By Jeff White (jwhite@virginia.edu)
VirginiaSports.com
CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — At 6-foot-3, 255 pounds, Jeremiah Nubbe does not lack brawn. As an aerospace engineering major, he has plenty of brains, too, and that occasionally poses problems for Nubbe, according to his throws coach in the University of Virginia track & field program.
“He’s almost too intelligent,” said Brandon Amo, who previously coached at Harvard.
“I tell him a lot, ‘Hey, I want to zap your brain a little bit and make you a little dumber.’ But, yeah, coming from Harvard, you got to work with really intelligent athletes that also had other interests outside of their sport, and with athletes like that, you always felt like you were learning from them,” said Amo, who’s in his second year at UVA.
“They were always teaching you something new or teaching you something different, and he’s cut from the same cloth. I think the big thing with him is making him not think as much, making practice enjoyable, making it fun, making it not a math equation.”
Nubbe, who transferred to UVA last summer after two years at the University of Texas, is a 4.0 student. He acknowledges that his analytical nature “can be a blessing and a curse. As an athlete, one of the issues that held me back up until this point was overanalyzing and getting too focused on those details that can kind of overload the way in which you approach practice. to where you never really make proper changes because you’re so focused on so many of the smaller things that are important but should be left to the coach. Not to make it sound kind of dumb, but sometimes thinking less is actually much better.”
His results this winter speak to his improvement. In his debut as a Cavalier, Nubbe set UVA and ACC records in the weight throw, an indoor event. At the Virginia Tech Invitational in Blacksburg last month, Nubbe recorded a throw of 23.94 meters (78 feet, 6.50 inches), breaking the program record held by Jordan Young (22.92m/75-2.5). NC State’s Josh Davis had set the ACC mark in 2018 with a throw of 23.83/78-2.25.
“He’s been an incredible person to coach,” Amo said of Nubbe. “I think usually when you have talented athletes, the biggest issue you run into is they’re not coachable or they think they know it all or they’re stubborn. But I think with him, he came here extremely receptive to coaching, extremely receptive to wanting to get better, and extremely receptive to just trusting me as…