The native of Maldonado in the South American country of Uruguay, Nolles has earned his second straight College Sports Communicators Academic All-America honor.

The 2024 Paris Olympian has a 3.74 grade-point average (on a 4.00 scale) in athletic coaching.

He was a seven-time All-American at the NCAA Division II Championships held in Evansville, Indiana, about seven weeks ago in the first half of March. And he also posted two gold-medal victories with five total medals at the Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference Championships a month before that in early February.

After all that competition wrapped up, he was honored with his second GLIAC Commissioner’s Award, the league’s top award that combines athletics and academics, and received one of two GLIAC Pat Riepma Postgraduate Scholarships, providing a $5,000 stipend for the award winner to attend the graduate school of his or her choice.

Northern Michigan University’s Leo Nolles, center, leaps from the starting block at a Wildcats men’s swimming and diving meet held against Wisconsin-Green Bay at the PEIF pool in Marquette on Jan. 20, 2024. (Photo courtesy NMU)

Over four years swimming at NMU, he attained All-American status 21 times, earning three top-three medals at the D-II Championships, also earning 19 GLIAC Championship medals with eight event victories. That doesn’t even get into all the school and pool records he’s broken.

Along with all this dedication in the pool and in the classroom, Nolles has given back to our community in a number of ways — regularly volunteering with Special Olympics, where he teaches and coaches specially abled athletes in swimming and resistance training; engages with the Northern Center for Lifelong Learning to share his experiences as an Olympic athlete with older adults; visiting the Beacon House of Marquette to cook and socialize with families in difficult situations; volunteering at the Marquette Marathon with aid stations; volunteering to work at NMU sporting events; and even raking leaves at Marquette-area elementary schools with his teammates.

Going back to 1952 and selected by the CSC, Nolles joins an all-time list of more than 44,000 Academic All-Americans that includes major sports stars and some of the world’s most accomplished individuals in medicine, business, science and the arts.

Just from the Northern men’s and women’s swimming and diving programs, he joins four other athletes with CSC Academic All-America honors in the past three years, a time period when 14 other swimmers and divers have earned CSC Academic honors, about half getting that award multiple times.

Story contents based on a

Northern Michigan University Sports Information press release reviewing the honor. Journal Sports Editor Steve Brownlee’s email address is sbrownlee@miningjournal.net.