National champion and three-time All-American Caleb Henson is redshirting for Virginia Tech wrestling's 2025-26 season, the program announced on Thursday.
The two-time ACC champion and has one year of eligibility remaining, and the Hokies are putting their chips in a deep run in 2026-27 with a loaded lineup.
"Everyone knows what Caleb brings to our program in terms of wins and losses and the way that he competes, how he represents us on and off the mat," Tech head coach Tony Robie said in the school's release. "He's really been the face of the program for the past three years. But we've made the decision that we're going to redshirt Caleb this year. … Looking ahead to next year, we could have a really special team — perhaps the best team we've ever had here at Virginia Tech. For us not to try to take advantage of that opportunity, we'd be missing the boat on that a little bit.
A two-time ACC Wrestler of the Year at 149 pounds, Henson became the first Hokie to make back-to-back NCAA finals appearances in the spring. He was 22-1, the best single-season record in school history, which featured 13 bonus-point wins.
Tech's decision to redshirt the No. 1 wrestler in the country is unique, especially when he's in the position to win another national title, but the Hokies are stacking the deck for next season.
On the Hokie Sports Insider Podcast episode with Evan Hughes that dropped Thursday, Robie broke the news that Eddie Ventresca, a two-time All-American at 125 pounds, was approved for a medical hardship waiver and has another year of eligibility remaining. Along with Henson redshirting and being eligible for 2026-27 — he would've been the only wrestler Tech lost to graduation after the 2025-26 season — the Hokies could also return all of their starters next year. That could include the likes of Sonny Sasso, Mac Church, Tom Crook, Jimmy Mullen and Chattanooga transfer Sergio Desiante.
That's on top of adding five top-100 prospects in the 2025 class in Aaron Seidel, Ryan Burton, Collin Gaj, Noah Nininger and Drew Gorman, in addition to Ben Weader. Moreover, Tech currently has the No. 2 recruiting class for the 2026 cycle, headlined by Bo Bassett, the No. 1 recruit in the country. Its other three commits — Revin Dickman, Jonathan Rocha and Alex Rozas — are all top-55 prospects, per FloWrestling.
The Hokies have a pledge from Melvin Miller, too — the top recruit in the 2027 class.
"Caleb's going to focus entirely on developing his freestyle wrestling this year, he's going to go compete with Bill Farrell," Robie told Hughes. "He's going to take some opportunities to go compete internationally. His goal is to make the Olympic team in 2028, so this gives him a year to just kind of focus exclusively on the freestyle with Bryce [Andonian] and Sam Latona and kind of develop in that area, and he's completely bought into that right now. He's excited about then. Then obviously next year he'll come back, wrestle folkstyle, and then hit the freestyle scene as soon as he graduates, and then be all in for 2028.
"He's excited about the plan. He obviously had to be on board with this when we decided, and we kind of floated it to him. I think after he thought about it a little bit, team goals are important to Caleb. Virginia Tech wrestling is important to Caleb, so his legacy is about a lot more than himself here, I think he feels like, and I think he wants to have a legacy where he can look back and know that we did everything we could to put our team in the position to do really, really well at nationals. And we've been good, we've had some good finishes, but I think next year could be special."