Now a senior at Campbell University, Hanna still has eligibility left to make two runs at an accomplishment he had never heard of a half-decade ago, and he can’t help but feel like he would already be there if he started wrestling when all of his teammates did.
“At this point, I became a student of the sport,” Hanna laughed. “I still don’t know the old-time wrestlers, but right now, with everything going on in wrestling, I’m kind of an expert at the sport. Right now, my teammates will talk about their idols and favorite wrestlers they grew up watching and I’m like, ‘I didn’t even know this was a thing when I was a kid.’”
Hanna is living proof that with enough hard work, anything is possible, but even he has a hard time putting into words how close to impossible his accomplishments have been in a sport where athletes learn to lace up wrestling shoes before they take training wheels off their bike.
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He doesn’t have much longer in the sport, but he’s improved by leaps and bounds in only two years.
“I did it, so it’s hard for me to say this is something impossible, but it’s right next to impossible,” Hanna said. “I know kids who have been wrestling their whole life and haven’t made it as far as I have. I really put in a lot of work. Like a lot of work. Even now, I’m doing extra work because I’ve got a lot of catching up to do. I’ve got six years under my belt and I’m wrestling at one of the hardest levels to be wrestling at, so I’ve still got some work to do.”
When Hanna wraps up his career on the mat, he plans to explore the world of MMA, and if he picks up fighting as quickly as he’s picked up literally everything else, lightweights beware.
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