Hamilton Growing Into New Role

By Jeff White (jwhite@virginia.edu)
VirginiaSports.com

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — From the moment Nick Hamilton woke in the morning until the moment he fell asleep at night, food was never far from his thoughts last season. That’s because, as a University of Virginia wrestler who had to shed pounds to make weight, Hamilton couldn’t eat as much as he would have liked.

The 2024-25 season was his third as a 165-pounder in head coach Steve Garland’s program, and Hamilton again excelled, finishing as ACC runner-up and then winning three matches at the NCAA tournament. But the constant grind of making weight took a toll on him.

“Do I think I could have done it this year?” Hamilton said recently. “Yeah, but it definitely would have been a lot more of a struggle. I thought it would be better to focus more on getting better at wrestling and less on cutting weight.”

And so he bumped up this season at 174 pounds, and he’s 5-1 and ranked No. 19 nationally heading into UVA’s dual meets Sunday. In Lewisburg, Pa., Virginia meets Hofstra at 10 a.m., Bucknell at noon, and Morgan State at 2 p.m.

Asked about Hamilton’s move to 174, Garland said, “I think it’s freed him up to be able to train the way he wants to train, because he’s not worried about weight. All he’s thinking about is getting better.”

Hamilton is in his final year in the prestigious McIntire School of Commerce, where his curriculum is challenging.

“The load is big on him,” Garland said. “It’s heavy. And so when you add cutting 12 or 13 pounds a week on top of that, you can imagine how much harder it gets. So, really, for his general well-being—physically, mentally, everything—that’s why he did it.”

Hamilton, who works with nutritionist Shana Rosenthal at UVA, said he’s happy to not focus so much on “exactly what I’m eating. If I’m hungry, I can just go get something to eat. Last year, literally everything was tracked. It would go into my calorie macro-counter, and I had certain targets I had to hit and that was every day. I remember going to sleep, and the only thing I wanted was to wake up and eat breakfast. Food was constantly on my mind.”

In 2022-23, his first season at UVA, Hamilton competed unattached at 165 pounds and posted a 13-2 record. As a redshirt freshman in 2023-24, he won the ACC title at 165 and became the first Cavalier since Brent Jones in 2009 to be named the tournament’s Most Outstanding Wrestler. Hamilton concluded the season by going 2-2 at NCAAs.

It’s too early to say what Hamilton’s ceiling will be at 174, Garland said. “He just hasn’t had enough matches. To me, he looks just as tough as he did at ’65, but the other guys are bigger, and he’s still figuring out how to score on all these guys. And that’s true for anybody who goes up in weight. So that’s a work in progress, but it’s definitely going fine.”

Hamilton’s style on the mat hasn’t changed significantly, Garland said. “He’s always been a guy that wears people out with his heavy hands.”

For those unfamiliar with that phrase, it means that “when he clubs your head, it’s very, very hard,” Garland said. “When he pulls on you, it’s very, very tiring.”

Hamilton is “never going to light the scoreboard on fire. He’s never going to be a guy that throws up a million points with a million takedowns,” Garland said. “He’s a grinder, blue collar, solid fundamentals, tough to score on, stingy defensively. When he touches your leg, he’s going to finish. A lot of his matches, they’re going to be 5-2, they’re going to be 7-3. He just is who he is, and that’s what he’s going to be.

“His teammates call him Tank, and that’s for a couple different reasons. One, because of the way he looks. He’s jacked out of his mind, but I also think because he finds a way to empty out everything in the tank that he has when he’s out there.”

Hamilton arrived at UVA in 2022 as a celebrated recruit. A native of Nebraska, he spent most of his childhood there but wrestled at Underwood High School in Iowa in the ninth and 10^th grades. Hamilton was state runner-up at 138 pounds as a freshman and state champion at 145 as a sophomore.

He moved back to Nebraska after the 2019-20 school year and captured two state championships for Papillion La Vista High School, winning at 152 pounds as a junior and at 160 as a senior. Hamilton finished his high school career with a record of 199-3.

At UVA, he’s distinguished himself in the classroom as well as the mat. McIntire has “been great,” said Hamilton, whose concentrations are accounting and finance.

“It’s a tough program. There’s always a lot to do, and balancing both athletics and the Comm School is always a challenge, but I’ve had a lot of fun with it and I’ve been learning a lot. I think it’s definitely prepped me for my career going into accounting.”

He’s on track to graduate in the spring and will pursue a master’s in accounting from McIntire in 2026-27. Hamilton had an internship last summer with an accounting firm in Charlottesville, Hantzmon Wieble, and said it was a great experience. He’ll have another internship next summer, with Deloitte in its Omaha, Neb., office.

Such career opportunities are “why people come to UVA,” Garland said. “It’s not just a recruiting pitch. I try to tell parents this. This place opens up doors that other places can’t. He’s got these amazing opportunities with jobs. He’s got an amazing opportunity with a master’s program he’ll be going into next year. He’s got an amazing opportunity to finish up undergrad at one of the best schools in the nation. And then you have to balance the other stuff: How do I continue to improve in wrestling too?”

For Hamilton, that’s meant assuming more responsibility in the program.

“It’s been an interesting transition for him, because now everyone looks to him as a leader,” Garland said, “and I don’t care who you are: No one teaches you how to do that. It’s not as easy as people think. It’s not natural to everyone.

“First of all, not everyone should be a leader, frankly. So it’s been an adjustment for him, where he’s the guy that everyone is looking to. I think he’s learning how to be a leader. I think he’s learning how to be the guy that is the one that needs to be out front with the guys and have to speak a little bit and talk a little bit more than he likes to, because he’s a pretty quiet guy. Just like moving up a weight is a work in progress, I think him evolving into the leader we need him to be is a work in progress, and he’s doing everything he can for it, but it’s definitely not complete. So it’s exciting to see where he’s going to be at the end of the year with that.”

At the end of the year, Hamilton hopes to be an All-American, too. In 2024-25, he was a victory away from earning that status at the NCAA championships, and he’s looking to clear that hurdle this season.

“The NCAA tournament, it’s the best tournament I’ve ever wrestled at,” Hamilton said. “The atmosphere is just on another level, everything about that tournament. Everybody’s wrestling at 110 percent, giving their all. It just comes down to who’s wrestling better on that day, who’s going to be able to tough out some gritty wins. Being so close, that definitely does make me really want to see how far I can take this. That’s kind of the next step for me.”

To receive Jeff White’s articles by email, click the appropriate box in this link to subscribe.