Engineering Their Olympic Dreams

Team USA gymnast Stephen Nedoroscik, now widely known as pommel horse guy, has gained social media fame as a Superman/Clark Kent, winning an individual bronze medal in pommel horse and aiding the U.S. men’s team to a bronze in the team competition while wearing chunky black glasses outside the gym.

This seems appropriate, as Clark Kent was an alter ego very different from the miraculously capable Superman and gymnastics hero Nedoroscik has a sort-of secret life as an engineer following his graduation from Penn State in 2020 with a degree in Electrical Engineering. He is also an 8.5-second Rubik's cube master and sudoku player.

Nedoroscik isn’t the only member of Team USA at the Paris Olympics with an engineering degree. In fact, while Nedoroscik has his degree, he’s continued to train at Penn State since his graduation in a bid to hone his athletic skills full-time.

However, other Team USA engineers have entered the working world, where they’ve learned to balance work with training while producing results. Swimmer Nic Fink earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Agricultural Engineering with a focus in Electrical and Electronic Systems from the University of Georgia, which he followed with a Master’s in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from Georgia Tech, where he concentrated on systems, controls, and digital processing, according to his LinkedIn profile. He also picked up a minor in Physics while he was at Georgia and was swimming for the school’s swim team.

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Fink, 31, scored a silver medal in the 100-meter breaststroke, missing out on gold by only 0.02 seconds. He trained daily in preparation for the competition while also working as an assistant project manager for Quanta Utility Engineering Services. Fink holds a total of six gold medals, and says that balancing training with work has helped him prolong his career.

“I thought there was a chance that as I dedicated more time into engineering, perhaps my swimming career would begin to sunset,” Fink told NBC News. “But finding that balance has actually helped me in both, and my swimming’s been just as good or better than ever,” he added with a laugh. “It’s been fun to enjoy this part of the ride.”

On the 3x3 basketball court, Team USA player Canyon Barry has maintained a professional basketball career while working as a System Engineer for L3Harris. Barry comes from a basketball family and has three brothers who played in the NBA. His path to Olympic 3x3 basketball includes a  Bachelor’s Degree in Physics from the College of Charleston and a Master’s Degree in Nuclear Engineering from the University of Florida. He is another Rubik's Cube afficionado.

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Barry played basketball for both schools while earning Summa Cum Laude degrees from each with a 4.0 cumulative GPA, according to his LinkedIn profile. He is a co-author of a 2019 paper on graphene oxide. Barry credits learning to balance schoolwork with basketball during his college years for his ability to lead dual lives as a professional engineer and basketball player. “"Being able to balance basketball and the professional world was a direct correlation to the work I did as a student-athlete in the NCAA," Barry told NCAA.org.

Perhaps these stories and those of other professional athletes like Atlanta Falcon’s NFL quarterback Taylor Heinicke will inspire more people to hold on to both their engineering careers and their athletic dreams.