Celebrate National Student-Athlete Day with Northwestern Athletics
4/1/2025 2:24:00 PM | General
On April 6, Northwestern Athletics celebrated National Student-Athlete Day with the University's 10th annual day of giving to support student-athletes across all 21 varsity programs at Northwestern.
This year, Northwestern set a goal of reaching 500 donors to recognize more than 500 student-athletes at the University. The Wildcats community stepped up with 772 donations and $466K raised to support academic, nutrition, sports psychology and sports performance resources for student-athletes.
This day of giving smashed the Wildcat Fund's previous fundraising record for National Student-Athlete Day. Thank you to everyone who supported Northwestern Athletics in honor of our 500 plus student-athletes!
National Student-Athlete Day is Northwestern's day of giving that directly impacts student-athletes, including academic, nutrition, sports psychology and sports performances resources.
Since Northwestern's first National Student-Athlete Day giving campaign in 2015, the Wildcats have enjoyed a decade of unprecedented athletic success, including:
- Six national championships, including NCAA titles in Field Hockey (2021, 2024), Lacrosse (2023) and individual NCAA titles in Wrestling (Ryan Deakin, 2022) and Diving (Olivia Rosendahl, 2017, 2018).
- Six appearances in bowl games, including five victories, most recently in the 2023 SRS Distribution Las Vegas Bowl. Northwestern Football has also won a pair of Big Ten West Division Titles, reaching the Big Ten Championship Game in 2018 and 2020.
- Northwestern Men's Basketball made their first trip to the NCAA Tournament in 2017 and earned its first back-to-back berths in 2023 and 2024, including victories in all three appearances. Northwestern Women's Basketball reached the NCAA Tournament in 2015 and 2021 and claimed a Big Ten Regular Season title in 2020.
- 15 conference championships including Big Ten titles in Women's Basketball, Field Hockey, Men's Golf, Women's Golf, Lacrosse, Softball and Women's Tennis along with four Midwest Fencing Conference or Central Collegiate Fencing Conference championships.
- More than 75 All-American student-athletes, most recently wrestler Trevor Chumbley, who secured the honor at the 2025 NCAA Wrestling Championships in March.
- More than 2,000 Academic All-Big Ten student-athletes, including a record 157 Wildcats in the Fall of 2024, the most in the conference.
- Completed, broke ground or announced seven different stadium and athletic facilities projects worth more than $1 billion, most recently the new Ryan Field and the Kip and Sara Kirkpatrick Softball Stadium.
- Northwestern has continued to post the Big Ten's highest Graduation Success Rate over the last decade, graduating 97% to 98% of student-athletes every year since 2015.
Donations of any amount to the Wildcat Fund help us to graduate complete student-athletes who excel in the classroom and in competition. Thank you again to those who participated in the giving campaign. Be on the lookout for your Wildcats Mini Fan in the coming weeks!
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