Coming into NIU, redshirt junior Jamison Wells’ plan was to play baseball on a scholarship. But halfway through Wells’ freshman year, he realized one sport was not enough.

“For me, I knew there was something I could do to help the football team out and there was something I could do to help the baseball team out, and that’s why I did it,” Wells said. “I definitely did love both of them. Out of high school that was my toughest decision, was picking between football and baseball, and I did pick baseball right away. And then I got to college and changed my mind and decided I wanted to try and both.”

Since his sophomore season, Wells has been a centerfielder for the baseball team and a wide receiver for the football team.

While playing two sports can be time consuming and a lot of work, Wells’ coaches have been more than accommodating to his schedule.

“Coach [Dave] Doeren this year was pretty helpful,” Wells said. “We literally just sat in his office and we got this big calendar and went through the whole spring football schedule, went through that and planned out every single day. And if there was trouble we would sit there and plan out what was going to happen and decide what we’re going to do before it happened, so that way I knew where I was supposed to be at what time.”

Baseball coach Ed Mathey believes the tough schedule in the spring has had an effect on Wells’ play on the baseball field.

“I think it’s a big impact from a baseball perspective,” Mathey said. “If you look at his numbers statistically from his sophomore year to last year, there was a drop. A lot of that was just was just the fact that baseball is a repetition sport, it’s an experience-based sport. You have skills that you develop but you have to be able to apply those skills to different experiences out there. When you don’t get the necessary reps through fall practices, through inters-quad games in the fall, through playing summer baseball, it’s going to have an impact on you in the spring.”

On top of balancing time between football and baseball, Wells still finds time for school, as he majors in kinesiology.

“It’s not horrible; you can always find time for school. I mean if it means something to you, then it means something to me,” Wells said. “I’ll be the only one from my family with a degree, so that’s something I take some pride in and something I definitely want to finish out here. It’s pretty easy for me to stay interested in exercise science because I deal with it every day in sports.”

Mathey has been impressed with the work Wells has been able to do based on his difficult day-to-day schedule.

“He’s a pretty exceptional kid,” Mathey said. “When I talked about focus and time management, he’s a pretty exceptional kid from that standpoint. He’s doing well in school; he’s in an academic major…that has a lot of requirements on top of it. So I’m sure when he gets up in the morning and he starts to think about what his day looks like, he’s trying to scratch out a little free time somewhere because he’s probably going from point A to point B to point C to point D, and his schedule is pretty set.”