Student-Athlete Feature Of The Month: Zac Epperson

CHASING DREAMS: FROM MILITARY TO THE MOON

Just about every little boy has big dreams of becoming a hero one day. Some little boys dream of flying commercial airplanes or military fighter jets. Others dream of being an astronaut and walking on the moon. And some, at one point or another, dream of being a soldier, fighting battles to protect their country.
Samford pole vaulter Zac Epperson is still dreaming those dreams.

The junior Birmingham native has his eyes set on all of those goals and is taking big steps to accomplish them while getting an exceptional education and competing in Division I athletics at Samford University.

As if he didn't already have enough on his plate with academics and athletics, the junior Mathematics major joined Samford's Air Force ROTC during his sophomore year of college. As a kid, he had always wanted to be in the military. It's a personal belief of Epperson's that one should serve time in the military for at least a little while. His dream had always been to be a fighter pilot in the Air Force, but one thing stood in his way - his eyesight.

Epperson had worn glasses for a while and knew that with them, his chances of being a fighter pilot would be slim to none. However, when he met with the admissions officer for Samford's AFROTC, they told him he could get his eyes fixed and still accomplish his dream.

Epperson joined up and now just a year and a half into the program, he has received one of the greatest honors a cadet could receive.

A few weeks ago, Epperson was accepted to participate in the Advanced Course in Engineering (ACE) Cyber Security Boot Camp, starting June 1. Ninety-nine cadets from across the country were hand-picked based on major, GPA (Epperson has a 3.19), and a ROTC qualities report done at boot camp. Out of those 99 cadets who fill out applications, 25 people were chosen including Epperson.

The program is a 10-week long camp in Rome, N.Y., in which cadets learn how to defend the nation's defense network. The cadets will learn how people hack into computers and how to stop that from happening. At the end of the course, the participants will be broken up into teams to play war games in which they will try to overtake the other teams' computer while defending their own.

Epperson also has been a part of a very successful vaulting group at Samford over the last three years. As a freshman, he won several vaults throughout the indoor and outdoor seasons and was an All-OVC honoree for his third place finishes in each of the conference meets. As a sophomore he continued his success, bettering his personal performances each week. Now, as the Bulldogs are bringing the 2010 indoor season to a close and are preparing for the outdoor season,

Epperson has contributed to one of the most successful men's vaulting seasons in recent history at Samford. The Samford men have dominated the event in every meet over the indoor season, sweeping the top three spots everywhere they go.

There is one thing that ties all of these things together for Epperson, one thing that is the link between academics, athletics and the military.
Discipline.

"I learned discipline with track before I ever learned it with military," Epperson said. "If you are a student-athlete, you've got to have all of your boxes checked and your ducks in a row when it comes to being focused because it's going to be hard if you don't."

Epperson says his plan after college is to get a pilot slot in the Air Force, become a fighter pilot, get a doctorate in Mathematics and use all of those things to get an astronaut candidate slot. Math is one of the few majors that is accepted for the slot and his hope is that with the doctorate and the fact that he can fly a very fast airplane, he can do what every little boy dreams of - go to outer space.

"It's the ultimate," Epperson said. "You can't go farther faster. And if I fall short, at least I tried. And, you know, someone's got to do it. It might as well be me."