Dubuque adds Olympic medalist Carr to staff

One of the most decorated wrestlers in Iowa State history is staying in Iowa for his next coaching stop.

Nate Carr Sr. has been hired as an assistant coach for the University of Dubuque women’s wrestling program, Director of Athletics Michael Feuling announced. Carr joins the staff of first-year head coach Fernando Villaescusa, who took over the Spartans on Sept. 1 after six seasons on the Iowa State staff.

Villaescusa said Carr’s arrival rounds out the staff he set out to build.

“Adding Nate Carr to the coaching staff makes University of Dubuque Women’s Wrestling an immediate destination for elite athletes to join a championship culture,” said Villaescusa. “We are truly blessed to have completed what in my humble opinion is an elite top tier wrestling coaching staff. … The Carr family legacy of winning is alive and well here at University of Dubuque.”

Carr won three straight NCAA titles at 150 pounds for Iowa State from 1981 to 1983. He also captured two Big Eight Conference crowns and finished his Cyclone career with a record of 122-17-1, according to the National Wrestling Hall of Fame.

Internationally, Carr made the U.S. senior world team in 1983 and 1990. He won the World Cup and the Pan American Championships in 1986, then claimed a bronze medal at 68 kilograms at the 1988 Olympic Games in Seoul. He added a gold medal at the 1990 Goodwill Games.

Carr was inducted into the National Wrestling Hall of Fame as a Distinguished Member in 2003. That same year, he also entered the Iowa State Athletics Hall of Fame, the Eastern Wrestling League Hall of Fame and the Iowa Wrestling Hall of Fame. He was inducted into the Pennsylvania Wrestling Hall of Fame in 2000.

Wrestling success runs deep in the Carr family. Carr grew up as one of 16 children in Erie, Pennsylvania, where he won a state title at Erie Tech High School. Five of the Carr siblings, Nate included, became NCAA All-Americans, an NCAA record, and two of them, Nate and older brother Jimmy, competed in the Olympics. The family received the Bowlsby Family Legacy Award in 2020.

The legacy has carried into the next generation. Carr’s son David won NCAA titles for Iowa State in 2021 and 2024, and as a senior in 2023-24 helped the Cyclones win their first Big 12 team title since 2009 and place fourth at the NCAA Championships.

Carr brings a lengthy coaching resume to Dubuque. He spent 13 seasons as an assistant coach at West Virginia, where he was named the 1991 national assistant coach of the year by the National Wrestling Coaches Association. The Mountaineers produced two national champions and 10 All-Americans and won two Eastern Wrestling League dual-meet titles and an EWL tournament title during his tenure.

Carr was also the head coach at Perry High School in Ohio from 2015 to 2018. The Panthers won two Federal League team titles under his guidance, and the program produced four Ohio state champions.

Most recently, Carr spent eight years as associate director and coach of the Cyclone Regional Training Center in Ames, Iowa, beginning in 2018.

Carr earned a bachelor’s degree in sociology from Iowa State in 1985 and a master’s degree in guidance and counseling from West Virginia in 1991.

Dubuque, an NCAA Division III member of the American Rivers Conference, added women’s wrestling in 2022 with world champion Dennis Hall as the program’s first head coach. Villaescusa is the second head coach in program history.