Inside HOKIE SPORTS | Vol. 12 No. 2 | October 2019

42 Inside Hokie Sports He owns a national championship, a Most Outstanding Wrestler award, a gold medal from the 2018 Junior World Championships, and an ACC championship, but Virginia Tech wrestler Mekhi Lewis feels that the shelf which holds all his most prominent accolades lacks one important piece. He wants to add an Olympic medal—and he’s decided to go after it. In mid-August, the Virginia Tech wrestling program announced that Lewis would be taking an “Olympic redshirt” year to train and qualify for the 2020 United States Olympic Team Trials in hopes of making the U.S. Olympic squad. The Bound Brook, New Jersey native hopes to become the 13th Virginia Tech student-athlete to qualify for an Olympic team (see chart). “It’s a great experience and opportunity to have,” Lewis said. “I don’t want to look back on it when I get older and be like, ‘Oh, well, I could have taken the chance at this opportunity’ and be regretting that I never had the chance to do it. I’d rather go through the process, and whether I win or lose, at least I’ll always know that I tried to make an attempt for it. Especially, it’s going to get me prepared for the next [Olympic] cycle when I’m older and more mature. I can learn from this right now and build on to it. Also, I feel like I’m pretty confident in my abilities to make the team and try to win a gold medal.” His decision, though, comes with a price. He will not be participating for Virginia Tech in any meets this academic year—hence the term “Olympic redshirt”—and thus, not defending his national championship. Lewis applied to the NCAA and received an athletics activity waiver that allows for him to train for senior level competition, but prevents him for competing for the school. He retains his year of eligibility, and even though he took a redshirt season in 2017-18, he still will have three years of eligibility remaining at Tech. Lewis met two of the four criteria needed to qualify for the NCAA’s athletics waiver. He won the national championship in his 165-pound weight class at the NCAA Wrestling Championships in Pittsburgh in late March—the rule states that one needs to finish in the top three of a weight class or be a national champion from a previous year. He also qualified by being a gold medalist at the Junior World Championships held in Trnava, Slovakia last fall. In addition, the waiver prevents him from being enrolled in classes at Virginia Tech, thus allowing him the necessary time to train. “Not having to take classes, I can really start to focus on myself and not stress out too much,” Lewis said. “I’ve still got to get up in the morning and go to practice. Class, for me, was usually after that practice. When next year comes and I have to do it, it’ll probably be weird again because I’ll be like, ‘All right, now you have to go to class.’ That’s something I’m worried about, but that’s a long ways away.” For the most part, Lewis trains with the Tech wrestling team. He lifts three times a week, he works out twice a day two times a week, and he participates in workouts on Monday and Friday afternoons. Lewis went to the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, Colorado for training in late August. While out there, he squared off against some of the wrestlers whom he will be competing against for a coveted spot in the 74-kilogram class. For sure, he faces an uphill climb, even with his immense athleticism and talent. In Colorado Springs, he wrestled 2012 Olympic goldmedalist Jordan Burroughs (Nebraska) and four-time national champion Kyle Dake (Cornell), who won the gold medal at the Senior World Championships in Kazakhstan in late September. He also worked against two-time national champion Isaiah Martinez (Illinois). All three are older and possess more experience than Lewis, who turned 20 in late April, and he admittedly struggled against them. “I wasn’t in shape—but that’s not an excuse,” he said. “Plus, they were training for the World team—Burroughs and Dake were on the World team, and they both beat me, but Martinez, I had a good go of it with him because he probably wasn’t in shape either. It was a good experience to roll around with them.” Lewis, though, plans to keep his training local and for good reason. In Tech’s wrestling room, he often wrestles with former Tech heavyweight Ty Walz, who made the Senior World Team that wrestled in Poland in 2017. Walz also won gold medals at the 2018 Bill Farrell Memorial Open and the Dave Schultz Memorial International earlier this year, and he claimed a silver medal at the 2018 Cerro Pelado in Cuba—so he possess a lot of valuable experience. In addition, Tech’s staff include Cody Brewer, who won a national title while at Oklahoma, and of course, associate head coach Jared Frayer made the 2012 U.S. Olympic team. “Ty is helping me a lot, and Coach Frayer,” Lewis said. “Coach Brewer is helping me a lot, too. Ty tells me that what I do in folkstyle won’t work in freestyle, so I have to be aware of that.” Most high school and college wrestlers compete in folkstyle wrestling, which places an emphasis on pinning an opponent and scoring as many points as possible. Also, there are moves to be made LEWIS Readying for Biggest Challenge Mekhi Lewis won the wrestling program’s first national championship in the spring and now he is going for the ultimate—a U.S. Olympic Team spot and an Olympic medal by Jimmy Robertson