tournament’s program and daily tee sheets.  I was proud to do those paintings and support the Evans Scholar programs.  Both of the original pieces were auctioned off, with the proceeds benefiting the Evans Scholar Foundation.