Nicole Wood may have finished her first year at university, but there is no summer break on the horizon for the Team Scotland judoka. The 20-year-old is juggling her studies with preparations for her Commonwealth Games debut as she targets success at Glasgow 2026.
Most university students have just started to wind down for summer break, but judoka Nicole Wood is busier than ever. The 20-year-old is getting ready to compete in her first Commonwealth Games, having received a Team Scotland call-up for Glasgow 2026.
Wood grew up in Hertfordshire and trains at the British Judo National Training Centre in Walsall, but her dad’s side of the family hail from Fife. She has just finished her first year at the University of Birmingham studying International Relations, but there is no time to rest ahead of a busy summer.
“We have a two-week training camp in Japan and then afterwards I think I will compete one more time,” said Wood, who competes in the -78kg category. “I'm going to do a Junior Cup because the last time I fought was at the end of April, so it's been a while.”
“I've got a training block in Walsall and then I might come back up to Scotland to do a bit more with the team, then hopefully it's go time. I’m buzzing to get started.”
Balancing an international judo career with a full-time university degree brings several challenges, not least the need for ultra-disciplined time management.
“It has been quite tough,” she said. “I’m on a sports scholarship so they let me get extensions, but I don’t think I grasped how challenging Uni is on top of training and competing.”
“I don’t think I had very good time management, especially in that first semester. I was handing things in late and it was quite stressful.”
“But I spoke to our performance lifestyle support and since then I've been great.”
Competing at the Commonwealth Games is a hard-earned reward for all the early morning training and late-night study sessions. Wood is hoping some of her university friends will make the trip up north to support, and she has plenty of other family members heading to Glasgow.
But just as judo has given Wood the opportunity to compete on the international stage, it has also taught her valuable life skills.
“Judo has matured me,” she said. “It’s a tough sport. It’s quite cut-throat - if you lose in the first round, you’re out. It has helped with Uni because if you get a bad grade, you have to bounce back.”
The 20-year-old half-heavyweight was introduced to the sport at school, before joining the Bishops Stortford Judokwai in Hertfordshire. She has had the same coaches since the age of 12, and is still just as passionate as she was eight years ago.
“It is a very exciting sport and I hope everyone enjoys it as much as I do, and the rest of us do,” Wood said. “I feel like anybody that is new to the sport would really enjoy it if they just gave it a chance.”
“It's really easy to pick up. Because it's quite a niche sport, people think it's very hard to suddenly learn and watch, but the rules are quite simple.”
“You just need to know the three scores and then just watching judo is exciting.”
