Today's Athlete: Nicholas Maccini

Nicholas "Nick" Maccini is Pre-Junior from Cumberland, Rhode Island where he started wrestling his freshman year of high school. As his wrestling career went on he began to like it more each day. In high-school Nick won the Lancaster Invitational and Capital City Classic. He also placed third in states and was academic all state as a junior and senior in high school.  He started traveling for wrestling and his skills landed him here at Drexel University.

Each year many high-school athletes strive to get offers from division 1 colleges in their respected sports. I know from a personal experience how tough it is for someone coming out of high-school who is not highly recruited to choose a college of your liking. Nick was one of these athletes, "my only other offer for division 1 wrestling came from Sacred Heart University."

Wrestler are known for their physicality on the mat but something Nick finds unique about wrestling is how its brings people together. "I have friends all over the country just because of wrestling. Also people don't know how much wrestlers give back to their sports community."There's no professionals in wrestling, so a lot of former wrestler coach to give back to the community."

If you know anything about wrestling you know that their are different weight classes and each wrestler cuts the same weight amount of weight. "Making weight is the hardest part about wrestling. Naturally I'm about 175 tops, but my wrestle weight is 149." I can see how hard it is for someone to cut 26 during competition, when I gain about 5 during the basketball season.

Nick works 30 hours a week to pay for school, he works as the manager at Drexel pizza. He works beside the owner, who if you've ever seen is a little bit on the meaner side, and doesn't really talk to anyone. Nick says that the best compliment he's ever gotten was from him. "He told me that he was proud of me. It was a big deal, everyone in the family heard about it. It was cool."

I want to thank Nicholas Maccini for taking time out his 30 hour week to chat.