Nick Segura felt like an outsider.
He wore a Northwestern basketball jersey with "Segura" on the back. He practiced with the team. He sat on the bench during games. His name was on the official roster. But in his time as a walk-on for coach Chris Collins' squad during the 2014-15 season, Segura said he felt that he was treated like less than a full member of the team.
"Sometimes the coaching staff would make me feel like I wasn't part of the team, I guess," he said. "I remember a couple of times we were in the locker room after the game, and Collins was talking to us, and he would say, ‘I thought all 12 guys played really well,' or something like that. I'd be like, ‘Wait, there's 13 guys. He's excluding me.' That really got to me. Sometimes, I felt like it was intentional ... That happened three or four times during the season."
But he didn't tell anyone.
"As a walk-on freshman, you're at the bottom of the food chain," said Segura, who now plays at Division III Claremont McKenna, where he started in 14 games this past season. "You don't really have a lot of saying power. Twelve or 13, it doesn't really matter. I knew I was a part of the team, and no one could take that away from me... I just remember being really annoyed."
Collins addressed Segura's feelings before a practice in late February of this year.
"He wanted to play," Collins said. "He was on the team, he traveled, he suited up. Everybody is different. I greatly appreciate what the walk-ons bring. You have to have a very selfless attitude. You're not going to get a lot of credit."
Segura left the team in February of 2015 after speaking privately with Collins. He was forced to drop a Calculus class he had been struggling with, but dropping the class would have removed his eligibility.
"I had a dilemma," Segura said. "Either fail this class and keep playing, or drop it and be ineligible."
So the walk-on decided to meet with his coach.
"That was when I felt like Collins was the most in-tune with me," Segura said. "He told me, ‘Nick, we love you. We love your energy that you've given us. We want you to take care of your studies, so don't worry about it. We know it's tough for you not to play, so drop the class and take the rest of the season off. Then spring quarter, if you decide to stay, you'll be back on the team. You won't miss a beat. Or you can think about it and transfer if you'd like. It's going to be tough for you to play here, just being honest.'"
Segura decided after winter quarter that he wanted to transfer, later settling on Claremont McKenna in California. For him, being a walk-on just wasn't worth it, though he acknowledges that he didn't "live up to his end of the promise."
"Being a walk-on was probably the hardest thing I've done so far in my life," Segura said. "It was truly difficult. It's tough not being acknowledged by media or by a lot of other people, or not getting playing time after having all these dreams and aspirations for myself."
As Segura's story illustrates, being a student-athlete is tough. Segura would bolt from morning classes to meetings with advisors to practice to the library, with supplementary workouts and shooting sessions in between. And that's not to mention road trips, for which players often spend more than 24 hours away from campus.
For most, a scholarship mixed with the satisfaction of earning consistent playing time — often on national television — gives the journey, and the schedule, tangible value. But for walk-ons, playing time is hardly a guarantee. For some, like Segura, it's virtually unattainable.
In addition, the education isn't free — the families of walk-ons must pay full tuition unless they receive financial aid, and the full price tag at Northwestern can add up to more than $68,000 per year. Northwestern's walk-ons also must be admitted to the university, which this year accepted just 10.7 percent of applicants, the most selective rate in the school's history.
"It's different than a state school," said Collins, a former assistant coach at Duke. "At a high academic school, so much is predicated on getting admitted, so it's going to narrow the field. We can't see some kid we really like as a high school player and say, ‘Why don't you walk on?' First of all, it's a high academic school. Second of all, it's not a cheap school... Duke and Northwestern are very similar."
Northwestern often has far fewer walk-ons than other Big Ten schools, in part due to the cost and also due to the school's selectivity. There's also Northwestern's lack of basketball prestige. Many young basketball players grow up dreaming of playing at Duke or Michigan State. Rarely does a kid aspire to wear Northwestern purple.
Many walk-ons also don't have their expectations met. Austin Nichols, a walk-on from 2009-11 under former coach Bill Carmody, left the team after his sophomore season, dissatisfied with his role. "I kind of walked in there not having a realistic picture of what it was," Nichols said. "You think you're going to come in and be given the opportunity to play significant minutes, and that wasn't the case for me.
"There were times I felt I wasn't given a fair shake — that I really wasn't given the opportunities that I felt I deserved, as far as having a chance to play. I felt that my time wasn't valued and that my contributions weren't valued. I had to sit down with coach [Carmody] a week or two before the [2011-12] season began. We discussed things and we just kind of came to the conclusion that for the time being it was best for me to step away from the team. Especially not getting a scholarship, I felt my time was better spent elsewhere."
Collins puts things in simple terms for his walk-ons. He doesn't sugarcoat the process. Being a walk-on takes character, he says. It requires sacrifices. He points to the role taken by current freshman walk-on Charlie Hall, who was not made available for comment.
"I tell them exactly what it's going to be like," Collins said. "Because I don't want someone to come in and feel like it's going to be different than it is and not be happy with that. But you have to let them know, if they're on the team, they're not a second-class citizen. They're just like everyone else, but the role that Charlie has is different... He's got to be the guy that comes early to practice or stays late and works with guys on their individual games, trying to make them better, knowing that he probably won't play."
Since the Bill Carmody era, Northwestern has experienced extreme ups and downs with its walk-ons. Reggie Hearn walked on and was the team's leading scorer by his senior season. Aaron Liberman, on the other hand, left Northwestern unhappy with his role, and signed a non-disclosure agreement, meaning he cannot reveal details about his time with the program. Hearn, Liberman, Segura and Nichols represent the wide range of experiences of Northwestern walk-ons. Here are more of their stories.
★ ★ ★
In many ways, Reggie Hearn symbolizes the typical American success narrative. He found an opportunity, seized it, worked his way up and achieved greatness. Hearn was a walk-on his freshman year. By his sophomore season, he was on scholarship. By his senior season, the 6-foot-4 guard was Northwestern's leading scorer.
Hearn came to Northwestern from Fort Wayne Snider High School in Indiana. Contrary to Segura, who said he would usually "sit on the sideline" during practice, Hearn routinely got minutes in practice from the get-go and even played in 13 games during his freshman year, the 2009-10 season.
"For the most part, I felt like I was just another one of the guys," Hearn said. "I didn't feel like I was treated like less than a player."
Before his sophomore season, Hearn received the news walk-ons yearn for. "After my freshman year, they had a scholarship available," Hearn said. "I talked to coach Carmody about it, and he told me that if they didn't find anyone else to fill the scholarship, that I would be able to have it... So I had the scholarship for the beginning of my sophomore year."
Among the perks of the scholarship were team meals. Walk-ons are not allowed to participate in "training table," or post-practice meals provided once per day by the program. Scholarship players, however, do get the meals, so from his sophomore year onwards, Hearn was chowing down alongside Drew Crawford and John Shurna.
Hearn continued to climb the ranks into the starting lineup by his junior season. The next year, he was the Wildcats' leading scorer, averaging 13.4 points per game, the 13th best mark in the Big Ten that year.
"The thing that got me there was increasing confidence," Hearn said. "When I started playing my junior year, I still wasn't sure about myself on the court. I was just happy to get playing time. As my junior year progressed, I found myself continuing to play and continuing to start, and not playing badly... I said to myself, ‘I belong out here...' I took that with me to the pros."
Today, he plays for the Reno Bighorns of the NBA's D-League, averaging nearly 12 points per game. Back in November, Hearn scored 30 points in a game on 8-for-11 shooting from three-point range. He still holds NBA aspirations.
As for the keys behind his wild success as a walk-on, Hearn points to the practice time he was granted. "I got to participate my freshman year in everything that the other guys got to participate in," Hearn said. "When we scrimmaged, I got to play. It's not like they had me standing on the sideline. I have seen a few practices under coach Collins, and I do recall not seeing the walk-ons get a chance to be a part of practice in that way. To me, naturally that's to be expected because walk-ons aren't expected to play. You need the guys who are going to be in the game to get more reps."
★ ★ ★
Omar Jimenez faced a dilemma.
The then-sophomore student in Northwestern's Medill School of Journalism was a rising star in the industry. His success led to a dream internship with CNN International, based out of the United Nations Headquarters in New York.
"It was an offer that I could not refuse," Jimenez said. "But the dilemma was that Carmody had just been fired, and Collins was here now. But because he was new and he wanted to get to know the team and to get his system implemented, he wanted us to be there over the summer... The only issue was, my internship was based in New York. It wasn't being offered part-time, so I essentially just had to make a decision."
After working out with Collins and his staff for around two months during the spring, Jimenez made the decision to leave the team and aggressively pursue his journalism career at the cost of quitting basketball.
"I made the decision to go with CNN," he said. "I figured it was better in the long run, and I wasn't going to go pro in basketball... I pretty much just walked into Collins' office one day and was like, ‘Hey, I thought through it, and in the end it was all pointing in one direction.'"
Jimenez came to Northwestern as a walk-on in 2011. Some walk-ons attain "preferred walk-on" status, a label signifying that the player has been vetted by the coaching staff and will be a full member of the team once the season begins. But for most, like Jimenez, a formal or informal tryout is the norm. For Jimenez, the process was hazy, underscoring the sometimes confusing role of walk-ons.
"Nobody ever said to me, ‘This is a tryout,'" Jimenez said. "It was literally a practice with the team in October, and I just assumed that maybe the first week or two was a tryout. As I kept going, nobody ever said anything to me. I just kept going to practices and games every day. After the first month or so, I was like, ‘Alright, I guess I'm on the team.'"
Jimenez was able to see some in-game action as a walk-on, and points to his two years on the team as some of the best of his life.
"The teams I was on were great," Jimenez said. "While I was on the team, I realized some of the talent that was at Northwestern — not just on the court, but off the court. ... None of the guys I ever played with fit that jock stereotype."
Jimenez won a number of awards for his journalistic work while in school. A month after graduating in 2015, he took a job in Baltimore as a general assignment reporter for WBAL-TV 11 News.
"The biggest thing that makes me look back on [basketball] fondly is the fact that the journalism thing worked out," he said. "Retrospectively, I feel like I made the right decision, and I was able to have both worlds."
★ ★ ★
It was one of the milestone moments of James Montgomery III's life.
On Thursday, October 17, 2014, Collins called Montgomery, a walk-on senior, to the front of the room during a team meeting. "The guy through 12 practices that has done the best job of doing what he's supposed to do every day is James," Collins told the team. "That's why I'd like to say in front of the team right now that, because of that, James is going to be put on full scholarship for this year."
Montgomery was overjoyed. "The first thing I went to do was call my mom," he said. "We talked about it since high school, and since I joined the team, [a scholarship] was my goal. I even told Collins when he came — that's what I wanted. And he didn't make any promises, but he said, ‘If you earn it, there's a chance...' It was pretty emotional in a good way."
In 2013, Montgomery was entering his senior season when Carmody was fired, and Collins was brought in as the new head coach. Montgomery served as a practice player for the Northwestern women's basketball team during his freshman year in 2011 after trying out for and not making the men's team. He had been a walk-on since his sophomore season.
"Once Collins came, I never felt like a walk-on — ever," Montgomery said. "It kind of felt like an even slate."
For Montgomery, whose walk-on story includes a fairytale-like ending like that of Hearn, being a walk-on was far from a burden. He started four games during his senior season and, of course, ended up on full scholarship.
"I worked for it," he said. "I knew it would be hard work, and I definitely envisioned it happening. I didn't just stumble upon it. I worked towards being the best player I could be in order to earn minutes on the court and help my team win in the best way possible."
"I was always part of the team," Montgomery added.
Montgomery's story was even used in Collins' pitch to Segura to walk on at Northwestern. Segura said Collins told him, "that could be you," regarding Montgomery's scholarship.
★ ★ ★
Like Segura and many other walk-ons frustrated with their roles and the exhausting time commitment, Austin Nichols expresses a pragmatic view of the situation.
"Life is bigger than basketball," Nichols said. "There's more to life and there's more to college than playing Division I athletics."
But stories like those of Hearn and Montgomery demonstrate the double-edged sword that is walking on: for some, it's a struggle—stressful, time-consuming, and yielding no tangible results. For others, the experience of walking on to a Division I basketball team is life-changing.
"That made college for me—having that family, those resources, that goal," Montgomery said. "Being part of the team was by far the best experience for me in college."