No member of Ohio State’s 2024 freshman class came to Columbus from further away than punter Nick McLarty.
While the rest of the Buckeyes’ newcomers are from all over the United States, McLarty is in his first months living in America after growing up in Melbourne, Australia. Since enrolling at Ohio State this summer, McLarty has had to get used to a 14-hour time difference, meaning his parents have already started a new day when he calls them at night.
That wasn’t an easy adjustment for the new OSU specialist at first, he acknowledged last week. But he says he’s gotten used to it over time.
“The first couple of weeks were not that good,” McLarty said with a laugh at last week’s Special Skills Football Invitational. “But over time, you slowly adjust to it and it's good now.”
While McLarty misses his family and friends back home, he already feels like he has a new family now at Ohio State, where he’ll compete in preseason camp to be the Buckeyes’ starting punter this season. Although he’s never played American football before, he’s expected to be a factor in that competition as the only scholarship punter on the roster.
The 6-foot-7, 255-pound, 20-year-old freshman will compete with fellow Australian punter Joe McGuire and Anthony Venneri, a walk-on transfer from Buffalo, to be Ohio State’s top punter this season following the transfer of another Australian punter, Jesse Mirco, to Vanderbilt.
McLarty says his fellow specialists – even those he’ll be competing against – and Ohio State special teams coaches Gunner Daniel and Rob Keys have quickly made OSU feel like home.
“Coach Gunner and Coach Keys have done an amazing job with me,” McLarty said. “All the specialist group has been really, really helpful towards me. Joe McGuire, another Australian punter, has helped me through the process as well, so all those guys.”
A former Australian rules football player, McLarty has gotten a taste for the difference between American football and Australian football during summer workouts. He says the workouts are “a lot different” than what he’s used to, but he doesn’t feel as though he’s had much trouble getting up to speed.
“It's a lot more speed, it's a lot more sprinting. In Australia, there's a lot more long distance running,” McLarty said. “What we do in the weight room and what we do on the field is very different to what we do in Australia. But the adjustment's pretty easy. You just got to make sure you keep up with it.”
Aus Ohio #buckeyes @nflaussie pic.twitter.com/D2NtmrTfgv
— Nick McLarty (@nick_mclarty) May 30, 2024
McLarty has said from the day he committed to Ohio State that he aspires to be OSU’s No. 1 punter right away. But he’s taking the same approach now as he was then, which is doing what he needs to do one day at a time.
“You just got to take it day by day,” McLarty said. “Got to make sure you're doing the work. Make sure you're doing your recovery. That's probably the main thing. The coaches are always going to make you work in terms of on the field and in the gym, but outside of that, you still got to stay in that professional mindset.
“So right now, it's just enjoy the process, take it day by day and I just look forward to fall camp, really. And that's where we can sort of show off and have a bit of fun.”
McLarty says he’s making sure he’s putting in a consistent level of effort in summer workouts while also making sure he does what he needs to do from a nutrition and recovery standpoint to give himself the chance to perform at his best each day.
“Honestly, it's just do your nutrition, do your weightlifting. Make sure you're putting in that effort,” McLarty said. “We have a grading system in terms of our effort that we put in and making sure that that's just high. And then afterwards, make sure you do your recovery. Make sure that if we're not kicking that day, we've got to do our kicking, we've got to do our mobility. We've got to do all that sort of stuff. There's ice baths, there's all the recovery stuff. So just make sure you keep up to date with it all.”
“Right now, it's just enjoy the process, take it day by day and I just look forward to fall camp, really. And that's where we can sort of show off and have a bit of fun.”– Nick McLarty on his mindset entering Ohio State‘s punting competition
McLarty got a sense of just how much it means to be a Buckeye during the Special Skills Football Invitational, where he was among the Ohio State football players who helped coach special needs athletes during a two-hour football camp at the Woody Hayes Athletic Center. Seeing how much it meant to them to be able to spend the day with the Buckeyes showed McLarty the impact he can have not only on the field but off the field in Columbus.
“The whole point of me coming over to this country was to just sort of help out younger kids. So to have the opportunity to come out here and actually be able to spend time with kids, it's a great, great, great place to be,” McLarty said. “I don't think you truly realize how much of an impact you have until you have something like this day where kids are coming up to you, they're smiling to see you, they want autographs. And they just want to spend time with you. And it doesn't matter what you're doing, if you're doing the 40-yard dash, if you're running around cones, it's got nothing to do with that. It's just got to do with the connection between the players and the kids.”
In a literal sense, McLarty is now half a world away from home. But there isn’t anywhere else he’d want to be as he begins his college football career.
“I'm loving it,” McLarty said. “It's a whole different environment to what I'm used to in Australia, so just trying to make the most of it. It's a great group that's going to do a lot of good things this year.”
