Grafton’s Benzschawel realizes dream despite rare leg infection
He is third brother to commit to UW
Prior to the 2019 prep football season, the Journal Sentinel will reveal the Supreme 17, a look at the top players in the area to watch. Each day between the first day of practice on Aug. 6 to the first day of games on Aug. 22, one player will be revealed.
JP Benzschawel pushes aside his flowing golden locks that hang just over his eyes and offers a bit of a chuckle as he recalls the wildest three months of his life.
“Obviously, I always wanted to play for the Badgers, but that’s something you’re not really thinking about when you’re worried about losing your leg,” he said.
Inside of a meeting room at Grafton High School, where he will begin his junior year next month, Benzschawel leans back in an orange swivel chair and places a cold, wet towel on the back of his neck. The chair looks like it was made to fit a third grader when the 6-foot-7, 265-pound Benzschawel sits in it. On both sides of his right knee are surgery scars in the form of two six-inch lines, each just over 18 months old.
JP thinks about those scars — and what they entailed — rather often. As a freshman, he was hospitalized for a total of three weeks with osteomyelitis, a rare-but-critical bacterial or fungal infection of his femur. There was a chance he could have lost all motor ability in his leg because of it, and, in its response to the infection, his body developed an illness that in very rare instances leads to
death.
“I was worried about myself,” Benzschawel said. “I was scared because I had no idea what was going on.”
For the first time since he could remember, Benzschawel’s focus was no longer on following in his family’s footsteps, largely because, in a hospital bed and unable to use his right leg, he couldn’t take any himself.
The Benzschawel name is wellknown around the state. JP’s oldest brother, Beau, started 49 games for Wisconsin, was a first-team All-American as a senior and now plays for the Detroit Lions. Luke, the middle brother, is a redshirt junior at UW and has played in 15 games at tight end, including four starts. JP’s father, Scott, and uncle, Eric, also played for the Badgers, while his grandfather, John, was on the rowing team in the 1950s and later served as president of the National W Club.
“I’m a die-hard Badgers fan,” JP said. “I never liked any other college, so it would have been extremely hard to pick a different one. Wisconsin was really always the dream. I just freaking love the Badgers.”
That dream came true for JP in February when he committed on the spot after receiving a scholarship offer from UW head coach Paul Chryst.
And all of it almost never happened.
Health scare puts football on hold
Just over two months after making his varsity football debut midway through his freshman season, Benzschawel’s right leg started to tighten up while running conditioning sprints during basketball practice. Initially, he wrote it off as a cramp and continued to practice through it. By the end of practice, he could no longer walk.
Doctors took a blood sample despite first telling Benzschawel that they thought nothing was wrong with his leg.
“They saw that my inflammatory markers were going crazy,” Benzschawel said. “My white blood cell count showed that there was some problem.”
At the hospital, Benzschawel was diagnosed with osteomyelitis, which affects 2 out of 10,000 people and eventually leads to the decay of bone tissue. He spent two weeks at the hospital in December, agonizingly watching on TV with his mother, Barcie, as his brothers and UW lost to Penn State in the Big Ten Championship.
After a two-week stay, Benzschawel was released from the hospital and returned to school using a wheelchair. He was able to make the trip with the family to Florida to watch UW defeat Miami in the Orange Bowl and started preparing to return for the end of basketball season.
But the infection returned again. The second time around, Benzschawel says, was scarier.
“He could have lost his leg,” said Grafton head coach Jim Norris, who is married to JP’s sister, Abbey.
The second time around, doctors attack the infection even more aggressively. They scheduled Benzschawel for surgery, debriding as much of the diseased bone and tissue as possible.
Benzschawel has still never been given a reason for how his leg became infected in the first place, but he also says he didn’t need an answer.
All he wanted was permission to get out of the hospital.
“It was so weird doing nothing for that long,” he said. “I needed to improve on everything. I just hated it there. I wanted to get out, go to the weight room, play video games, stuff like that.”
After another week-long stay at the hospital, Benzschawel was released, using a wheelchair before moving onto crutches as he finished out his freshman year.
Working toward an offer
Once cleared to begin physical activity again, the youngest Benzschawel was in the gym every morning and sweating through his shirt in the first 15 minutes as he tends to do.
“I don’t want them to kick my butt, because obviously they have had great careers and continue to have great careers, but JP has been in the weight room way earlier than his brothers,” Norris said. “A kid that is 14 who has to go through a double femur surgery has every excuse in the book just to say, ‘I’m good. I’ll take a break.’ But that dude was itching to get out of the wheelchair, get off the crutches.”
Both Benzschawel and Norris saw the potential to start receiving major college interest after JP’s sophomore season. Benzschawel kept adding weight and honing the techniques of his craft, thanks in large part to tips from Beau.
Norris, a national title-winning offensive lineman at UW-Whitewater, was harder on his future brother-in-law in practice than any other player. While living with his then-future in-laws last fall, some days he was so tough on JP that he would sleep in his office at school until he knew Abbey was asleep because he knew she wouldn’t be happy with her fiance hounding her little brother.
“They were absolutely phenomenal to live with, but it’s unique,” Norris said. “It’s a unique dynamic, to live with your future brother-in-law and left tackle who is a higher profile athlete in Wisconsin.”
Wisconsin coaches watched how Benzschawel responded to his injury, fighting back and tacking on 25 pounds over the summer going into sophomore year. They also took notice of him dismantling opponents in the North Shore Conference on film.
Chryst and special teams coordinator Chris Haering combined to make three trips to Grafton to speak with Benzschawel. On the third, they offered him a scholarship.
Benzschawel was taken aback. He had always dreamed of going to Wisconsin and only Wisconsin, but never knew that this day would come.
That initial shock didn’t keep him from delivering what was probably the quickest commitment in program history.
“It was insane,” Benzschawel said. “I didn’t expect it at all. It was crazy. I decided right away, 100 percent, literally as soon as Coach Norris told me.”
Following the family tradition
UW made sure to let JP and his parents know that their recruitment of him was independent of his brothers’ success.
“Even if he wasn’t attached to the family name, with his size and his ability to move, I think he’d have gotten a lot of attention regardless,” Norris said. “I mean, he’s a big, big dude. The Badgers were very good about making sure he knew they were there because of JP.”
Still, UW was also willing to offer JP to be the first member of their 2021 class because they knew what they were getting from a Benzschawel: a gifted athlete, a hard worker and a familiar, projectable frame.
“You know what you’re going to get in the weight room,” Norris said. “You know what you’re going to get socially. You know, relatively, what kind of kid you’re going to get academically. You know what you’re going to get physically when the frame fully matures. So I think that the way Beau and Luke kind of set the path for him plays a role.”
JP doesn’t mind the comparisons to his older brothers. He says he never once even considered going to another college to branch out from being like Beau or Luke or even Abbey, who also attended UW.
“I like having them come before me, but I also want to prove that I can be more than them,” Benzschawel said. “Of course I want be better than my brothers.”
That may very well happen. “He’s a fighter. He’s a scrappy dude,” Norris said. “He was a scrappy dude when he was a younger kid, so he doesn’t take any crap. Whether he knew it or not, he was being raised to be a dominant offensive lineman.
“You talk to his brothers and they’ll say that he’s going to be the best one.”