Grafton’s Skebba on road to success
Offensive lineman one of state’s best
Prior to the 2021 prep football season, the Journal Sentinel will reveal the Supreme 17, a look at the top players in the area to watch. Each day between the first day of practice on Aug. 3 to the first day of games on Aug. 19, a different story on a different member of the Supreme 17 will be published. This is the fifth installment.
Nathan Skebba knows a thing or two about paving roads.
This summer, Skebba worked for the Town of Grafton doing asphalting. For 40 hours a week, in the beating sun, that’s where you could find all 6-foot-5, 260 pounds of the senior at Grafton High School. It was fun, Skebba will tell you, and paid well for a teenage summer job, but there’s no way he could do it for a career.
When fall comes around, Skebba trades in the reflective vest for a blackand-orange No. 74 football jersey. There, Skebba rolls over defenders from his position at tackle, contriving a path for his running backs in tow. He’s rather keen on this type of paving.
“I move the other person against his will on every play. That’s what I love doing,” Skebba said.
Unlike asphalting, football, it seems, is the perfect fit for Skebba. From his size to his strength to his personality — ”I’m an a-hole on the field,” he says — to even how his last name (pronounced ski-bah) is the perfect Midwestern lineman name for coaches to shout at practice, Skebba is built to line up in the trenches.
“He is, when we look at our team, part of our recent success and that’s because it’s an entire program committed to the process,” Grafton head coach Jim Norris said. “You love seeing kids that are committed in all facets of their life, from football to school to the weight room to work. That’s what we’re looking for, and that’s absolutely who he is. You can see he has been committed from an early age and wanted to be great.”
A first team all-conference honoree a year ago who holds a Division II Upper Iowa offer and is receiving Division I interest, Skebba showed commitment to his craft from an early age to get him where he is.
The greatest reason Skebba has become one of the state’s premier offensive lineman, he will tell you, is the transformation that took place over the months before his sophomore season.
“I dropped 75 pounds of bad weight,” he said. “I was at 297, went all the way back down to around the teens at my lowest and built myself back up in the weight room. I shaved my 40 (-yard dash) time from the sixes to a 5.3 right now. My agility in the pro agility drive this summer at the Northern Illinois camp was a 4.5-second, which was the lowest compared to all other offensive linemen there.”
Before the 2019 season, during which Skebba was set to become a starting offensive lineman on varsity as a sophomore, Norris had a conversation with Skebba and his parents about goals. They briefly discussed training and nutrition, after which Skebba set out on a mission to transform himself.
“I was getting ready for my sophomore season and after a morning lift, I said, ‘I’m going to start this year. I need to get in shape,’” Skebba said. “I switched my diet around, and did double workouts all summer long. I was dedicated to doing it and to getting faster and more athletic.”
The results showed that fall. “You can definitely feel the quick, snappy movements and how it’s different now,” Skebba said. “It’s not all because of the weight factor, but also the agility I worked on.”
Skebba didn’t stop there. He sought out current Wisconsin offensive lineman JP Benzschawel, who was a year ahead of Skebba at Grafton, and the two matched each other both step-by-step in practice and the weight room.
“Iron sharpens iron,” Norris said. “So when you’ve got two of your best players that committed to pushing each other and making each other better, the effect it has can’t be measured. Nathan wouldn’t be as far as he is today without JP, and I don’t think JP would have been as good without someone else at his level pushing him and challenging him.”
Skebba and Benzschawel have become friends, but it wasn’t always that way. When Skebba was called up for varsity practice as a freshman, he was pitted against Benzschawel on scout defense. Benzschawel, the top-rated senior in the state last year, buried him in the dirt on each of the first three snaps.
“I saw what he was doing and I tried it and kept going over and over again,” Skebba said. “The next two years we went at each other in every drill possible. Nobody else wanted it, but I wanted it.”
Now, there are players on the Black Hawks scout team whose stomachs probably don’t sit too easily when lined up against Skebba.
“There are a lot of things that go into being a really good lineman,” Norris said. “One that we want and that Nathan has is that nastiness. You want an attitude where you’re toeing the line between a really good block and a personal foul, and he’s got that.”
With his senior season approaching, Skebba’s goal is simple: get his backs as much recognition as he can.
“My sophomore season, we blocked for Joey Giorgi and got him the most touchdowns in the state. Junior year, Canon Pfaff had the most yards in our conference. Getting my running back and quarterback those kinds of accomplishments is my accomplishment. Nobody sees it but the offensive line.
“That’s a direct reflection of us.”