Late November, the school announced that a special guest will be showing up to speak at an assembly. That special guest is known to be  as 3x world champion wrestler and a MMA fighter Matt Hamill “The Hammer”

With the help of SWHS ASL teacher Mr Grant, he invited Matt Hamill to our school and held a
meet and greet for the students during our lunch hours. Matt Hamill goes around the US, and visits schools to share and express what he had to go through growing up deaf. His main goal making these events for schools is to motivate the kids and encourage them that anything is possible. The days that he was here he spent his afternoon with the boys and girls wrestling teams and practiced with them, showing some moves and talking sports with them.

“They want to participate in wrestling and they want to go drill and go to clubs, and the only way to improve is to use drills in order to improve your skills and your technique,” Hamill said.

During the assembly he started off with explaining why and how he got into the sport of wrestling. After
his parents found out that he was deaf, they didn’t know what to do  for him. Drs and friends suggested
sports and as a kid he fell in love with wrestling out of all sports. He explained how at first it was difficult
to train with his trainer but the learning part of the actual moves came to him fast. High school is where wrestling really became part of his life and how the overall experience was a blast for him.

“ I made a lot of friends through the wrestling program,” said Hamill. He said, who wants the students to feel like they can enjoy their activities too even if there’s problems in their way.

With the help of sports, Hamill really dove into the  school aspect of his experience. the staff and his classmates learned to communicate with him and how not giving up to accomplish the hard parts of school “My accomplishments through wrestling and that would help me improve and be ready for the next levels to move up. But I’ve gone way beyond. The first time in history, no other that has gone that far. So I’m really blessed that I’ve been working really hard, and I’m really proud of myself going that far,” Hamill said.

By being deaf, everything he’s had to go through hasn’t been as easy as it sounds, but he didn’t want to let the not being able to hear part get in his way to work and achieve his goals in life.

“suffer and go through the mistakes and everything, and then I would review and go through the process. I wanted to improve my mistakes, so the more I made mistakes, the more I could learn, and then the more I could improve.” Hamill said.