UTPB football player splits time as nursing student

ODESSA, Texas (KOSA) - The UTPB football team is coming off its best season in program history. Running back Adrian Walker is setting a new standard as well, in the UTPB School of Nursing.

“This is the first time that I know of that we’ve had a football player,” Dr. Sherron Franks-Meeks, one of Walker’s professors, said. “It’s exciting.”

“It’s always been a passion of mine,’ Walker told CBS7. “Growing up I always took care of my little sister. I could see a person anywhere, and I’d want to help. So I just feel like this is what really suits me.”

I asked Walker if teammates give him a hard time about wanting to be a nurse.

“They make fun of me. They call me ‘Nurse Walker’ all the time,” he laughed. “I don’t think I even hear my name ‘Adrian’ anymore. It’s always fun. It’s all love inside the locker room.”

However, the workload Walker handles is no joke. In addition to his clinical rotation at the hospital and class, Walker has practices, workouts, film study and works another job.

“Hopefully I can motivate others,” Walker said. “When you have something that is strenuous like nursing and something that is strenuous like football, you can have both. You don’t have to pick one or the other.”

“He’s going to make a great nurse,” Franks-Meeks said. “He loves going to school here. He loves the program. He loves the prospects of his future. That excites him beyond belief. In turn that is exciting for me, because I get to see somebody who is going to make an amazing difference in the world.”

Walker may be the first Falcon to go from the gridiron into the clinic, but he probably won’t be the last.

“I had another player talk to me like ‘I’m thinking about joining nursing, how is it?’,” Walker said. “I’m like bro you can do it. And if you need me, I’ve got you.”

“Come on!” Franks-Meeks encouraged. “We need more men in the profession. The more people from different backgrounds that we have, the better we’re going to be as nurses.”

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