It’s 11 p.m. on a Tuesday, and Micah Hach’s phone buzzes. He’s hungry. He’s thirsty. He wants to eat, but he can’t: he’s still five pounds overweight with a match days away.
Assistant wrestling coach Cody Caldwell texts back, telling Hach he can’t, but he’ll be alright. Micah will come in early the next day to run, get a cardio session in and then he can eat and get some water.
This is the reality for the SDSU freshman who has chosen a path almost no one takes anymore: competing in two Division I sports simultaneously. At 6-foot-5, Hach splits his time between the offensive line for football and heavyweight wrestling, two physically demanding positions.
The weight fluctuations alone tell the story. During football season, Hach reached 315 pounds. But when wrestling called, he had to drop to 285 pounds to compete. Hach got the call on Saturday night to show up Sunday morning, not knowing he was about to cut twenty-two pounds in just five days.
“It was probably the most brutal weight cut I’ve ever had to do in my life,” Hach says.
Both wrestling and football coaches admit they’ve never had anything quite like this. Football head coach Dan Jackson has had track athletes cross over, but never football and wrestling.
“This is probably the most challenging two sports I think you could do,” Jackson said.
Wrestling head coach Damion Hahn has never had a heavyweight attempt this feat in college. Yet both are all-in on Micah.
“He has the talent to play in the NFL one day,” Jackson says. “I think he could be an All-American football player.”
Hahn sees similar potential in Hach on the mat.
“He’s going to be able to chase down some of his goals with us of being an all-American national champion,” the wrestling coach says. “But when you have a dual sport athlete, and those are his goals, and we believe he can obtain those, it’s special.”
The son of a father who drove him across the Midwest for wrestling tournaments and a mother who supported him at every turn, Hach has been in both sports for eleven years. His Uncle Isaac, who played in the NFL, inspires him to pursue football seriously, but wrestling has always been his first love.
“You’re asking me to cut out a piece of my heart and hand it to you,” Hach explains about choosing one sport over the other. “I’ve made so many relationships around both of those sports. I’ve learned so much about myself from both.”
Hach is now participating in spring football drills with teammates. He switched from wrestling almost immediately after the season ended with the NDSU dual.
“I’m loving (spring football) and trying my best to get better every day,” Hach said.
The Jackrabbit spring football game is scheduled for April 18.
The sacrifice is real. While other students are going out, Hach’s life revolves around practice schedules, weight management and studying for his business economics major. He switched from mechanical engineering after realizing the workload was incompatible with two sports.
His dorm room has become a sacred space: no homework allowed, just decompression. He schedules study hours at the library or athletic facilities, maintaining strict physical separation between work and rest.
“You need to give yourself time to relax and decompress,” Hach says. “The physical separation helps keep it more stable.”
His teammates have rallied around him. Football teammates attend his wrestling matches; wrestling teammates understand when he’s absent. When Hach faced a family emergency this fall, both teams supported him through it.
“He’s done a good job at coming to the offensive meetings that he can,” Jackson says. “Just trying to show him support by being there for him.”
Hach didn’t play in any football games this season as a redshirt freshman, but he impressed coaches in practice. In wrestling, he posted several pins and only three losses despite joining the team mid-season and competing against ranked opponents.
The doubts creep in constantly. Hach admits he questions his decision all the time: “I’m constantly worried that it’s gonna hold me back in one way or another.”
But he trusts his coaches to tell him if it does. He has a clear mantra, borrowed from strength coach Morris: “Push all your chips to the middle.”
“At every moment, you have to be ready to put everything on the line,” Hach says. “Everyone here is behind you, supporting you. You just need to be ready to put everything in the middle.”
As for the future? Hach wants to start in a football game next season. He wants to keep winning in wrestling, and he wants to prove that in an era of extreme specialization, there’s still room for athletes who refuse to choose.
“I’m gonna push it for as long as I can,” Hach says. “I’m going to keep going with it until I physically can’t.”
When asked if he’d make the same choice again, his answer came without hesitation: “I wouldn’t change it for the world.”
