Ranked top-5 nationally in two throwing events, Rainier senior track and field standout Jeremiah Nubbe could have gone to nearly any university in the nation. After whittling his choices down to two schools, Nubbe has verbally committed to the University of Texas.
Nubbe vaulted onto the high school scene in 2019 when he captured the 2B state discus title as a freshman. He broke the state junior discus record in April 2021 with a throw of 196 feet.
He is currently the fifth-ranked high school discus and hammer thrower in the nation. His personal-record marks of 200 feet 2 inches in the discus and 224 feet 8.5 inches in the hammer were both recorded in July while competing at The Outdoor Nationals Presented by Nike.
The 6-foot-3 Nubbe last made headlines in July when he was named the 2020-21 Gatorade Washington Boys Track and Field Player of the Year — the first Rainier High School athlete to ever win the award given to the top track and field athlete in the state.
By September, just when his senior year of school was getting started, he had narrowed his choices down to either Stanford or the University of Texas. He flew to both schools in mid-September for official visits and came away wowed with UT’s campus in Austin.
The campus has a cafeteria specifically for athletes, with free, unlimited meals, and it’s located two floors above the weight room. The track and field team gets its own weight room, unlike at Stanford, where athletes all have to share one weight room. The University of Texas also has one of the top throwing facilities in the nation, and is hosting the Division-I Track and Field Championships in 2023.
Just two weeks after his visits to California and Texas, Nubbe had made his final decision and verbally committed to the Longhorns on Oct. 1.
“The initial visit and everything with the application process with Stanford was not exactly what I’d hoped for, so the University of Texas seemed like the best fit,” Nubbe said. “I like the mindset and the straightforwardness of Texas’ coach. I really connected well with that and appreciated that.”
Another big factor was he connected well with the Longhorns’ track and field athletes and coaches he met.
It helps the Longhorns’ throwing coach, Zeb Sion, is also the personal throwing coach of Olympic Gold Medalist Valarie Allman, who won gold in the discus at the Tokyo Olympics in August. Nubbe met with Sion during the official visit.
“Looking at what Sion had to offer, his expertise and the overall success he’s had in the past, I obviously want to be successful, his coaching was a big, defining factor,” Nubbe said.
Nubbe’s decision wasn’t only made from the athletic side. He plans to major in aerospace engineering, and it makes sense to be in Austin, where Tesla is moving its headquarters to. There’s also NASA’s Space Center Houston a few hours east.
“(UT) has a great engineering program; top-10 in the country,” Nubbe said. “It doesn’t have the Stanford name but it’s a better overall choice. With Tesla just moving down, internship opportunities are definitely more abundant.”
Before all that, Nubbe has his senior year to finish up at Rainier. He only competes in track and field, which begins on Feb. 28, 2022, and ends with state in late May. With no state tournament in 2020 and 2021 due to COVID, he’s hoping to add more one discus title to his prep career before carving a new path in the Longhorn State.
