MORGANTOWN — West Virginia defensive lineman Nate Gabriel started playing college football at 17, which is unusual because most college athletes and students start at 18. Gabriel was a 3-star out of Florida and, at 19, is now a veteran on the team in his third year. Usually, a veteran is in their 20s.
“Coming in about two and a half years ago, never would have thought that now everybody’s calling me unc, even though I’m only 19,” Gabriel said. “But, I guess I kind of took that role, but I’m not really mad at it. Gotta be the older guy. Gotta be an example to these young guys.”
Even at 19, Gabriel has a lot of work to do, being one of the more experienced players on the team. WVU added almost 50 freshmen this offseason, so there are a lot of players who’ll look up to him.
Gabriel has been in their shoes and knows it’s hard to adjust to the next level, even if some of them were stars in high school. At some point, they’ll all have their “welcome to college moment.”
Gabriel remembered his moment very vividly.
“During practice, I don’t know why I was playing three tech, but I’m playing three tech; I’m usually a nose guard,” Gabriel said. “Tomas (Rimac) and Wyatt (Milum), they were on the same side and took me for a ride, 10-15 yards down the field. I really felt that.”
Gabriel is still learning a lot of the freshmen’s names, and some of them haven’t even arrived yet this spring. Gabriel knows his defensive line room and is expanding out to the rest of the position groups.
Gabriel isn’t drawing attention with a loud voice. He’s leading more by how he conducts himself on the field.
“I want to be an example,” Gabriel said. “I want to make guys see me. I want to be a visual example to the guys. I’m not really vocal. I’ll talk to guys, like on the side or in the locker room, but I want guys to see what I do and follow my lead.”
Gabriel played in his true freshman season. There aren’t a lot of freshmen who see action in Year 1. He played 128 defensive snaps and finished with nine tackles, including assisting on a sack. Gabriel made his debut in the final year of Neal Brown, so there were high expectations for that team, and he still saw the field.
He recalled that the hardest thing about playing as a true freshman was learning the playbook. This year’s freshmen have a lot of homework, and so do the new transfers on the team. When asked about any new player, Rich Rodriguez concludes his update with they’re “still learning.”
“I was a freshman at the time, and I didn’t know better,” Gabriel said. “Now, I’m definitely getting to learn the playbook better, just being in college more. I guess I’m getting used to college playbooks. It’s just how it is, growing up. Being a freshman, playing, I really felt that pressure. I had my welcome to college moments, but everybody has that. I felt my freshman season could have went better, but as a freshman, what I did was decent.”
A lot of the freshmen won’t play in their first season. Rodriguez talked about how he doesn’t recruit players with redshirting them in mind. But the reality of the situation is that some of them will redshirt.
For the ones that will play, Gabriel is a leader and a good player to learn from.
“I feel playing that young, I have more experience than most guys,” Gabriel said. “Being that young, getting thrown in that fire, having that pressure on me early made me more prepared for better years.”
