The sibling rivalry between Tessa and Jack Cichy long ago gave way to mutual respect, the foundation of a two-way support system both have leaned on while finding success in sports at Wisconsin. Along the way, the former walk-ons have followed strikingly similar paths made possible by the traits they inherently share, not least of which are toughness and a love of competition.  |  From Varsity Magazine

MIKE LUCAS Senior Writer Related Content Varsity Magazine

BY MIKE LUCAS
UWBadgers.com Senior Writer

Photo shoots are harmless and playful, maybe a little sappy by design. And that can be a good thing, even if they are staged. So it was for Wisconsin's sister-brother duo of Tessa and Jack Cichy

Last week, they posed for the shot on the cover of this week's Varsity. Siblings tend to be competitive, especially if they're close in age, so it was not a complete reach to have them lock hands and arm wrestle.

"We're both physical and we're both pretty tough," said Tessa Cichy, 22, a senior guard on the UW women's basketball team. "We kind of play with a chip on our shoulder."

Nobody would dispute that after the Holiday Bowl heroics of Jack Cichy, 20, a redshirt sophomore linebacker for the Badgers. Cichy had three sacks on consecutive plays against USC.

Despite sitting out the first half because of a targeting penalty that was assessed in the final regular season game at Minnesota, he was able to make up for lost time.

Cichy was named the Most Outstanding Defensive Player of the bowl after posting a team-high nine tackles in Wisconsin's 23-21 victory over the Trojans.

"I didn't want it (the targeting penalty) to be the last thing I remembered," he said. "I didn't want that one play to carry over and affect the last half of football that I could play this season.

"I wanted to leave my own stamp on the year."

That same day, Dec. 30, Tessa Cichy learned that she had mononucleosis — forcing her to miss the Big Ten opener against Indiana the following day at the Kohl Center. She ended up missing two weeks.

"It was about 40 minutes before the (Holiday Bowl) game," said her dad, Steve Cichy. "and I put my phone on and had her on FaceTime. When the screen comes on, she's in tears."

The Badgers' win over USC helped take her mind off things.

"She was sick in bed but I know she was still yelling at the TV," Jack Cichy said. "When I came back to my phone afterwards, she had a text, 'You're awesome. I love you.'"

While their birthdays are about 16 months apart, the Cichy siblings have the same drive and work ethic; a testament to the way they were raised and the commitment they have made to their sport.

That was echoed by Steve Cichy, a former Notre Dame defensive back. "I always believed if you sign up for something," he preached to them, "you play it to the best of your abilities."

Cichy recounted how the kids played for different AAU coaches when they were younger.

"They were totally different people (the coaches) and they came up to me and my wife Lisa at separate times," he related. "But they both said, 'Your kids play this sport like they need it (to survive).'"

Over their UW years together, Tessa and Jack Cichy have found out how much they need each other. It wasn't always like that when they were growing up, especially in middle school. But it is now.

"They're wonderful friends, best friends," Steve Cichy said. "They have an incredible amount of respect for each other. They realize what each has had to go through to get to where they're at."

Jack Cichy singled out Tessa for the stability that she has provided him. "She has always been kind of a rock," he said. "When I've needed to talk to her about something, she's always been there."

Tessa Cichy, in turn, acknowledged the bond that she has developed with her brother.

"As we've gotten older, we've become more appreciative of each other," she said. "Having him here to share in this student-athlete experience at Wisconsin has been great.

"We're in a place we love. We're doing things we love. We're with people we love."

Family is very important to both of them. Their older sister, Rochelle, graduated three years ago from UW. She works for BMC Software and still lives in Madison. She was a good athlete, too.

"She's a little 5-6 girl, blond hair, cute," Steve Cichy said. "And she holds the record at Hill-Murray for throwing a football 41 yards. She throws a tighter spiral than I do."

Rochelle served a vital role in the relationship between her younger sister and brother.

"When me and Tessa would scrap — we kind of clawed at each other — Rochelle would always be the mediator," Jack Cichy said. "She was probably the most level-headed of all three of us."

That would bring a smile to Steve and Lisa Cichy's faces.

"With all of our kids, the University of Wisconsin has been a wonderful experience," Steve said. "They give me a hard time because I went to Notre Dame and nobody wanted to go where Dad went."

•  •  •  •

Tessa and Jack Cichy were both nurtured on the wisdom and motivation of Vince Lombardi even though the iconic Green Bay Packers coach died in 1970 — nearly three decades before they were born.

Both have been fueled by Lombardi's words.

"Obviously, we're from Wisconsin, we're Packers fans, so Vince Lombardi is a legend," Tessa Cichy said. "We actually have one of his quotes in one of our rooms at home."

Jack Cichy pointed out that it was the idea of their parents to highlight the words on a big poster board in the workout room of their home in Somerset, Wisconsin, a village of 2,732 along the Apple River about 20 miles from Hill-Murray High School in the St. Paul suburb of Maplewood.

"Gentlemen," Lombardi begins, "we are going to relentlessly chase perfection knowing full well we will not catch it because nothing is perfect.

"But we are going to relentlessly chase it because in the process we will catch excellence. I am not remotely interested in just being good."

Jack was able to recite it almost verbatim. Tessa cited another famous quotation from the 1910 "Man in the Arena" speech delivered by Teddy Roosevelt at the Sorbonne in Paris.

"It's not the critic who counts," Roosevelt said, "not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.

"The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood …."

Miley Cyrus has a tattoo of the Roosevelt quote on her arm. Cadillac has used it for a television commercial. Tessa listed the quote in her online biography.

"To sum it up," she said, "it's better to have tried and dared than to have never tried at all."

"We're both physical and we're both pretty tough," Tessa said. "We kind of play with a chip on our shoulder."

The late Sid Cichy could not have summed it up better than his granddaughter.

In the '60s and '70s, Cichy led Fargo Shanley High School to 11 undefeated seasons and 16 state football championships in North Dakota. He retired in 1977 with a record of 231-38-3.

Less than 10 years later, Cichy, who coached Roger Maris, was inducted into the National High School Hall of Fame. His class included Red Grange, Jack Nicklaus, Dan Gable and Win Brockmeyer.

The latter was Elroy (Crazylegs) Hirsch's high school coach in Wausau.

Sid Cichy passed away in 2006. Tessa was 12.

"He still has an influence on me," she admitted. "I still have my mom's parents who come to all of my games and they're very supportive, but just knowing my grandpa Cichy was a legend makes me proud. It's very nice to know that he's looking down from above."

Jack can get emotional when he's talking about his grandfather.

"Looking back on everything, he had a huge impact on me," he said. "It's really indescribable how big of an impact he had. A lot of it is internally. I remember asking my mom or dad, 'What would Grandpa have done in a situation like this?' And that helped get me through a lot of things, not just football."

As a high school sophomore, Cichy traveled with his Hill-Murray football team to North Dakota for the season opener against Fargo North.

"We got settled at the hotel the Friday before the game," he recalled, "and I asked my dad to take me to the cemetery where grandpa was buried.

"So I was able to be with him before my first varsity football game. I'll always remember that."

Since then, Jack has written his grandpa's initials on his wrist band before each game.

"I do it more subtle now," he said. "I tape it over. But I know it's there. It's always there."

•  •  •  •

Steve and Lisa Cichy have always been there for their kids but they've never pushed sports on them. Almost never.

Steve played for his dad at Fargo Shanley and never lost a game while winning four state titles. But he strayed from the Cichy clan in that he went to Notre Dame instead of North Dakota State, where his three brothers played football.

He was a two-year starter at safety for the Irish and had a hand in one of the most memorable comebacks in college football bowl history, a 35-34 win over Houston in the 1979 Cotton Bowl otherwise known as the Chicken Soup Bowl.

Notre Dame trailed 34-12 with 7:37 remaining when Tony Belden blocked a punt and Cichy returned it 33 yards for a touchdown. That opened the door for the Irish and quarterback Joe Montana, who was battling the flu and hypothermia. A bowl of chicken soup was what the doctor ordered.

From there, Montana rallied Notre Dame to the improbable win; one of the early steps on his road to stardom and the Hall of Fame. "He had a calmness about him," Cichy said. "When the game was on the line, his demeanor never changed, he always had the confidence that he could do it."

Lisa Cichy can hold her own in any sports conversation. She was on a New Richmond High School basketball team that competed in the first girls' state tournament in Madison. She later played one year at Marquette before going to law school at the UW.

"We never pushed our kids to do anything," Steve said. "I've always been a believer that you expose them to as many things as possible and you let them decide.

"Jack will probably kill me for saying this but Lisa and I weren't sure when he was 10 years old if he ever wanted to play sports because he didn't show that much interest."

Jack had no problem with what his dad was saying because it was true.

"My friends would come over and they would want to go play catch and I kind of wanted to play Legos," he said. "At that point in my life, sports weren't high in my life.

"My parents didn't force it and that was good. Eventually I grew a love for it. It was probably around the sixth grade that I started to realize how much I liked football."

But he had some physical limitations back then.

"He was scrawny," Tessa said. "It was difficult for him to gain weight."

"In the eighth grade," Steve said, "he was 5-7, 120 pounds."

"It's a night-and-day difference from how I am now," sighed Jack, now 6-2, 223.

But it took a lot of work, especially in the weight room, and perseverance to get to the Big Ten.

"There was a time when he was a junior in high school," Steve said, "when I thought the kid could probably play college football but I never really thought at the Division I level."

Before this season's Northwestern game, Steve had dinner on Friday night with former UW quarterback Brooks Bollinger, who coached Jack for one season at Hill-Murray.

"We looked at each other and we were thinking the same thing," Steve said. "Did you ever think that Jack would be in this position (starting for the Badgers)? I said, 'Quite honestly, no.'"

Jack, in part, was pushed to succeed in high school by the success of his sister, Tessa.

"It pushed me to be better," he said. "It might have been selfish on my part but she had her name out in the papers a lot and I wanted that for myself. It gave me a little motivation.

"It was also nice having someone who was going through the same stuff in sports, the ups and downs. When she went to state for basketball, I was able to focus on that. I loved watching her play."

There was some friction between Jack and Tessa during those formative years.

"Typical brother-sister kind of thing," Tessa said. "We had the same groups of friends and I didn't like it when he talked to my friends. That kind of thing."

"Middle school was awful," Jack interjected. "At that point, we were really close and a lot of her friends were friends with my friends. Stupid stuff like that. But that faded away.

"It was pretty much nonexistent my sophomore and junior year. We were focused on helping each other out in whatever we could. We both realized we needed that support system."

Tessa received offers from a variety of schools but eventually chose to walk on at Wisconsin.

"I hated the process," Tessa confided. "Everyone loves it — getting pampered or whatever. But, for me, I didn't really like it.

"They (schools) would send me letters constantly, questionnaires. And I would get to the point where I didn't even look at them. I had my mom throw them in a box."

Steve and Lisa were concerned because they both felt, "She had resigned herself internally to not play college basketball," Steve said. "It was the only time that we forced our kids to do anything."

On spring break of her senior year, the family vacationed in Europe and Steve and Lisa had a heart-to-heart with their daughter on the steps of the Paris Opera House.

"We just told her, 'We don't want you to look back five to 10 years from now and say, 'I wish I would have done that,'" he said. "So give it a try, see it through for one year.

"If you don't like it after that year, you can do what you want, no problem."

Tessa took their advice.

"I don't like to regret things," she said.

And four years and nearly 100 college games later, she has no regrets. She quickly earned a scholarship the second semester of her freshman year and developed into a key player as an upperclassman.

"They have an incredible amount of respect for each other," Steve Cichy said. "They realize what each has had to go through to get to where they're at."

"I think I've handled it pretty well," she said. "I have my fellow seniors and we're on this ride together. Unfortunately, I missed four games with the mono. That's obviously a bummer. But it actually put the season into perspective for me.

"When I was out, I was thinking, 'Well, this is what it's going to be like in two months after you're done with the season.' It was a little preview and I didn't like it.

"It made me cherish the time I do have here a little bit more. I'm OK with what I get when I get it (playing time) and I'm more appreciative of the spot that I'm in."

Tessa will graduate in May with a degree in women's studies and a certificate in global health. Less than a year ago, she went to Spain and Morocco as a part of a UW course on human trafficking. She was moved by what she saw on the continent of Africa.

"It's something I'll never forget," she said. "We saw people lining the road and just waiting to be picked up and taken across the border into Spain. None of us had ever experienced that before. And it's really important to have those experiences to know how lucky you are."

•  •  •  •

Jack Cichy recently spoke to a group of Blackhawk Middle School students. It was arranged by a teacher who just happened to be his aunt. The kids had a bunch of questions.

"And I kind of told them my story," said Cichy who, like his sister, walked on at UW. After seeing limited action as a true freshman and redshirting his second year on campus, Cichy was rewarded with a scholarship last summer.

That story will soon have a new chapter based on a new UW defensive coordinator with the departure of Dave Aranda to LSU. Cichy was here for all three of Aranda's seasons with the Badgers.

"We were all surprised that he was able to stick around after Coach (Gary) Andersen left," Jack said. "So having him here for this past year was awesome for my development and all of our guy's development and I think that will only help us going forward.

"He called me the night he made his decision (to leave) and we had about a 20-minute conversation. He told me — which I believe — that his scheme doesn't mean a thing if we're not the ones doing it. That's the great thing about our defense and that will carry over in the years to come.

"We're a very football savvy group. We all kind of understand that each guy has to do his 1/11th, so no matter who our new coordinator is, we're going to keep that mindset and succeed."

Cichy, the fifth-leading tackler on the defense with 60 total stops, has the versatility to play inside linebacker or outside linebacker depending on what the team needs.

His performance against Southern Cal was certainly eye-opening and earned him considerable national recognition, though he confessed that he was a little uncomfortable with the attention.

"When I'm off the field, I like to be reserved and not say a whole lot," he said. "I'm fine with that. When I'm on the field, I'm a different person."

Watching his son record three sacks on one possession almost left Steve Cichy speechless. "It was surreal," he said. "It's the only word that I can use for it."

Laughing, he added, "I went 0-for-4 against USC when I played them."

Returning that blocked punt for a score against Houston in the Cotton Bowl was definitely a thrill. But was it a bigger thrill than witnessing the natural sack trick in the Holiday Bowl?

"I'll take what Jack did — 100 times out of 100," Steve said. "Jack will forever be etched in the annals of Wisconsin football with what he did.

"But I asked him, 'Are you ready to start over again?' Because it's a clean slate next season with a new defensive coordinator. He said, 'I'm ready.' He's not going to rest on his laurels."

How did a 207-pound walk-on linebacker get to this point anyway?

"It's a testament to him," Steve said. "He has unbelievable instincts. He's smart. He's a student of the game. And part of that comes from his grandpa."

Part of who Jack Cichy is as a football player also comes from Tessa Cichy?

"He feeds off her toughness," Steve said. "She took a charge in the Wake Forest game on a girl that was probably 70 pound heavier and that girl went down like a ton of bricks.

"After the game, Tessa's comment to someone was, 'What did you think was going to happen?' She's not one to back down."

Neither is her "little" brother. So who does win an arm wrestling match if it was for real?

"I do today," Jack said. "Five years ago, probably me. Ten years ago, her."