BVU Senior Eyes Upcoming Spring and Fall Football Campaigns
After fall contact sports were postponed due to COVID-19, Eric Pacheco is looking forward to an abbreviated spring football campaign followed by his senior season next fall for the Beavers.
A semester that started with Eric Pacheco receiving a figurative gut punch ends with a feeling of optimism. For a senior football player nearing the end of his collegiate career, he stays positive, focusing on the promise of a new set of downs.
Eric Pacheco was set to become Buena Vista University’s all-time leading wide receiver as he drove east on Interstate 80 the morning of August 10. The Kearney, Neb., native was on his route to Storm Lake to help lead his final BVU football fall camp.
His phone buzzed with news. Bad news.
“I was halfway to Storm Lake when the announcement came,” Pacheco says of a bulletin detailing how BVU would join the American Rivers Conference and the rest of NCAA Division III football in postponing the traditional fall season to spring, an effect to the COVID-19 cause.
“The games this spring will give us added experience and will allow us to mold our freshmen into the team. By next fall, we should have a roster of 80 to 90 guys ready to compete. This ultimately could be a blessing for our program.”
Eric Pacheco
“Getting the word was tough,” Pacheco says. “You work out all summer and get ready for the culmination of three years’ worth of work for your last season and then it’s postponed because of a virus.”
Pacheco proceeded to BVU. He joined the Beavers in meetings with coaches as they embarked on a plan to hold practices and workouts as classes commenced. The two-time First Team All-ARC wideout and Second Team All-American is also a “first-teamer” in the classroom, having earned a 4.0 grade-point average the past two semesters as a kinesiology major.
“It would be great to someday serve as a physical therapist for a professional or collegiate football team,” he says.
Until that time, however, there were third downs to convert, kicks to return. So, Pacheco’s off-season workout regimen continued as he started class. A setback occurred when he contracted COVID-19 in early September. Pacheco drove home to quarantine and recuperate while attending classes online.
“I felt fatigued for a couple of days when I got the virus, and then I lost my senses of taste and smell,” he says, noting that his symptoms didn’t go much beyond that level. “My taste and smell still aren’t fully back to normal.”
Pacheco endured the virus, returned to campus with a clean bill of health, and continued his role as a leader who looks forward to an abbreviated three-game football schedule this spring, starting on March 27 when the Beavers host Simpson College at J. Leslie Rollins Stadium. That shortened season, a campaign that doesn’t cost him a year of eligibility, will serve as an extended training camp of sorts in which the Beavers can ramp up for the 2021 fall slate.
“The games this spring will give us added experience and will allow us to mold our freshmen into the team,” he says. “By next fall, we should have a roster of 80 to 90 guys ready to compete. This ultimately could be a blessing for our program.”
Coach Grant Mollring agrees with Pacheco’s assessment about the spring season. He’s also thrilled to have his senior able to return for a final autumn on Peterson Field.
“The development as a player, a person, and a leader is exactly what we seek for every student-athlete in the BVU program,” Mollring says. “Eric was a multi-sport athlete in high school, and a very good one.
“He came here and focused on BVU football. He spent more time in the weight-room and devoted so many hours in learning even more about the game and what would make him—and his team—better,” Mollring continues. “The knowledge Eric shows, the example he sets as a leader, and his work in the classroom all combine to form an incredible trajectory from the day he first came to campus to his senior year.”
Pacheco, who plans to continue workouts while living and working in Storm Lake this summer, will take physics next fall while completing his senior capstone. He’ll graduate in December 2021, then set his sights on PT school.
If he breaks records at BVU along the way, all the better. Pacheco says the stats will take care of themselves. What he seeks are the key numbers on the scoreboard when the time shows 0:00, those reflecting a BVU victory at the end of each Saturday.
“I took a visit at BVU and kind of knew then that this would be the place for me,” he says. “I remember showing up for my first fall camp and seeing the field from the sky boxes at Pierce/White Hall. It looked amazing.”
The view grew even better on Pacheco’s first career touch, one in which he fielded a punt, broke free from a would-be tackler and sprinted for a touchdown, the first for one of BVU’s all-time best.
Eric Pacheco prays he's not had his last.