Cavs' Snyder an easy guy to root foR
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No wonder Matt Snyder will be one of the fan favorites when Virginia's wrestling team takes to the mats this weekend to open the season at home against Gardner Webb and Anderson.
Who couldn't root for a guy that has overcome adversity, beat the odds, never backs down from a challenge and competes just as hard in the classroom as he does in the gym?
Born with a rare immunodeficiency disorder that claimed the life of his mom's brother as a child, Snyder's life was saved at age three when he received a bone-marrow transplant. Once he became old enough to think about a life ambition, Snyder decided he wanted to become a doctor and give back to the medical field that saved him.
After a brief college stint at Bloomsburg State in his native Pennsylvania, Snyder discovered that he wasn't getting the wrestling experience he had dreamed of and decided to transfer. Enter former UVa All-American wrestler and longtime family friend Scott Moore, who just happened to be an assistant coach for the Cavaliers at the time.
An advocate on the inside
If not for Moore's persistence, even Snyder isn't sure where he might have ended up. Penn State invited him to walk on, but Snyder wanted more.
"Scott kept telling me that this guy is great, he's a guy we want on the team," said Virginia coach Steve Garland. "Truth be told — and I joke with Matt about this all the time — I didn't know how good he was. I really didn't have a clue. I just knew that he was a wiry, scrappy kid that had a good resume in high school."
Garland met Snyder and his parents and immediately knew they were the kind of people that any coach would like to be associated with. Snyder's high GPA didn't hurt either because the coach knew that any kid that could handle the rigors of wrestling and have a high GPA was the quintessential overachiever.
A fighter from the start
While those qualities were part of the formula, what really sold the Cavaliers' coach was Snyder's personal story about the bone-marrow transplant.
"Anyone who can fight through that kind of adversity, well, they appreciate life and everything they have," Garland said. "Every single day that he's breathing, he's excited about it."
So, Virginia brought Snyder aboard its program, but Snyder's work had only started. Once Garland and the strength coaches got a look the wrestler's 5-foot-6, 125-pound frame, they wondered if he could compete on the ACC level.
"He stepped on campus and I looked at his body and watched him in practice, and I said 'This is the guy?'" Snyder chuckled. "I thought, 'There's just no way.' But sure enough, we put him out there for the first competition and he looked better than anybody on the team. He was pinning guys like it was no big deal. He can go out there on competition day and beat anybody in the country."
A junior academically, Snyder is a redshirt sophomore by NCAA eligibility and is expected to be one of the favorites this season in the ACC's 125-pound weight class. He started his freshman year at UVa at that weight but had to moved up to 133 when he lost in a wrestle-off at midseason with one of the team captains, Ross Gitomer, now a graduate assistant and Snyder's roommate.
"Moving to 133 wasn't easy because I had to gain weight at midseason and that was like culture shock to me," Snyder said. "I was a little small the first month or so because you just can't gain 10 pounds of muscle in a month and a half."
Snyder finished strong, though. In dual meets against UNC and Virginia Tech, he registered two huge wins for the team and pinned the rival Hokie in the ACC semifinals, giving the team important pin points, helping UVa win the ACC tournament championship. In the finals, he nearly upset a heavily-favored, two-time All-American from Maryland, losing by a point.
"Nobody in the gym thought that could happen except for Matt," Garland said. "That was a special moment for us as a team."
It was late in the season when Dr. Craig Seto, who specializes in both family medicine and sports medicine and now work with UVa wrestling as a team physician, spotted Snyder.
"There was Matt, a freshman, up a weight class, beating a bigger wrestler," Dr. Seto said. "I saw the heart of this kid who was thrown around by the bigger wrestler, but Matt came back and won. The kid wouldn't even shake Matt's hand afterward, pushed him off."
Seto couldn't wait to congratulate the UVa freshman. During that interlude, Seto discovered that Snyder had a strong interest in becoming a doctor. Within a month, the wrestler began shadowing the good doctor during his rounds in sports medicine.
"We sit down and talk about the issues, and it gives him a sense of the amazing, a sense of the frustration parts of medicine, and about relationships with patients, sticking with them through thick and thin. He's like a sponge. I always remind him that as doctors we are here to take care of folks. That's what it's all about," said Seto, a former high school wrestler in Northern Virginia.
Snyder said that shadowing Seto has only heightened his interest in becoming a doctor and that he has learned a great deal.
"Learning from him has been reassuring," Snyder said. "I've always wanted to do this and now that I am getting a taste, I love it. The medical field is what I expected."
Garland and Seto will readily tell you that being a pre-med student and simultaneously being an athlete is a challenge, but Snyder has handled both with diligence.
"The guys on the team were joking one day about a big physics exam and I think the mean was about 60," Garland recalled. "They asked Snyder what he got. He didn't want to tell them because he didn't want to brag.
"They said, 'Seriously, what did you get?'" Snyder said. "Matt told 'em, 'I got 100.'"
That's just Matt Snyder. He takes on exams like he does All-American opponents. He wants to be the best, no matter the challenge.
"People will say things like they want to be the best all the time, but they don't really mean it," Garland said. "Matt Snyder means it. He doesn't just want to have the highest grade in the room — he wants the 100. When he goes into a match he wants to pin a guy, not just beat him. His attitude is rare. He's very humble, but he hates to lose and that separates him from other athletes. He's a gamer."
The gamer, having dropped back to his natural weight class of 125 pounds, begins his pursuit of an ACC title on Saturday at Memorial Gym.
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