After all, what wrestler wouldn't want to be called the "Vermonster?"
Robert Hamlin celebrates after winning his NCAA semifinal match (Photo/Tony Rotundo, WrestlersAreWarriors.com)It wasn't always that way. When Hamlin made the seven-hour trip south from Jonesville, Vt., to Bethlehem, Pa., he entered a new wrestling world.
Gone were the sparsely attended state tournaments where the two dozen or so schools that had wrestling teams gathered to crown Vermont's best -- no qualifiers needed. He was now in the wrestling-mad Lehigh Valley, where the Mountain Hawks' wrestleoffs routinely attract 1,000 or more fans.
Not only that, the competition in the Lehigh wrestling room was far different than what he had faced at Mount Mansfield Union, where he went 168-3 with four Vermont titles and three New England Championships. Now, he was struggling just to compete with his practice partners.
"When I first got to Lehigh, all the guys around my weight -- our '65, our backup '65, our '74 and our '84 -- I was at '74 at the time -- I don't think I scored on any of those guys until like the spring of my freshman year," Hamlin recalled. "It was a big change from high school to college. And I really didn't have as much competition as some of these kids coming from Pa. and stuff. I feel like if I wrestled myself back then now it would be just so easy."
Pat Santoro"That happens to a lot of freshmen coming in," Lehigh coach Pat Santoro said. "Some freshmen lose more during their first semester than they did all through high school, and it gets them down. It didn't matter to him. He was trying to figure out how to get better every day and what he needed to work on. When you have that type of attitude, you're not focused on wins and losses (and) you get really good really fast. And that's what he's done."
Even while he struggled in the Lehigh wrestling room, Hamlin was shining outside of it. He went 30-6 wrestling unattached at 174 pounds in open tournaments during his redshirt season. He was named the outstanding wrestler at the Wilkes Open in December and won the Shorty Hitchcock Memorial Open the following month.
Somewhere along the way, he started pushing his teammates more and more in practice.
"Even though, in the room, he couldn't get a takedown for awhile, he was wrestling some pretty good kids coming in," Santoro recalled. "(But) he just never stopped wrestling. You keep coming up, you're going to get better. You get taken down, come back. By the end of the year, he was pushing those people. A year later, he earned the starting spot. A year after that, he's the national runner-up."
He went 18-12 in his first season in the Lehigh lineup and qualified for the NCAA tournament at 174 pounds, which gave him confidence heading into his redshirt sophomore season.
But even he didn't expect the kind of year he had last season. He bumped up to 184 pounds and went 32-3, boasting wins over some of the top names in the sport. He placed third at Midlands in December. In January, he beat then-No. 1 ranked Joe LeBlanc of Wyoming. And he notched three victories over another eventual All-American, Cornell's Steve Bosak.
"I tried to tell myself the whole season "I'm going to win nationals. I'm going to win nationals. I'm going to win nationals,'" Hamlin said. "But there was a part of me that really didn't believe I'd even be an All-American.
"If you'd have told me at the beginning of the season ‘You're going to be a finalist,' I would have thought, ‘Man, that's awesome.' But now that I was that close … It's hard being that close and not getting it."
Just how close Hamlin came to winning the national title is evidenced by the fact that he beat Penn State's Quentin Wright -- the eventual champ -- earlier in the season. A 4-3 winner in their dual meet, Hamlin lost 5-2 in the all-important rematch.
Robert Hamlin fell to Penn State's Quentin Wright in the NCAA finals (Photo/John Sachs, Tech-Fall.com)Like Hamlin, Wright and six of last year's eight All-Americans return at 184 pounds. That should make for an interesting season.
"It should be a fun time," Santoro said. "He's going to see Quentin Wright, probably Dec. 9 (in a dual meet at Lehigh's Stabler Arena), but he can't worry about him. He's got to worry about (his next match). That's kind of his approach. He doesn't get too far ahead of himself."
Focus has not been a problem for Hamlin. He was named to the NWCA All-Academic Team last season -- no small feat for a chemical engineering major.
When Hamlin initially chose Lehigh, he wasn't sure he'd wrestle all four years, as he thought his course load might become too difficult to continue his athletic career. Not only has he made it work, he's excelled.
"That's one of the things Lehigh preaches -- you can do both," Santoro said of academics and athletics. "You can excel in the classroom with real majors and you can excel out on the mat. He's done that. He's been the epitome of what Lehigh wrestling is all about. That's why he's been a fan favorite, because everything he does is one hundred percent."
He's not just a fan favorite; he's also a coach's dream.
"If you had 10 of him, as a coach, you'd be very happy," Santoro said. "He's that kid that does things right across the board. He does it academically, he does it athletically, he does it socially. He's very well-liked. He's the type of kid you'd let your daughter date."
Robert Hamlin edged Cornell's Steve Bosak three times last season, including a 4-2 win in the NCAA semifinals (Photo/Tony Rotundo, WrestlersAreWarriors.com)"I try to score a lot of points," Hamlin said. "I just try to keep attacking the whole time. That's what Coach always pushes -- even if you're winning, try to build a lead, keep going and break your opponent. I try to wrestle the whole time, the whole seven minutes."
Problem is, Hamlin has had to do most of his scoring from the neutral position. He's much more comfortable on his feet -- where he has a slick high crotch that he can hit to either side -- but he's working to become a stronger mat wrestler. Despite piling up 80 victories, Hamlin had just one pin in each of his three seasons.
He matched that number at the UB Open in Buffalo on Nov. 6, where he used legs and a power half for a first-period fall over Gannon's Dylan Martin. In all, Hamlin went 3-0 and won the 184-pound title, beating Pitt's Andy Vaughan, 9-3, in the finals.
Santoro said the tournament gave Hamlin a chance to work on his ability to work from the top position.
"It was a great opportunity for that," the coach said. "Once our dual-meet season hits, pretty much every weekend is a battle. We don't know the outcomes. It's not like we have any easy matches. Every match usually goes down to 6-4 or 5-5 with bonus points. That's just the way our schedule is set up, but we do that (to get ready) for the national tournament. This was a nice opportunity for him to get a couple of matches and work on some new things."
As Hamlin sees it, improving his ability to score from the top position is all about helping the team. While he readily admits it would be nice to be able to pick up a riding-time point here or a cheap set of backpoints there in a close match, he knows that those skills mean even more in dual meets.
Robert Hamlin is looking to become Vermont's first NCAA champion (Photo/Tony Rotundo, WrestlersAreWarriors.com)After a 19-1 record in dual meets last year, it's hard to imagine anyone associated with the Mountain Hawks demanding too much more out of Hamlin.
Well, except maybe Hamlin himself. When they first met, Hamlin told Santoro -- a two-time national champion in his own right -- that his goal was to become the first wrestler from Vermont to win NCAA gold. After falling just short last year, Hamlin isn't about to give up on that dream.
In fact, he's hoping that he can achieve his dream and possibly spur more Green Mountain State youngsters to take up the sport. Maybe one day, they'll even take over the Vermonster moniker.
"What I like about it is, when I'm done, it can be kind of passed on," he said of the nickname. "I know programs in Vermont, some of the clubs, want to know, who's going to be the next Vermonster? I think it's awesome. I'd like to pass that nickname on and hopefully someone else can take it in the next few years."
And maybe they'll have to aspire to be Vermont's second national champion.
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