Ben Youel ’09 came to North Central College thinking his athletic career was behind him, but wound up re-discovering his passion for wrestling and becoming one of the most decorated competitors in the history of the Cardinals’ men’s program.
“I was burnt out on wrestling in high school,” he said. “I wanted to reinvent myself in college. Part of that was going to be not wrestling at all.”
As fate would have it, Youel was paired with a roommate who was a highly-motivated member of the wrestling program and decided to give the sport a second chance.
“I guess I was just competitive, and I thought if he could be so gung-ho about being a wrestler, I could go to some practices and give it a try,” Youel said. “I made a lot of friends on the team and started to care about the guys I was wrestling with. As the season went on, I just developed a new relationship with wrestling and I have to credit my teammates for making me like the sport again.”
As a sophomore, Youel won a College Conference of Illinois & Wisconsin (CCIW) individual championship in the 165-pound weight class and made the first of three straight trips to the NCAA Division III national championship. He helped lead the Cardinals to a CCIW team title in 2008 before earning All-America honors with a fourth-place showing at the national meet.
Youel closed out his career with a senior season which saw him win a second CCIW individual title en route to a second straight conference team crown, and advance to the national championship match in his weight class to become an All-American for the second time.
One of nine wrestlers in the program’s history to earn multiple All-America awards, Youel was the first and remains one of just two to earn National Wrestling Coaches Association (NWCA) Scholar All-America honors all four seasons in uniform. As a senior, he also became the first Cardinal wrestler to receive Academic All-America status from the College Sports Information Directors of America (CoSIDA) and was named the CCIW Man of the Year.
“I had such a wild change, going from believing I wasn’t going to wrestle and thinking about transferring to feeling committed to wrestling and feeling like North Central was home,” he said. “That’s probably what I think about the most. I enjoy the effort that wrestling takes, and I enjoy academics, and North Central offered me everything I needed for them.”
