UVU wrestling's program builder retires after 18 years, 45 NCAA qualifiers

OREM — All of his life, Greg Williams has been defined by his wrestling career, from All-American and three-time NCAA Tournament qualifier at Utah State to his coaching career at Sky View High and Elite Wrestling Club and the past 18 seasons as head coach at Utah Valley University.

But the tenured wrestling pro who was the second head coach in Utah Valley University history is trading it in for perhaps a more important title: grandpa.

Williams will celebrate his two-decade career in Orem at the Wolverines' senior-day match Saturday morning against California Baptist (11 a.m. MT, YouTube).

From there, the longtime Utah coach will lead the Wolverines (2-6, 1-6 Big 12) to the Big 12 championships one final time beginning March 9-10 in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and then oversee one last NCAA Tournament run.

Williams has a few side projects planned for his retirement, but they won't involve coaching. Instead, he's looking forward to spending more time with his family, including two daughters and his first grandchild, a girl now 18 months old.

"I'm looking forward to spending even more time with her," Williams told KSL.com before the duel with the Lancers (6-10, 1-6 Big 12). "I'm a family person, through and through. My family has been along for this ride from the very beginning … and my family is going to be a big thing after I retire."

Williams took over the program from former coach Cody Sanderson with three years left in the 2003-04 expansion team's postseason moratorium, when the Wolverines practiced on the balcony of what is now the UCCU Center, moving the wrestling mats into place every day before acquiring their own practice facility on the north end of campus.

Fourteen years since their first national tournament appearance, the Wolverines have placed five All-Americans, including the program's first-ever NCAA semifinalist in 2011 in former Viewmont High star Ben Kjar, along with 45 NCAA Tournament qualifiers, a two-time Big 12 champion in Demetrius Romero, and a program-record six podium finishes at the 2021 conference tournament.

In his time at UVU, Williams' squad has wrestled more than 60 ranked opponents, upsetting seven of them including a win over then-No. 8 Boise State and three top-15 dual meet wins.

But perhaps the biggest moment for the program came in the 2015-16 season, when Utah Valley was invited to join the Big 12 Conference as an affiliate member for wrestling.

The Wolverines joined Western Wrestling Conference foes Air Force, North Dakota State, Northern Colorado, South Dakota State and Wyoming in combining with Iowa State, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State and West Virginia to form the foundation of a league that now stretches from Riverside, California to the upper midwest in wrestling.

"It was huge in recruiting, for wrestlers to see that you're in the Big 12 and wrestling top competition," Williams said. "At the time, we were able to recruit — we eventually moved into the top-six with eight guys at nationals. But the downside has been that we now need to try to keep up with NIL and Alston scholarship money."

Williams said his own wrestlers have seen the allure of name, image and likeness payments being used to transfer away from Utah Valley and the regional training center in Orem with significant sums of money that the program isn't able to support (at least not right now, he adds).

"There's a lot of money in wrestling right now … and we're not at that point yet," Williams said. "But the decisions that the Power Five pass through the NCAA makes things a little harder for programs like us. We just need to raise money to compete in that battle, to some degree."

Instead, Williams took the program as far as it could — and the next step will belong to Adam Hall, the nine-year assistant at North Carolina State who has been the program's associate head coach since 2019, winning five straight ACC championships and piling up recruiting classes ranked as high as No. 1 nationally by FloWrestling and InterMat in 2016.

A former two-time All-American at Boise State and Pac-10 champion, Hall went 30-2 as a senior in 2010-11 en route to a fifth-place finish at the NCAA Tournament, including a perfect 25-0 regular-season before a career that included a fifth-place finish at the 2012 Olympic trials and U.S. Open placewinner in 2013 and 2014.

Williams said he submitted three names to UVU athletic director Jared Sumsion for a successor upon his retirement, and Hall's name was on that last. But Williams also doesn't necessarily plan on offering volumes of sage advice to the first-time head coach.

Mostly, he is quick to say, because Hall doesn't need it.

"He's very clear in what he can do and what he has set out to do with the program," Williams said. "So I probably wouldn't offer him any advice. But what I will do is sit down and talk about how things work here, specifically. There will be some transition conversations, but Adam's always been a high-level technician. … So I would just say, keep doing what you're doing."

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