Struggle and Triumph

As the new general counsel for the Carolina Hurricanes, Nigel Wheeler ’15L has fulfilled his dream of a legal career in professional sports.

BY KATIE DOAR

Wheeler got the job after investing in a new house in Dallas. He had an infant and 4-year-old child. Add the impending pandemic to that scenario, and the timing couldn’t have been worse.

But in many ways, Wheeler expected that. “I’ve always been a big meditation guy,” Wheeler explained. “And I’ve studied the careers of a lot of different people in the sports world. I’ve learned that, if you have an opportunity, it’s going to be terrible timing.” learned from studying athletes. “A lot of [athletes] talk about visualizing what they’re going to do before they are going to do it, he said. “And it seems that the mind can’t separate fantasy from reality.”

He often works with West Indian immigrants and, as necessary, can converse in Jamaican patois or in French. “I’ve found advocacy to be better where clients think, ‘Hey, you look like me. You just have a suit, and you’re going to help me,’ ” he said.

Buckmire treats his clients the way he treated his former soccer teammates and views his court trials like matches.

“With teammates, you develop a sense that you would bleed for that person. If you’ll bleed for your client that way, then getting only 10 hours sleep in a week as you prepare for a case is nothing special, particularly if you have the law and the facts on your side,” he said. “The adversarial system reminds me of what I lost in not being a soccer player anymore. Preparing for a trial reminds me of training for a tournament — it’s that same competition that was bred into me.”

NIGEL WHEELER ’15L started working as general counsel for the Carolina Hurricanes at the beginning of the pandemic. So, in addition to dealing with normal legal issues, such as property law and contracts, he writes COVID-19 disclaimers and serves as the team contact tracer.

Working in sports had been Wheeler’s dream since he entered law school, but getting a job was not as easy as he expected. “I had tons of rejections,” Wheeler said.

After graduation, he took a job in mergers and acquisitions before shifting to public finance, but he still imagined himself walking into the office he wanted — another skill he

Wheeler made dozens of connections with people who could help him. He learned how to network at W&L Law and noted that, for him, this was the school’s biggest value. “Every interaction you have at school — with faculty, folks in the Brief Stop and other students — will easily translate into every other professional networking experience,” he explained. “When I meet people, I really try to get to know them. You can learn so much from how someone describes the things that they love.”

Wheeler was a guest on the official podcast for the Carolina Hurricanes, called “Canes Cast,” which has a series that seeks to “amplify Black voices” within the hockey league. In the podcast, Wheeler suggested that hockey needs to become accessible at a preprofessional level if the sport wants to diversify on the ice and in the front office. Fees for ice time and hockey gear can be prohibitive.

But if more and more adults and children are invited to play or enjoy the sport, Wheeler imagines that it will take off with all kinds of people.

On the side, Wheeler — who took jobs in broadcast journalism all over the U.S. after college and toured the world with a reggae rock band — has his own podcast, called “Struggle and Triumph,” about people who worked hard to get where they are, and people who have “crashed and burned.”

Now, after years of working and dreaming, he’s become the general counsel for a national sports team.

Struggle and triumph, indeed.