Sports
Athlete of the Week: Meredith Nuber '14
By Cooper Creagan '13, Sports Staff Writer
October 27, 2011
Middle hitter Meredith Nuber ’14 is making a name for herself this season. One would think that scoring 32 kills and making the all-tournament team at the Hartwick College Invitational would be enough for her. But no, Nuber turned around and scored 43 kills at the Continental Classic this past weekend. In short, Nuber is on a roll.
Indeed, volleyball is in this star athlete’s genes. All three of Nuber’s older sisters played, which prompted her to start as early as the fifth grade. Besides having her sisters as role models, Nuber reported that growing up near Chicago didn’t hurt matters, either.
“The Midwest is a big volleyball area,” she explained, adding that there were “tons of opportunities” for her to play.
Though she followed her sisters into volleyball, Nuber is the only one of the four to play in college. After she received a recruiting letter from Coach Erin Glaser, she included Hamilton in an east coast college search that included other NESCACs as well as Boston University and NYU. After falling in love with the “small college feel,” Nuber decided the Hill was for her. A lover of foreign languages and cultures, she is pursuing world politics and German.
Nuber wasn’t the only volleyball player to choose Hamilton that year. She and four other first-years were all new to the team last season and quickly became close friends. Nuber remembered how, going into freshman year, “it was definitely helpful to have a friend base right away.” A year later, she has only become closer to her teammates, maintaining that, “all my best friends play volleyball.”
In addition to her fellow sophomores, Nuber also sings the praises of her upperclassmen leaders as well as the five new first-years on the team. She described her captains Rachel Irizzary ’12 and Alley Martella ’13 as “great leaders on the team” who not only rally their teammates effectively in tough matches but also provide guidance off the court. And while these leaders provide the experience and wisdom that the relatively young team needs, Nuber said that the new recruits add depth that has become invaluable to the team’s success.
However, numbers alone do not make a team, and Nuber knows that being able to depend on your teammates is vital. Fortunately, she reported that she and her teammates “always hang out outside of volleyball.” Nuber described the phenomenon cleanly: “When you get to know people, you can trust them on the court.”
The women’s successes over the past two weekends, not to mention their 17 wins this season, speak to the tremendous trust these athletes have already built.
In fact, Nuber had much more to say about her teammates than she did about herself. When prompted, she maintained that despite her success this season, she is just one part of the larger team. Leaving the leadership up to Irizzary and Martella, Nuber is focused on doing the best she can to contribute to the team’s momentum.
Indeed, the perceptive student-athlete is acutely aware of where the team is and where she thinks it can go. For example, when asked if she thought the team could make it to the NESCAC tournament next season, her response was simple: “definitely.” Given Nuber’s unwavering dedication to her teammates and her sport, one would be hard-pressed to disagree.