You may know Jack Tucker as the big kid who likes to lift weights, but there is to him than meets the eye. I sat down with Jack and discussed football, wrestling, and what else there is to know about Jack Tucker.

My first question for Jack was outside of football what does he enjoy doing? Tucker said, “ I enjoy playing Pokemon online, I play the DS games and competitively.” Well, what is his favorite Pokemon? Tucker said, “ There’s definitely a lot of good ones but I have to go with Golurk as my favorite.”

My next question for Tucker was sports related, Jack is a two-sport standout in football and Wrestling, this year he was voted a captain by his teammates in football and I asked what that meant to him. Tucker said, “It means a lot to me that people recognized my hard work from last year and that they decided I should be a leader. My expectations are that if we continue to work hard and put in effort day in and day out we will reach our goal again.” That goal, of course, being getting back to the state championship.

Last year Tucker played nose guard on the defensive side of the ball. Since Elder had one of the best offensive lines in the state last year and lost a majority of that line to graduation, Tucker was asked to make the position change to offensive line this year to help beef up the offensive front. I asked Jack if this position change was difficult for him. Tucker told me “the position change hasn’t been that hard for me because I knew I would be doing it at the end of last year, so I knew what to expect from it”.

I asked Jack about his recruitment in both football and wrestling and whether or not he wished to continue athletics in college, Tucker said, “ I will continue athletics in college but I would almost certainly focus on one of the two sports, as of now I’m most interested in wrestling in college and I am most likely going to wrestle at Thomas More University.”

I continued by asking if he were to receive D2 or FCS interest for football would he go that route? Tucker said “that depends on where the school was and how much tuition would cost and if they had the major, I wanted, but it is possible yes.” That prompted me to ask Jack which major he intends to pursue, Jack told me he was going to major in exercise sciences with a minor in business.

My final question for Tucker was regarding his dad and having him here as an authority figure is there any added pressure to perform both in the classroom and on the field? Tucker said, “There is some pressure to it, but I motivate myself enough so that my dad doesn’t need to be too concerned with my success.”

It was great getting to catch up with senior Jack Tucker and wish him and our panthers nothing but the best of luck and success going forward, and we will see if Jack and the Panthers can get back to the state championship this year.