Griepentrog earns $10K Herb Kohl scholarship

Despite significant medical struggles and other challenges, Spencer High School senior Carter Griepentrog has pressed on to meet his goals and work toward becoming the best person he can be. His hard work has been recognized with a Herb Kohl Student Initiative Scholarship in the amount of $10,000. He joins a group of 306 students, teachers, and administrators receiving awards from the Herb Kohl Educational Foundation this year, including Student Excellence, Student Initiative, Teacher Fellowship and Principal Leadership awards.

“It feels really good (to receive this scholarship),” said Carter. “It’s really going to help me focus on my studies more, because I don’t have to worry about paying for college the whole time as much. So it will be a little easier to have time for studying because I won’t have to work full-time.”

Carter is enrolled in classes online through Northcentral Technical College’s computer specialist two-year technical degree program. By the time he graduates high school, he will have already completed almost a year’s worth of college classes. He’s also employed by First Choice Credit Union in Marshfield. He works afternoons there during the week through the school’s Youth Apprenticeship program. Although he is on a solid path toward his future, that path hasn’t always been smooth.

Per the Herb Kohl Foundation website, the Student Initiative Scholarship is intended for students who have put forth “extraordinary effort” to achieve and have “overcome significant obstacles or other adversity,” and by all accounts, Carter would meet those criteria.

Carter’s vein going from his heart to his legs is smaller than it should be. Because of that, his sophomore year of high school, he got blood clots throughout his body. He had to have a procedure in which doctors went in behind his knee to remove the clots. He said it took three or four days to have all the clots removed. Carter was put on blood thinners, meaning he couldn’t participate in contact sports anymore and had to stop playing football. This was during the fall of 2020, in the thick of COVID.

“I missed a lot of school, because we were only there for two days out of the week, and then every time I was at school, I usually would have to go to lab, like once a week. So I’d have like half a day on those days. So that wasn’t really fun. During that time as well I had to have shots to get my blood thinners in and everything. I had to do that twice a day for six months, so that was not fun,” Carter said.

He also heard something from the doctors that motivated him to make some healthy lifestyle changes.

“They can’t really do surgery on it (the vein that is too small) until I’m fully done growing, so they got to wait until then. But, no matter what, I’ll be on blood thinners for the rest of my life. And they told me, ‘If you were in better shape, you probably wouldn’t have to have surgery done,’ so that kind of motivated me to get into better shape,” he said.

Carter started managing his caloric intake and lost 70 pounds over the course of two years — 30 pounds his sophomore year and another 40 pounds his junior year. He also started weightlifting to build muscle and be able to perform better in sports, which he has done. He lettered in track and field, and placed fifth in the discus at Spencer’s last track meet. Now, he works out about six days a week.

Another challenge Carter had to overcome in school was a speech impediment. When he was young, he had a lot of ear infections and couldn’t hear soft noises, which made it hard to replicate certain sounds. He finished speech therapy at the beginning of this year.

Through it all, Carter persevered. “He maintains a positive character and is able to have resilience and display that resilience,” said Heidi Brostowitz, Spencer guidance counselor who assisted Carter with enrolling in the dual-credit, Start College Now and Youth Apprenticeship programs. “He always says ‘hi’ to you in the hallway; he’s a very polite student. He has a very strong work ethic too.”

“He’s a very intelligent, successful young man but school hasn’t always been easy for him,” said Carter’s mom, Tonya. “We’re so proud, honored and in shock that he got this.”

More about the Herb Kohl Educational Foundation Each year, the Kohl Foundation selects 100 different high schools for the Initiative Scholarship. The selection of schools is based on a seven-year rotation cycle, which allows every high school in Wisconsin to receive an Initiative Scholarship every seven years. Each designated school chooses its recipient through an internal selection process.

The Kohl Foundation award program was established by Herb Kohl, former U.S. Senator, philanthropist, and businessman. Since 1990, the foundation has awarded nearly $34 million to Wisconsin educators, principals, students, and schools.

Carter Griepentrog