For WVU’s Ja’Quay Hubbard, all the hard work and self-sacrifice have paid off

Many moons ago, Hubbard was a 6-foot-4, 400+-pound high school freshman in Hermitage, Pennsylvania. He was still athletic enough at that size and age that he started on the varsity football and basketball teams for Sharpsville High School, but he realized if he was going to achieve his dream of earning a football scholarship to a major college, he had to get in better shape.

“I was always a dancing bear – maybe a dancing whale,” laughed Hubbard. “Right now I’m down to about 320 with way more mobility and way more strength. I have photos that pop up on my phone, and I look at them and think, ‘That guy would never be here right now.’”

Hubbard’s progress has not been an easy one. It has taken a lot of hard work and self-sacrifice to get where he’s at now – a 6-foot-5, 320-pound starting offensive guard at West Virginia.

“Football saved my life,” stated Hubbard. “You would think I would have been thinking of the health factor in trying to lose the weight, but for me, I knew I wanted to get recruited. I had some (coaches) who told me, ‘If you lose weight, I’d love to recruit you.’ I had been chasing that dream, and I decided I wouldn’t let fried chicken get in the way of my scholarship. Let me buckle down and go get some cantaloupe or something.”

As his conditioning and body composition improved, Hubbard’s opportunities on the field also increased greatly. After starting his college career at the University of Virginia in 2019, he transferred to WVU the next year. But through the Covid season of 2020 and his redshirt freshman campaign of 2021, Ja’Quay saw minimal game action. In 2022, though, he put himself in a position to earn a starting role at right tackle. Last year he moved inside to right guard and while he only started four games there, he was a regular in the Mountaineers’ offensive line rotation.

This season he’s trying to cement a full-time starting job at right guard. All that on-field success has come because of his hard work off the field

“I was never losing weight to become a supermodel,” chuckled Hubbard. “I just wanted to be a great offensive lineman.”

Part of that effort involved a change of scenery. After spending his true freshman year at Virginia, where he appeared in two games for the Cavaliers, he decided to make a switch and become a Mountaineer.

“I loved UVA, but West Virginia was the right move for me. It was the best decision I ever made in my life,” he said of his choice to transfer to WVU.

At West Virginia, Hubbard has not only found success on the football field but also in the classroom. He obtained his bachelor’s degree in communication studies in the spring of 2023 and now is working on his master’s in sport management.

He’s also been part of the WVU’s Chambers Elite Climbers two-year program where student-athletes gain experience and knowledge in things like technology, finances, entrepreneurship & innovation, community service and career preparation. For a couple of weeks in the summer of 2023, he and a group of other Mountaineer football players in the Chambers program studied abroad, meeting with various business leaders in Europe.

Hubbard has accomplished a lot since his days as a hefty ninth grader. Now he wants to finish his college career on a high note, and he feels the 2024 Mountaineers are capable of doing just that.

“This team loves each other. We feel unbeatable,” Hubbard stated. “The 5-7 season (in 2022), on paper we should have had a way better record than that. We had to go back to the drawing board and say, ‘What’s going on?’ Obviously, last season (9-4) was better with nine wins, but we want even more this year – we’re looking for Dallas (site of the Big 12 championship game).

“We’re on a mission this year. This is my last season, as it is for a lot of other guys, and it’s championship or nothing for us.”