Cormac Madigan earns prestigious NCAA Postgraduate Scholarship

Ripon College senior Cormac Madigan of Rosendale, Wisconsin, has been awarded a prestigious NCAA Postgraduate Scholarship. The NCAA awards up to 126 postgraduate scholarships annually. The scholarships are awarded to student-athletes who excel academically and athletically. The $10,000 scholarships are awarded three times a year corresponding to each sport season (fall, winter and spring). Twenty-one scholarships are awarded to men and 21 to women each season across all three divisions.

“This scholarship is highly prestigious and impressive to athletes and non-athletes alike throughout one’s career,” says Professor of Biology Colleen Byron. “It is important to note that Cormac is competing for this with athletes from all divisions of the NCAA. There is no separate category for each division, so these scholarships are very competitive and very hard to get.”

Madigan, who has maintained a perfect 4.0 grade-point average throughout his time at Ripon, was the cornerstone of the Red Hawks football program this year. Ripon turned in its best season in more than a decade, posting a 9-1 record and scoring nearly 40 points per game. Madigan became Ripon’s all-time leader in rushing yards with a career total of 4,139 yards on 651 carries.

This season, he totaled a league-best 1,491 all-purpose yards and 14 touchdowns in 10 games. He also led the Midwest Conference with 1,150 rushing yards and ranked second with 115.0 rushing yards per game and an average of 6.4 yards per carry.

He was named Academic All-America Division III Football Team Member of the Year by the College Sports Communicators; Midwest Conference Offensive Skill MVP; Midwest Conference Elite 20 Award honoree; and Player of the Year by both the Wisconsin Football Coaches Association and the Wisconsin Private College Football Awards.

Madigan is a chemistry-biology major and has taken courses across campus, including advanced English, Spanish, psychology and theatre. He has been accepted into the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health.

In the last six years, two other Ripon student-athletes have won this scholarship: Lincoln Wurtz ’17 of Ripon, Wisconsin, now in the M.D./Ph.D. program at The Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota; and Payton Rahn ’22 of Omro, Wisconsin, who will attend Marquette University Law School.