Few athletes have taken a career path as unconventional as Victor Glover’s. After graduating in 1994, he enrolled at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, where he competed as an NCAA Division I wrestler and also played football. Within a few years, Glover had stepped away from sports to pursue a new field altogether.

Glover is now in the news for NASA’s Artemis II mission, where he is set to make history as the first African-American of color to orbit the Moon! This mission is the first crewed flight to the Moon in 54 years since Apollo 17. It was launched on April 1, 2026, with four astronauts on a 10-day deep-space flight that was intended to test spacecraft technology and prepare for future trips to the moon.

The crew includes Commander Reid Wiseman, Mission Specialist Christina Hammock Koch, and Mission Specialist Jeremy Hansen. So, what exactly is Victor Glover’s role?

Well, he serves as the pilot of Artemis II. After all, a U.S. Navy captain from Pomona, California, Glover has dreamed of becoming an astronaut since childhood. Fortunately, he was selected as a NASA astronaut in 2013, chosen as one of eight from a competitive field of more than 6,000 candidates while serving as a Legislative Fellow in the U.S. Senate in 2012.

Speaking about the mission, Victor Glover explained, “We’ve had 25 continuous years of humans in low Earth orbit on the International Space Station…we’re testing the Orion capsule. We’re testing the suits. We’re testing the landing and recovery procedures. We’re testing the flight control team. And it’s a much more hostile environment because we’re so far from home.”

But does that mean that Victor Glover has left sports in the process? Not quite, he just developed a different course.

Sports laid the foundation for Victor Glover’s journey

Victor Glover graduated from Ontario High School in 1994 and earned a Bachelor of Science in General Engineering in 1999 from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. He played two sports at Cal Poly, wrestling with the Mustangs and playing football as a defensive back with No. 23. He even became part of the wrestling team when he won sixth place at the CIF State Championship in high school.

He earned the title of Athlete of the Year in 1994 for his performance in football. Looking back on his college experience, Glover told Cal Poly Magazine in 2025, “This is truly my original launch pad. Cal Poly is the reason that I’ve been able to do some amazing things.”

After graduation, Victor Glover transitioned from athletics to the skies by joining the U.S Navy. He became a naval aviator and got his wings of gold in December 2001. He flew more than 3,000 hours and landed on more than 40 different aircraft, and passed the U.S. Air Force Test Pilot School and became a test pilot.

In 2013, while serving as a Navy officer and legislative fellow in Washington, Victor Glover earned selection to NASA’s Astronaut Group 21. He completed his astronaut candidate training two years later, in 2015. His first spaceflight came in 2020, when he piloted NASA’s SpaceX Crew-1 mission to the International Space Station.

Victor Glover spent 168 days in orbit conducting experiments, managing technical operations, and completing four spacewalks. In that time, he became the first Black astronaut to serve on a long-duration mission aboard the International Space Station. Who knew that the mindset he forged on the mat and the field would later guide him among the stars?