Air Force Academy – Shaun Carney had to leave the ground to do it, but he found something he considered even more exciting than starting a football game against Notre Dame.
The Air Force senior quarterback took a major step toward entering pilot training on Friday when he completed his first solo flight in the academy’s flight screening program. He piloted a DA-20, single-engine training aircraft. When his solo time in the air was over, Carney compared the experience to playing football.
“You get the same kind of jitters,” Carney said. “This is a little more nerve-racking because this can be life or death. On the football field, it’s about pride and trying to win games. Both are amazing feelings, but it’s really two different ballparks. Here, it’s just you and the plane. In football, you have a lot of people around you.”
Carney said the landing and maintaining the right distance from other aircraft in the area were the most nerve-racking parts of his first solo flight.
Carney, a three-year starter for the Falcons, plans to complete the six-week program by Aug. 1, when new coach Troy Calhoun will call his first AFA team together in preparation for the 2007 season. Teammates Chad Hall and Julian Madrid are in the program, too.
As he did with the academy’s football coaches, Carney has impressed his pilot instructors.
“He’s been one of my best students,” said Capt. Linda Thorstenson. “We find that athletes pick up pilot training a little better. They have that hand-eye coordination that’s so important. If they can’t get through this, the Air Force won’t send them on to pilot training.”
Carney said he had no plans to become a pilot when he entered the academy, but the idea grew on him over the years.
“I’m enjoying it right now, but we’ll see,” Carney said.
Carney has mixed his pilot training and football preparations in what he called a typical Air Force Academy day.
“Sometimes it a bummer to get up at 3:30 a.m., but that’s what I had to do,” Carney said. “I had to be down here by 4:30. We had quizzes on various types of aircraft and we tried to get up in the air at least once every day. We’d do our mission and then go to football about 3:15. We’d work out and watch films until about 7. I’d be in bed by 9:30, get up the next morning and do it all over again.”
There will be one difference in the days ahead.
As with tradition, Carney got “dunked” Friday after completing his first solo flight. He was ceremoniously deposited into a big water tank. The cool water might have washed away any remaining jitters, but he won’t be subject to initiation into the solo club again.
Staff writer Irv Moss can be reached at 303-954-1296 or imoss@denverpost.com.
