There are many new freshmen that are walking the NIU campus this week, but there is one that is notably missing.

It was a nightmare that Chris Lawson wouldn’t wake awake out of.

On top of the world, the 6’5″ Lawson had everything to look forward to. After all, he just had a successful culmination to his high school career at Chicago Harlan and was off to start a wonderful new beginning at NIU.

Guiding his team to a 22-3 record in the Chicago Blue South Conference, Lawson averaged 18 points, six assists, six rebounds and two steals while garnering All-City honors. He gave the Huskies an early commitment under the old basketball staff, was a full academic qualifier and had seemingly everything in order.

But that was until the unknown became known.

While everyone was under the impression that Lawson had the necessary core classes and the essential grades in those classes, there was nothing to be questioned about his academic status. In fact, he had even obtained a 20 on his ACT score, right?

“It was late, about the middle of July, I found out that the ACT test that I took wasn’t the true test,” said Lawson.

It turns out that when he took the ACT test at Harlan, a school that is on academic probation to begin with, Lawson was not made aware that it was only a preparatory ACT test that did not

count as an official testing. Therefore, he was at a loss of time to take the official ACT for the first and last time available.

“I had to hurry up,” Lawson said. “It was last minute that I had to take the [official] test. I had no prep classes, no nothing. I was super nervous when I was taking the test. My whole future came down to this one test.”

With his future boiling down to a two hour session in a small, muggy room, armed with nothing but a No. 2 pencil and a single test in front of him, there was no looking back for Chris Lawson on this occasion.

A clutch player on the court, Lawson air-balled this last second attempt, achieving a less than satisfactory score.

With his solid core class, NIU was offering to put Lawson on the Chance Program, which would keep a close eye on his academics, but still allow his admission as a student, prohibiting any athletic participation his freshman year.

As a redshirt freshman, Lawson would not have been allowed any participation with the NIU basketball team and would therefore not be on scholarship his first year.

If he had accepted that offer, he would have had three years of eligibility on the basketball court and possible been able to appeal for a fourth year on the court in his fifth year of schooling if he was on schedule to graduate on time.

That route, however, was not obtainable for Lawson, as his family could not scrape up the funds for his first year.

“As a non-qualifier you are ineligible for athletic aid,” said NIU coach Rob Judson. “You have to pay your own way to school. Anything that is available to a non-athlete would’ve been available to Chris. He would’ve had to apply for student financial aid just as any other student would have. But he received the information that he wouldn’t be eligible late, so applying for financial aid was real late.”

With a lesser chance to be awarded financial aid help the later you apply, it wasn’t meant to be for Lawson and NIU.

“It was unfortunate that Chris didn’t qualify because he’s a nice young man and a good player,” Judson expressed. “We would’ve loved to have him here. Chris is a good kid and we wish him the best.

“When you don’t qualify you just basically have two choices. Either you go to junior college or you sit out a year and he decided to go to junior college.”

Headed to nationally know junior college power of Butler County in Kansas, all is not lost for Lawson, with the Grizzlies producing six All-Americans and appearing in the National JUCO Tournament four times in the ’90’s alone.

Judson compares Lawson’s situation to one that he encountered while he was an assistant coach on the University of Illinois coaching staff and Peoria Manual High School’s Marcus Griffin was a partial qualifier. Judson said that he tried to persuade Griffin to pay his way for the first year at Illinois, but Griffin opted to instead attend Lincoln Junior College for two years and followed that up with the Illini.

“You never know,” said Judson, “in two years we may be able to recruit Chris again.”