Introduction
Hey everyone!
My name is Luke and I’m a 22-year-old recently retired triathlete from CT. I’ve spent the past six years racing on the world stage and am incredibly grateful for the opportunity I had to wear the Stars and Stripes. I’m hoping to continue representing the U.S. in a more impactful, service-driven capacity as a pilot in the ANG.
I’ll be graduating next spring with an undergrad in Human Systems Engineering (3.6 GPA) and hope to be ready to submit applications by January of ’27. As for flying experience, I’m about 30 hours into my PPL and am loving the process.
While I remain open to all locations and airframes, I would love to fly F-35s on the East Coast and eventually take a role in CCA development (given my academic background). Not sure if this is feasible in terms of workload, but I would be interested to hear how current/former ANG pilots have managed technical or defense-adjacent civilian roles outside of traditional airline careers.
If there are any coaches or community members with an athletic background, I would love to chat! I want to carefully consider how I frame my story in applications and interviews—specifically how the characteristics of high-performance athletics translate into unit culture and the cockpit.
lukeanthony Welcome to BogiDope! Sounds like you are well on your way to building a solid application. Hit us up via a DM if you want to discuss more in depth.
Also, I am not an "athlete" per se, but you can be a retired triathlete at 22?!
Welcome lukeanthony
It's funny you asked the question this way. My favorite phrase (that my kids eyeroll) when someone was struggling or doubted themselves was to "go be an athlete and figure it out." Let's be honest, everyone is not an athlete, and that's ok. You don't have to be. But the spirit behind my words are: go put in the effort to get better, find a solution, control the things you can control, don't whine or play the victim, and prove that your name belongs in the conversation. It's a mentality. To be a (successful) military aviator, playing with tax-payer funded toys, bringing lethality to the enemy's doorstep, and being an incredible instrument of power...you better damn-well prepare/play/improve like an elite athlete!
As you progress in this process, you'll learn insights from people's experiences to manage two careers. We are hosting a Webinar on September 2nd with that exact title, so be sure to tune in! You'll find the right balance between flying and doing the civilian job. Keep in mind that if selected to UPT, your civilian career will be put on hold for a few years while you go through training and gain initial experience in the jet. Lastly, selling yourself on paper and in the interview is exactly what we focus on in our 1-on-1 consultations and BogiDope Bootcamp programs. Everyone has a story to tell with remarkable achievements, the key is finding the right way to present it...and that's where we can be incredibly helpful.
We are looking forward to working with you and seeing you around the community!
lukeanthony just DM'd you. Happy to talk about the athletics stuff and tying that into all of this from my own experience.
Hey Luke nice to meet you! I’m definitely interested in hearing how former/current pilots have handled a more defense contractor career and still managed their pilot responsibilities. By the way I’m working on one of the CCA programs right now as a flight test engineer! It’s pretty exciting stuff
Hey Luke! Sounds like you have lots of good help from everyone else, just wanted to add one quick note I didn't see mentioned elsewhere. I was a rower and triathlete in college, definitely not near your level but was well enough conditioned that it led to a few weird moments at my flight physical- things like a low resting heart rate that make sense to us but can apparently raise concerns without that context. I bring this up all to say don't worry if you get to do a few extra tests or have to do flutter kicks while they do an EKG... they're just being thorough. With that said, if anything serious does come up, there's a couple of coaches here that have professional experience with the medical side of things and would be a great resource.
And regarding the non-airline civilian jobs, I can't speak to that firsthand (yet... I'm still in training) but do know a couple guys at my unit that work in the technical/defense/engineering fields on top of their pilot duties. Understandably, the big defense companies tend to want to maintain a military-friendly image, so they seem to generally play nice with guardsmen/reservists. I'm sure the specifics of that could look different depending on the company, role, etc. and you may have to say no to some of the cooler but more demanding opportunities in favor of a position that doesn't overwork you to the detriment of your flying ability. But overall, it seems absolutely possible to, in some capacity, spend your weekdays getting paid to design cool flying machines and your weekends getting paid to fly cool flying machines.
