Heavyweight wrestler Weaver set for Monday's start of Flames Football summer training camp
6/2/2023 6:53:06 PM | Men's Wrestling
Liberty University graduate Rick Weaver, a two-time NCWA Grand National champion men’s wrestler at heavyweight, arrived on campus in Fall 2019 with aspirations of playing for the Flames’ Football team, a dream he finally fulfilled in April after trying out for a third time.
“The plan coming out of high school was to do wrestling and then go to football,” he said.
Weaver was recruited to wrestle by Virginia and Virginia Tech, among other NCAA Division I programs, after posting a 175-23 record at The Covenant School in Charlottesville, Va., where he also played running back and defensive end for the football team.
Instead, with his Division I football prospects slim after missing much of his sophomore season in high school due to a meniscus injury and his junior year after tearing his ACL, he chose to compete for the Flames and Head Coach Jesse Castro in part due to receiving preferred walk-on status from then Liberty Football Head Coach Turner Gill.
“Turner Gill left the year before I got to school and I didn’t think I would get a shot with (former Head Coach) Hugh Freeze because he doesn’t take a lot of walk-ons,” Weaver said.
But that didn’t keep him from throwing his hat in the ring, especially to audition for first-year Head Coach Jamey Chadwell and his staff this spring.
“My freshman year, I didn’t get a chance to try out because of some paperwork issues,” Weaver said. “The second time and third times I tried out, I actually got a chance, and this year I said, ‘What do I have left to lose?’ I was not worried about whether I made the team or not, I just wanted to do something different, and didn’t want to have any regrets before leaving college.”
His persistence paid off in the end.
“One of the coaches, a grad assistant, noticed I kept coming back,” Weaver said. “I saw him and he saw me and he instantly knew who I was. He said, ‘Thank you for being consistent because most guys wouldn’t do what you do.’”
He earned respect on the field with plenty of pushback on the defensive line, and helped the defense defeat the offense during the April 15 Spring Game at Williams Stadium.
“In football, if someone’s disrespecting you, you either handle it or everyone’s going to see that you’re not going to try hard enough,” said Weaver, who is still contending for one of the last 85 scholarships. “One day in practice, we got into a scuffle, and I did a wrestling move on a guy, and he got up and went back to practice. Being a walk-on, I was not going to let someone disrespect me and take my position away from me.”
The two sports are complementary in many ways.
“Wrestling helps a lot for football, especially being a heavyweight and staying low, which translates into being a noseguard,” Weaver said. “My stance already low and I just have to get under the guy every time I hit him in the standing position.”
Competing for both programs will require him to strike a balance between cutting weight to make the 285-pound heavyweight maximum for wrestling and bulking up to more than 300 pounds for football. He maintains an exemplary work ethic when training during the two overlapping sports seasons.
“For wrestling, you can spend time in the wrestling room, or in the sauna, doing whatever you need to do to cut the weight,” Weaver said. “I have a lot of mass to my own body, and a lot of guys don’t have that. Looking at me, I don’t look like I weigh 315. For football, I make sure I lift the heaviest, not just the hardest in the weight room.”
Weaver has been working out with players in the weight room Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays for the past few weeks since Commencement, and the whole team will be back in town for a team meeting on Sunday night before summer training camp starts on Monday.
“I’m third-string right now and will be trying to get up to second string (this summer),” he said, noting that there are four noseguards on the team. “The goal is to get first-string.”
He said the transition to the collegiate game has involved a steep learning curve.
“It is very different from what I played in high school, where they tell you to go after someone who has the ball,” Weaver said. “In college, you play assignment football. No matter what everyone else is doing, have to do your own thing, or it will throw everybody else off.”
Weaver won’t be the only dual-sport athlete on the football team, with safety Brylan Green also playing outfield for the Flames’ Baseball team and wide receiver Cole Peterlin also a track & field decathlete. But if he receives clearance, he will be the only one competing for both Athletics and Club Sports programs.
“It’s going to be difficult, I’m not going to lie,” Weaver said after experiencing life as a two-sport athlete in the spring semester, practicing with the football team at 5:30 a.m. and the wrestling team at 3:45 p.m. for close to three months while completing his B.S. in Sport Psychology. “Before going to nationals, my body was fatigued, and I was tired mentally. I don’t recommend doing them both at the same time, so I’m going to be focusing on football in the fall and then wrestling in the spring.”
He did his practicum by offering the DI men’s hockey team sport psychology tips throughout the past season, earning Male Academic Integration Athlete of the Year honors at the annual Club Sports Choice Awards.
“Working with the DI men’s hockey team, I was just making sure their mental state was doing well on and off the ice, talking with them, chilling out with them,” Weaver said. “My job was to hang out with them, and I made some good friends out of that. That was fun.”
He begins pursuit of his M.A. in Applied Psychology this summer and will be taking most of his classes online with only one required to be in-person. He plans to be more communicative with his coaches and professors as a graduate student than he was in the spring semester of his senior year.
“When I was trying out for football this past season, I didn’t want people to know for a while because I didn’t want it to be a big deal,” Weaver said. “Coach Castro did not even know about it. I didn’t tell him until two weeks after (NCWA Grand) Nationals. He was not the happiest, but he understood. He knows wrestling is something I’m good at, but football is something I like a lot more.”
“This is a dream of his that he’s wanted forever,” Castro added. “He’s done it and he’s real pumped about it. They love him. At noseguard, I can’t see anyone stopping him.”
By Ted Allen/Staff Writer
