Devin Carter Caps Off Historic Hokies Wrestling Career, Forms Bond with Fans in New River Valley

Devin Carter has spent 19 of his 23 years on this planet wrestling, but that hardly makes him unique in the college ranks.

Almost every wrestler to make an NCAA squad has devoted years and years of their time to the sport, yet few indeed have built their entire career in one area. Fewer still have crafted the kind of career Carter has built in his eight years in the spotlight in the New River Valley.

"Devin's very special," said Hokies' wrestling coach Kevin Dresser. "He's very special to me and he epitomizes how hard you should wrestle."

But his time wrestling in Southwestern Virginia came to an end on Saturday. The Hokies still have a pair of matches left before postseason play gets started, but the team's 22-15 victory over Duke was Carter's last chance to wrestle in Cassell Coliseum this season.

"It's bittersweet, it's nice to see a good career come to an end, I'm glad it ended with a win," Carter said. "But obviously I'm going to miss this place, miss these fans, miss the environment and the atmosphere. It's awesome in here."

The team honored Carter and the team's other graduating seniors before the meet kicked off, with a crowd of hundreds roaring their appreciation for him and his parents. It's a familiar sight in college sports, but Carter's teammates took it to heart, even if the redshirt senior internalized his emotions.

"I don't know if he cared, but I cared, it means a lot for me," said sophomore Ty Walz. "He's a guy that I looked up to since I've been here, he's the best wrestler on any team I've ever been on. Just seeing him in the locker room, I was joking around with him, I kept it light like 'hey, last time being in the locker room together before the match,' just joking around, but it does mean something. And I know it means something to him too."

Even on a bitterly cold, snowy Valentine's Day, plenty of people were on hand Cassell to give Carter a proper send-off. Part of that loyalty undoubtedly stems from the ninth-ranked Hokies' success these last few seasons, but Carter has also certainly earned some longtime fans dating back to his days at Christiansburg High School.

"The interest at the college level has grown just because there's some wrestlers that went through our program that people in this area have known since they were in middle school and they were able to follow them," said Daryl Weber, Carter's former coach with the Blue Demons.

"It's important to have a bond with the athletes out there, it makes it more interesting sometimes for those fans that are on the edge. Not quite wrestling fans yet, but if they have a personal relationship and they know the kid out there, it makes it more interesting and makes it more likely for them to go watch."

Yet for all his ties to the area, Carter isn't quite a native son. He was born all the way up in Hackettstown, N.J., but the Carter clan made their way south in time for Devin to head to Christiansburg HS.

"I met Devin when he was going into ninth grade, and I was really impressed with his maturity and his drive," Weber said.

Those qualities manifested themselves almost immediately. Carter made it all the way to the state finals while wrestling at 103 pounds, but lost to claim the runner-up spot.

That would be the only time in his high school career that he didn't finish as a state champion.

"He lost in the state finals freshman year, we would go to a lot of big tournaments and he would struggle at times, but he always came back positive and ready to get better and ready to work harder," Weber said. "It never discouraged him, so as he grew throughout high school he was always developing."

By his junior year, he was up to 112 pounds and finished 52-1, ending the year as the top ranked wrestler in his weight class. Senior year wasn't much different: another jump in weight to 130 pounds, a 45-2 record and a final ranking as the 23rd best overall wrestler in the nation.

"He was the type of kid, the day after the state tournament, he was out for a run or lifting weights," Weber said. "He didn't need a couple months break, he was really driven, he was doing all that on his own."

When it came time for him to consider his college career, the decision to head to Tech was an easy one. He'd already been wrestling in Blacksburg since he was a sophomore.

"They have a club over there that we can go to in the offseason once in awhile and it's important for any wrestler to challenge themselves at the next level, so we always tried to get him to wrestle either coaches or college wrestlers whenever he could," Weber said.

But Dresser also had good reason to take notice of Carter once Weber made it clear he believed in his pupil's abilities. The pair share a Christiansburg connection, with Weber coaching under Dresser for six years at the school before assuming the top job in 2006 when Dresser became the Hokies' head man.

"Coach Dresser and I have a relationship," Weber said. "We both come from the same place, we were both NCAA champs at Iowa, so kind of our perspectives on how successful a wrestler might be are probably pretty aligned. So he would ask 'who's got the ability for the next level?' and Devin obviously stuck out right away. Even when he was just a little freshman, he had the drive that was needed at the next level."

Dresser and Weber's similar strategic philosophies further smoothed what was already an easy transition as Carter moved from Christiansburg to Blacksburg.

"(It was the) same mindset, same type of wrestling, kind of attack-style wrestling," Carter said. "It was an easy transition, my parents were nearby, all my friends. I'd been on campus before, I'd been training here my last two years of high school, so it was a really easy transition."

That familiarity helped Carter and Dresser quickly develop the kind of bond that normally doesn't start to form until a wrestler's final season.

"We're closer than most, just because he grew up in this area and so I started working with him and getting my hands on him when he was a sophomore in high school," Dresser said.

Much like his freshman year of high school, he kicked off his first year of college with a splash. He finished as ACC co-rookie of the year at 133 pounds, winning an ACC title and making it to the Round of 12 in the NCAA tournament.

He stepped things up for his second act. He finished fifth in the NCAA Championships, again at 133 pounds, and was named the ACC's wrestler of the year with a 36. He even grabbed the top ranking in his weight class for a spell, the first Hokie to do so since 2002.

But then, in a move that might seem unthinkable in football or basketball, Dresser decided to sit Carter down for a year, redshirting him for his junior season. Even as he appreciated the move's value in the long term, Carter couldn't help but feel a bit out of place.

"A redshirt year is really hard for a lot of guys," Carter said. "I kind of got a piece of that, you're not part of the team, obviously the coaches aren't invested in you as much as the guys that kind of count, the 10 starters. So it's kind of lonely."

Carter still kept up a robust wrestling schedule, traveling to a number of prominent tournaments as an unattached wrestler, but he says those trips tended to exacerbate those feelings of isolation.

"You go on these trips, I went to Penn State and New York and I went to Cuba and all these tournaments, kind of just by myself," Carter said. "I just wanted to get back here and train with the guys in the spring and summer."

Once he did rejoin the regular squad, Carter figured to come roaring back with his most dominant season yet, this time at 141 pounds. But just a few meets into the season, he tore his hamstring, a devastating setback coming so soon after spending a whole year on the sidelines.

"It was rough, especially because we could've used that year," Carter said. "We thought I was going to be out for the season and when you redshirt, you don't get a medical redshirt afterwards, but luckily I had some good genes and got a quick recovery."

Carter missed three months of the season, but was able to come back in time for the ACC tournament, and even won another individual title. He then made a run all the way to finals of the NCAA tournament, falling to OSU's Logan Stieber to come up just short of his ultimate goal.

Even still, Carter helped the team to highest overall finish in the NCAAs ever at 8th overall, giving him some sense of pride, if there was still some unfinished business.

"I was definitely proud of what I did, especially because I was coming off the injury and we didn't think I could even wrestle then," Carter said. "But my goal at the beginning of the year, before I tore my hamstring, was national champ and when I started this season again it was kind of the same thing, striving for that number one spot."

Coming into his final season, Carter initially bumped his weight once more, this time to 149 pounds. But after the team pulled the upset win over the fourth-ranked Buckeyes, Carter dropped down to his original weight of 141, where's stayed since.

Carter then went 12-2 through the team's meet with Northern Iowa (with one of those losses coming to his old NCAA foe Stieber in the Las Vegas Invitational in his first match back at 141) but then the injury bug struck once more.

He suffered a knee injury in his next match against Iowa State's John Meeks and re-aggravated it in practice the following week, sending him under the knife for a scope of his meniscus and putting him out for the team's meet with Virginia at the Moss Arts Center.

But he hardly showed any signs of strain in his first two matches back, picking up technical fall and fall victories over his opponents from Pittsburgh and N.C. State respectively.

Yet he started to show signs of fatigue against Duke. He earned a 12-5 decision over Evan Botwin to stay undefeated at Cassell for his career, but it hardly came in the dominant fashion fans have become accustomed to seeing.

"I feel good, I'm 100 percent, I just had a bad match, I got a little tired," Carter said. "It was just a bad match, and sometimes you have bad matches and this was one of them."

Dresser points to that knee injury and his transition back to 141-pounds as the biggest thing still holding back his star as the stretch run looms.

"We haven't been able to train Devin like Devin needs to train, we haven't been able to get him healthy," Dresser said. "Hopefully we can make a step (this week). But Devin Carter's not a national finalist right now."

Carter understands his coach's skepticism, but he doesn't plan on accepting anything less than a national title to close out his career.

"It's the last tournament of my career, I've been wrestling for 19 years, so I'm gonna get my final dream," Carter said.

Dresser, ever the demanding head coach, says his chances at obtaining that dream are a matter of trust.

"I've been around Devin for seven years, so I think he knows me really well and I know him really well," Dresser said. "He's got to trust me as I come down the homestretch and I think he will."

Carter says with his close relationship with Dresser, forged over the majority of the coach's nine-year tenure at Tech, that won't be much of a problem.

"He knows when I'm hurting, when I'm tired, pretty much whatever I'm feeling throughout the week," Carter said. "I've got a good routine with him, I know what he's gonna do and how he's gonna coach me, so we're really comfortable with each other."

Carter's old mentor has no trouble envisioning that partnership paying off with the ultimate prize.

"I grew up around some of the best wrestlers ever, and I know the traits that it takes to excel at the college level and even the world level, and he's got those traits," Weber said.

But no matter the result at the NCAA Championships next month in St. Louis, Carter won't be going far afterward. He already has a degree in psychology from Virginia Tech and is working on his master's in curriculum and instruction, and he hopes to continue his classroom education by combining his studies with his love of wrestling.

"I applied for the doctoral program here for industrial organizational psychology, and I'm hoping I get into that," Carter said. "Nothing's official yet, but if I do I'm going to be a research assistant for Coach Dresser and I'll be in the room, trying to get the rest of these guys a national title."

For an athlete whose career is inextricably tied to the growing wrestling culture in Southwestern Virginia, that seems just about right.