Five years ago redshirt senior Matt Nelson suffered a blow to his temple in wrestling practice which left him with a concussion. At the time, few people could have foreseen how the injury would derail his promising athletic career.
The injury occurred during the weeks leading up to the 2007 Pennsylvania section and state tournaments. Nelson was a top-ranked wrestler at Shaler Area High School in Pittsburgh hoping to make a run at the state title during his final season.
“The two years before in the state tournament, I choked,” Nelson said. “This was my senior year, and I wasn’t going to let anyone or anything stop me.”
While he was out of school recovering from his concussion, Nelson continued to work out and hardly ate or drank to keep his weight down, a routine which exacerbated his symptoms.
Nelson visited concussion expert Dr. Michael Collins to get cleared to wrestle in the postseason. Collins, whose clients include Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger and Pittsburgh Penguins center Sidney Crosby, empathized with Nelson’s plight but would not be strong-armed by the high school senior.
“Dr. Collins said ‘there’s a 110 percent chance that you will damage your life,’” Nelson said. “It was a really humbling experience.”
With his dream of winning a state title gone, Nelson made it his goal to return later that season to contend for a national title. But every step of the way, he was met with disappointment.
“Our family was completely heartbroken,” No. 7 redshirt senior and twin brother Nick Nelson said. “There were a bunch of different times when we’d get our hopes up only to be crushed.”
The devastating blow came when Nelson was told he would not be cleared to wrestle his first year at Virginia.
“I didn’t think about the program,” Virginia coach Steve Garland said. “All I thought about was that Nelson was going to be crushed because, admittedly, I didn’t think based on the information I had that he’d ever be able to compete again.”
With wrestling on hold, Nelson decided to focus entirely on academics. He quickly discovered the more effort he exerted, the more difficult school became.
“I was failing classes and I couldn’t put two and two together with my concussion,” Nelson said. “I just thought college was hard and I didn’t get it. I was embarrassed about my concussion, so I didn’t tell any of my teachers about it.”
Just weeks before finals during the fall of 2007, Nelson faced a difficult decision – withdraw from his classes or take his finals and risk failing out of the University. Although he was at first averse to the idea, Nelson medically withdrew after meeting with Economics Prof. Ken Elzinga.
“[Elzinga] sat me down and we had an honest heart to heart the first time I ever met him,” Nelson said. “He’s been one of my mentors through this thing.”
Nelson returned home and entered a brain injury rehabilitation center. He attended four-hour sessions three times a week for four months to completely relearn how to learn. After completing the program, he was prescribed Xanax and Ambien for his chronic severe headaches and returned to Virginia during the fall of 2008.
“I got a 3.8 during my first semester back,” Nelson said. “But I was still completely miserable. I wouldn’t hang out with my friends, and I was a zombie from all of the medicine.”
Nelson began to take six to eight Xanax pills daily – twice the prescribed amount – because he was afraid of failing out of school. When he saw his doctors during the summer of 2009, they told Nelson that he would have to wean himself off the medicine.
It took three months of enduring withdrawal symptoms such as cold sweats and crawling skin, a time which Nelson called “the hardest thing I’ve ever had to go through,” but Nelson was medicine-free by the fall of 2009. He said he became happier and more social throughout that year but something was still missing.
“Finally it dawned on me that it was time,” Nelson said. “I could’ve easily made the decision to live my life in mediocrity, and I would wake up every day and be happy. But I would never be satisfied.”
Nelson returned to Charlottesville in the summer of 2010 after being cleared by his doctors to work out with the team, but still not cleared to wrestle.
“After the first week, I was so excited, but at the same time it was ugly,” Nelson said. “I finished last in everything. But everything I did I got a little bit better or a little bit closer to not finishing last.”
After rehabbing extensively with Virginia trainer Luke Donovan, Nelson was finally cleared for light contact January 2011. After that year’s March ACC Tournament, Nelson was cleared to go live again.
“I was like a little kid in the candy store,” Nelson said. “I was competing, and the room kind of stopped that first day.”
That summer, Nelson accepted an internship with Nike in Oregon. Although he couldn’t practice with his team, Nelson devoted himself to becoming the best wrestler possible by training with current and former NCAA All-American wrestlers, runners and swimmers.
“I think if I stayed in Charlottesville that summer, I would’ve been complacent,” Nelson said. “At Nike I had to dominate, and I came back with a different mentality.”
When Nelson returned to the University that fall, he thought he was ready to vie for a national championship in his last year of NCAA eligibility. Not everyone was as confident as Nelson, however.
“When he started working out again, we were all hoping he might be able to live a normal life again,” his brother Nick said. “As much as I always thought that he would be back to wrestling, I never wanted to get my hopes up too much because we had all been let down so many times before.”
In his first weekend back, Nelson picked up a pair of pins, and he proceeded to amass a 15-4 record, completing a comeback which almost nobody thought possible.
Nelson insists that his comeback, which Elzinga called “a case study in human tenacity,” wasn’t for him. Instead, he sees it as his way of saying thank you to all the people who supported him during the past five years.
Now that he’s back, Nelson is making up for lost time.
A fighter by nature, Nelson refuses to be satisfied with anything less than a conference and national title.
“My comeback story was over in January,” Nelson said. “No matter where I go, everybody’s going to be happy for me. But to me, it’s a failure if I’m not an All-American”
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