ENGINEERING ATHLETES
REDEFINE ROUTINE
Tackling advanced coursework amid demanding schedules is a challenge for any college athlete. Those student-athletes who pursue an engineering degree need uncommon focus and discipline.
Written by Cathy Cecere
COMPETING AT THE COLLEGIATE level requires the utmost commitment from student athletes, plus the ability to execute precision moves and make quick decisions to deliver on the field. The same qualities that allow students to excel in sports are often the very same that allow them to simultaneously pursue difficult degrees such as mechanical engineering.
For some engineering student-athletes, choosing between competing in the sport they love or diving into the intricacies of complex engineering problems is an impossible task. For Julian Ashby, a Vanderbilt University long snapper, that was never a choice. And for the University of California, Berkeley’s Filippa Isabel Ljunggren, the heavy load of competing at a great school while pursuing engineering is not a burden but rather a “dream come true.”
When they graduate, Ashby and Ljunggren will join the nearly 200,000 U.S. student graduates who are conferred a bachelor’s or master’s degree in engineering each year, according to the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System. Moreover, these students are among the elites who pursue one of the most difficult degrees: mechanical engineering. Of the nearly 36,000 students graduating with that degree—an already exceptional group—many are also athletes competing in extremely competitive National Collegiate Athletic Association sports.
AMONG THE BEST
Student athletes face a unique set of challenges. Those striving to excel both in the classroom and on the field face rigorous academic coursework amid demanding athletic schedules. To excel, they must be self-motivated and have exceptional time management skills. These disciplined individuals learn to become experts in organization, dependable teammates, and eager consumers of skills that will come in handy in future careers.
For running back Christian Francisco, his passion for football continued at the collegiate level when he became a walk-on at Rice University, which was one of just a handful of top-ranked educational institutions competing in the highest level of collegiate athletics. Indeed, this magna cum laude graduate who completed all his major requirements for a bachelor’s degree in just three years was one of only 33,000 Division I football players nationwide.
“Initially, I did not know if my dream of pursuing both endeavors at the highest level would be possible. Many of my college prospects would have offered top-notch education but lower-level football. Others competed in Division I but would have required me to settle for an average engineering program,” Francisco explained, pointing out that there are only 10 STEM majors on the Rice football team in any given season.
After he was accepted to the university as part of the regular decision process, he reached out to the football recruiting coordinator. “The only open position was running back, a position I had not played since elementary school,” the Rogers, Ark.-native explained. As a walk-on, he had to prove himself, all while the high school quarterback tackled a demanding engineering curriculum and, early on, worked six different jobs to help pay his way through school.
Since joining the American Athletic Conference in 2021, Francisco battled through two knee injuries to earn his first playing time in 2023, and in 2024, he was named a semifinalist for the William V. Campbell Trophy, college football’s premier scholar-athlete award. This honor came just a week after the mechanical engineering major with a 3.95 GPA caught his first career touchdown pass.
Part of the UC Berkeley Women’s Rowing team, Filippa Isabel Ljunggren begins her days training at Briones Reservoir in Orinda, Calif. Photo: University of California, Berkeley
NAVIGATING PROJECTS AND SCHEDULES
Francisco’s experiences with injuries and rehabilitation intersected with his studies working on his senior capstone project. “Our [team’s] challenge was to create a portable, bed-level rehabilitation device for post-operative, bedridden orthopedic surgery patients at MD Anderson [Cancer Center] in Houston,” he explained.
“This device would allow patients to get moving, even while stuck under bed rest orders, helping to decrease muscle atrophy and cardiovascular complications, ultimately helping patients return home sooner and decreasing the chance of readmittance or further complications,” he continued. “My knowledge of both human physiology and exercise equipment machines helped us to have an upper edge in designing a feasible and effective device.”
Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT) Emiko Pope also took her cue for a research project from a personal injury. The soccer player decided to analyze a prevalent problem in this sport’s community. “When I got a concussion my sophomore year, I asked the doctor treating me if wearing a concussion headband would be helpful,” the St. Louis, Mo.-native explained.
Pope indicated that the doctor didn’t know but attributed his lack of knowledge to the fact that there was “little research on the subject.” So, she decided to investigate the situation.
“After collecting data simulating concussions and testing multiple concussion headbands, my data revealed that certain concussion headbands can reduce the force of direct impacts by up to 80 percent,” Pope said.
For Ljunggren, who recently joined startup Fuse as a future fusion engineer, rowing began in high school in Menlo Park, Calif., where she was one of only five students who traveled to Boston to compete in the prestigious Head of the Charles Regatta. The competition bug bit her during that experience and quickly took its place in her plans for college. She decided to become one of only about 5,000 Division I women competing in the sport of rowing.
Now a senior at UC Berkeley, Ljunggren explained that she has sketched dozens of force-body diagrams of boats in her physics classes, calculated the flow velocities and densities, and found the lift and drag of hulls in fluid dynamics class, all of which relate to the dynamics of a rowing boat moving through the water.
“I think about why a rowing boat is shaped the way it is and the carbon fiber material that contributes to the speed of the hull,” she added. “Besides this, I even took an ocean mechanics class where the terminology we learned at the beginning of the course is a part of my everyday vocabulary. Words like port, starboard, bow, and stern are vocalized by the coaches and the coxswains every morning on Briones Reservoir.”
SOFT SKILLS
Athletic engineers quickly learn how to communicate ideas, share the load and the successes, and take on organizational tasks under pressure. These skills are learned both on and off the field of play. Minneapolis native Kevin James Armstrong explained his family instilled in him the importance of “working as hard as possible in everything I do.” Because of this, he can attest to the fact that “challenges bring out the best in our performance.”
The first-year student, who plays men’s basketball for UC Berkeley, explained: “the ability to operate under pressure in games and practices is the same ability I use when studying and preparing for midterm and final exams. On the flip side, the ability to quickly grasp engineering concepts in the classroom also helps me quickly understand defense schemes and scouting reports against opponents.”
Pope agrees that engineering and sports are very complementary. “Mechanical engineering is not as rigid or linear as many people think it to be—there are many creative ways to solve the same problem,” said Pope, who is one of about 11,000 female soccer players competing in Division III. She added that her sport follows this same principle. “With enough practice and experience under your belt, you can build your ‘soccer IQ’ so that you can be thrown onto the soccer field in any situation and still excel,” she said.
This strategy gave Pope the ability to solve problems anywhere on the field, to adjust and adapt just as she had to when presented with problems in the lab. It also enabled Pope to play nine out of 11 possible positions on the soccer field. In fact, this approach also led to her being given the nickname, “Swiss Army Knife,” because she was able to adapt to any situation.
“Being an athlete helps me in my engineering studies because it provides structure to my day and forces me to be productive,” said Ljunggren, whose Golden Bears women’s rowing team was recently part of a perfect sweep at the California Challenge Cup. “Starting my morning being active has always allowed me to stay focused and motivated in school throughout the day.” Her schedule does not allow for procrastination either. Rowing may help her to “decompress when on the water,” but it also forces her to use her time more efficiently, she said.
WHAT’S NEXT?
For Pope, soccer at MIT has taught her that to have joy you need to work with passion and purpose. She plans to take her enthusiasm for space exploration and mechanical engineering to ispace, a company working with the Charles Stark Draper laboratory to deliver payloads in support of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services Program. With lift-off slated for 2026, Pope is looking to join a “vibrant team with the mission of landing a commercial lunar lander on the moon.”
Likewise, Francisco will be taking his problem-solving skills to his new job at Boston Consulting Group. “My ability to achieve a common goal in high-pressure, time-sensitive scenarios that require us to rely on one another to execute our assignments will help me collaborate with a team and apply my leadership skills to group settings,” he said.
For Ashby, a career in mechanical engineering may have to wait since he plans to enter the National Football League (NFL) draft and eventually play professional football. He transferred to Southeast Conference football from Furman University and is now ranked among the top 10 long snappers in the 2025 NFL ranking.
“You know, the combination of mechanical engineering and playing football creates a pretty busy schedule, and so to manage that, I think I have to do a lot of compartmentalization,” said the Lilburn, Ga.-native. When he’s practicing or playing football, that's an opportunity to “focus on football and give all of my attention and effort there and then.” The same thing happens when he is in the classroom. “I've got to be focused in on my lectures. If I'm wandering or thinking about our game plan or my training, then I'm going to miss all the material,” he said.
Ashby enjoys the cool intersection of disciplines—of being a student and being an athlete. “Vanderbilt's a really kind of unique place where there's at least four or five of us [on the football team] who are studying some discipline of engineering,” he explained. “When I came to Vanderbilt a year ago, I started my master's degree here in mechanical engineering, and so I have about two semesters of that left. But my college football career is essentially over.”
Although he has used up his eligibility, Ashby plans to continue training and preparing throughout the spring for the chance to play in the NFL.
“The way that I see it is, I'll give my all to that training and playing football at the professional level. And if I don't get the opportunities there, then I'll still be able to come back to Vanderbilt, finish my master's degree in the fall, and proceed with a more traditional professional career,” he said.
Cathy Cecere is membership content program manager.
“I honestly love football,” explained Julian Ashby, long snapper for Vanderbilt University and mechanical engineering student. Photo: Vanderbilt University
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