When Nolan Grooms was a kid, he did what most children do for fun – arm wrestle. Back then, he was a hard opponent to beat in the school cafeteria. 

Not much has changed since. 

Except now, not only can no one from the school cafe beat him in an arm wrestle – no one in the world can either. 

Grooms, a Warrenton senior, was recently named the 2025 IFA 78 kg 16-18U World Champion in Baku, Azerbaijan. Not only did the 17-year-old take home one gold medal, he took home two for both his right and left arms. 

“I was crying a lot,” Grooms said. “I had never had that feeling before and I never understood why people cried from happiness, but now I do.” 

A simple activity with his friends at the school lunch tables soon turned into a lifelong passion. 

“I enjoyed it a lot more than any of my friends did and I didn’t know it was a sport at all, until I started doing some research and discovered arm wrestling is actually a sport,” Grooms said.

Nobody taught him the sport. Instead, Grooms taught himself all at the age of 12. 

His entrance into the competition world was unexpected. While he was arm wrestling coach Mark Thomas at his older sister Briana’s state track meet, one of her relay partners noticed. 

“She told me her cousin was a professional arm wrestler and I said give me his number. I’m 12 at the time and I’m texting this 30-year-old man asking him to please help me get into arm wrestling,” Grooms said while laughing. “He was nice enough to send me a couple event flyers and I went to this tournament.” 

Grooms placed second in that first tournament. From that moment, he was hooked. 

“From then on, I’ve just been seriously training these past five or six years,” he said. 

Since then Grooms has become a four-time state champion and a two-time national champion. 

This was just his second time qualifying and competing on the world stage. Last year, he placed eighth (left arm) and third (right arm) in Greece. 

Crazily enough, Grooms medaled third with a broken wrist – something that was unknown to him at the time. 

“For four months, I couldn’t train my right arm and it wasn’t getting better, so I had to contact the promoter and tell them I couldn’t compete with my right arm,” Grooms said. 

He recalled his first day at the world championship as humbling. 

“I had trained so hard and losing like that kind of defeated me,” he said. 

The next day, another competitor from Greece came up to Grooms and asked him to compete with his right arm. 

“He was explaining to me that he can get a scholarship to any college in Greece if he gets top five, but there had to be six countries competing. Since I opted out of right arm, there were only five countries competing. He told me I didn’t have to try but he just needed there to be six countries,” Grooms said. 

Grooms went to the promoter, signed back up and was ready to lay down. Until his dad came up to him 20 minutes before his competition. 

“He’s like go ahead, we flew all the way out here and the fact that I got my butt kicked the day before made me want to get a second shot,” Grooms said. 

With an untrained and hurting wrist, Grooms placed third – and the other competitor got his scholarship. 

With a bronze medal, Grooms headed home only to be put in a full arm cast and six months of no training. 

“I had lost so much strength and my right arm is just now catching up to my left,” Grooms said. 

While Grooms admitted he felt underprepared this year, especially with his right arm, he said he was overachieving all of his arm resting lifts, which made him feel confident. 

As he headed into the championships this year, Groom’s resilience shined through after losing a match in double elimination. 

He preserved and won his next match to advance to the finals. However, the one opponent he lost to was in the finals and he had to beat him twice in order to take first place. 

“The finals were three hours later so I was sitting there for three hours just sick to my stomach and so nervous because he had already beaten me once, but I knew I was so close,” Grooms said. 

During those three hours, Grooms said his dad helped motivate him. 

“He was telling me that I’ve trained so hard and don’t waste it. He knew that I was capable of winning that match because of how close it was, so when I got the win, it was just so relieving,” Grooms said. 

The next day, he competed with his right arm – and dominated. 

“I was so relaxed and I was also confident, and I just won every single match that day,” he said. “I was arm wrestling perfectly because I was relaxed. I also think it also helped me the year prior (when I placed third) because I had nothing to lose and I was going into it basically for fun.” 

With a warm welcome home on Oct. 31 with a community parade to celebrate his achievement, Grooms has felt overwhelmed with the support. 

With two world championship titles under his belt, Grooms has no intention of slowing down, especially with the possibility of arm wrestling being added to the Olympics in the future.  

“I never expected to receive this much support from a sport that people hardly even knew existed, but I’m so appreciative of it. It makes me feel like I’m actually doing this for a better reason and purpose and it’s not just for myself,” he said.