From an avid UCLA football fan to now a Bruin standout, Sam Yoon is living the dream.

Yoon has two identifiers that do not typically mix — he’s a student at the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering, and the starting center on UCLA’s football team. He has two passions and found a way to pursue them both.

“I have a lot of engineers on my mom’s side of the family, and I really loved building Legos as a kid. I’ve always been fascinated with figuring out how things work,” said Yoon, a third-year mechanical engineering student.

Yoon started playing football at Loyola High School in Los Angeles where he helped Loyola reach California Interscholastic Federation’s Southern Section Division 4 finals in 2021. While COVID led to cancelled seasons and changes in the recruiting process, UCLA, a school he grew up a fan of, reached out.

“The first time I stepped onto the campus, I was blown away,” Yoon said.

Now a six-time Athletic Director’s Honor Roll member, the 6’5″, 310 lb. Yoon has played in 12 games at UCLA and made eight starts — all at center. Against Iowa last November, Yoon helped the Bruins to a season-high 211 rushing yards while not allowing a sack for the first time in 2024.

Balancing engineering and football isn’t easy, and it requires an enormous amount of focus, dedication, and discipline. But Yoon’s efforts paid off. He was awarded the Ed “Coach K” Kezirian Award for Highest GPA at the annual UCLA Football Award Banquet last year.

“I’ve always been good at managing my time because I was a very good student in high school, as well as an athlete and involved in extra curriculars, but that has been critical here. I don’t have much spare time, especially during the season,” Yoon said.

Yoon jokes about the stress of the 2023 LA Bowl, where UCLA beat Boise State to end its season. The game was on the Saturday of finals week, so Yoon was shuttled back and forth between SoFi Stadium and campus to make sure he didn’t miss any exams. He may have missed a practice or two, but he was able to finish the academic quarter strong. Yoon credited his success to support from his professors. As long as he communicates with them, they’ve been very understanding of his situation.

Courtesy of Sam Yoon

Sam Yoon (far right) and his classmates with their remote-controlled airplane that they built as part of their E96A lab (now E1) 

“I really enjoyed Introductory Thermodynamics with Professor Ravnesh Amar and Introductory Fluid Mechanics with Professor Pirouz Kavehpour. I also had two outstanding math professors, Brian Shin and Richard Wong. I had very good experiences with them both,” Yoon said.

While the Fall is obviously a busy time for Yoon, the Winter and Spring quarters, as well as the summer, offer him the chance to get involved at UCLA Samueli in other ways. Yoon was a member of Fade, a year-long skill-building program that is part of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME). He’s eager to investigate a few other clubs this quarter, but that will all depend on his courseload.

“I’m taking MAE 107 and a few other thermos classes, and whenever I go to the counselors to plan out my courses for the next quarter, they always have 107 and in parentheses next to it “HARD,” when no other courses have any such indicator,” he said.

Yoon has also been able to use his summers to involve himself in exciting research. This past summer, he worked in the complex fluids and interfacial physics laboratory with Professor Pirouz Kavehpour of mechanical and aerospace engineering and bioengineering at UCLA Samueli.

“I had a great relationship with Professor Kavehpour, and I reached out to him because I wanted to be involved in some way and gain experience. He had me do some projects with an amazing Ph.D. student [John Hollister] and I worked closely with them over the summer,” Yoon said.

As a redshirt sophomore, Yoon has two more years of football eligibility, and plans to make the most out of them for his academics as well. Yoon is eager to explore his future, whether or not it’s tied to football.

“I think the biggest thing for me is not knowing what the day-to-day looks like in an engineering career,” Yoon said. “I’m hoping to pursue an internship this summer to explore what industry sector I’d like to be a part of.”

For Yoon, being able to pursue both of his life interests is special to him and is a feeling he will hold onto for the rest of his life.

“Sticking with it thus far has given me confidence that I can achieve great things when I am intentional about them,” he said.