Victor Glover is the first black astronaut to travel to the moon. But apart from scripting this milestone achievement, he was also quite the footballer on the gridiron when he was younger. Glover, among the 4 astronauts in NASA’s Artemis Mission, left Earth on April 3 and is expected to fly by the moon on April 6. What’s special about Glover is that he is a former college football player and an NCAA wrestler, and people couldn’t stop reacting to that unexpected background.

Who is Victor Glover?

Born in Pomona, California, in 1976, Glover moved to Ontario with his family and attended high school there. Early in his career, Victor found his calling for sports and became a multisports athlete. He not only played QB in high school, but also was deployed as a running back, as he won the Athlete of the Year honors in 1994 at his high school. Glover was also flexing skills on the mat, building a budding wrestling career. He finished sixth in the California State High School championship.

Despite a keen interest in sports, Glover always had a flair for engineering. Glover’s grandfather served in the Air Force during the Korean War but later faced many roadblocks and couldn’t pursue an aviation career. But after his fifth-grade teacher noticed that he was good in math and science, he was told he’d make a “good engineer.” At that time, Glover had no idea what that meant. But the “seed was planted,” he told Cal Poly Magazine.

When his college days neared, Glover’s father encouraged him to pick a school that gave him everything he wanted: engineering, football, and wrestling. That brought him to Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, where he enrolled in 1996 for a degree in general engineering. From here, he began his journey to space, while also dabbling in athletics.

How was Victor Glover in college as a player?

On the gridiron, Glover played as a defensive back for the Mustangs, wearing jersey No. 23. Not much is known about his football career, but his coaches still remember him for the way he carried himself. When Glover was at Cal Poly, the team’s head coach was Andre Patterson, who is now a member of the New York Giants’ staff. He knew that Glover would achieve things in his life someday.

“He may not have been the fastest guy out there or the most athletic guy out there, but he was going to succeed since he was the best technician out there,” Patterson told The Athletics. “That’s who he is at his core.”

Wrestling, however, challenged Glover. He told The Athletics that wrestling then-head coach Lennis Cowell was the “second-hardest” thing he chose to do in life after walking in space. To this day, he remains active in the Cal Poly circuit as an alumnus, speaking at graduations and also interacting with the current wrestling teams. His journey is inspiring lots of young minds.

What did Victor Glover say about his Artemis II mission?

Looking back now, Glover has been nothing but thankful to Cal Poly for providing him the platform and propelling him to where he is today. While at the university, he entered the US Navy’s Baccalaureate Degree Completion program in 1998, which allowed him to pursue his degree while training for the Navy. In 2003, he joined Strike Fighter Squadron in Oceana and was deployed aboard the USS Kennedy for the Iraq War.

Glover applied to be an astronaut for NASA in 2013 and was among 6,400 applicants. Out of this large number, only eight were chosen for this special career, and Glover was a part of this fortunate group. In 2018, Glover went to the International Space Station, becoming the first black astronaut to live and work aboard the ISS, where he was till 2021. Now on a new mission and creating history yet again, Glover has a message for the country.

“If you think about when we did this, the first time in Apollo, 1968, it was a tough time in the country,” Glover said to The New York Times, referencing Martin Luther King Jr and Robert F. Kennedy’s assassinations. “And I hope that we can create a touch point for our generation that’s equal to or maybe there’s a path to be even greater than because it’s current and it’s ours.”

Glover is well aware of his place in history, representing his community and country. But he prefers to take a wider view. Something that encompasses all of humanity and serves a greater cause in human history.