Yelm High School class of 2021 graduate Dylan Jemtegaard is making strides in the classroom and on the gridiron as a mechanical engineering student and football player at the University of California-Berkeley.
Jemtegaard, a current redshirt junior for the Golden Bears, was recently featured in the March 2025 edition of The American Society of Mechanical Engineers’ Mechanical Engineering magazine. He reflected on his experiences of leaving small-town life and the support of his family to pursue life as a student-athlete and a mechanical engineering career at UCB.
In the magazine, Jemtegaard said leaving behind the support system of his family and the Pacific Northwest “was no small task.” His experiences at the university, which have included “intense demands, unpredictable changes and moments of profound loss,” have shaped the former Tornado into the man he is today, he said.
In April 2022, Jemtegaard’s father, Shawn, was shot and killed in Hawks Prairie. The former youth football coach was honored in a celebration of life event at Yelm High School on Sunday, May 21, 2023.
“My father was not only a pillar of guidance and strength but also an inspiration to those who got to interact with him regularly,” Jemtegaard wrote in the magazine. “Navigating the grief of such inexplicable loss while balancing the physical-mental toll of football and a rigorous mechanical engineering program was and has been overwhelming at times.”
Jemtegaard said the experience of losing his father gave him resilience and purpose, adding he believes “you can learn a lot about yourself in the way you choose to respond to adversity and how long you allow yourself to lie on the floor when knocked down.”
“It is football where he learned how to handle setbacks with grace and celebrate victories without losing sight of the bigger picture. These lessons have carried over to my studies, where the challenges of undergraduate engineering can feel like marathons of problem sets, late nights, early mornings, and high-stakes exams,” Jemtegaard wrote. “Growth comes from struggle.”
While balancing his college football career with the rigorous life as a student athlete at UCB, Jemtegaard said his experiences in college have sharpened his focus, strengthened his resolve, and given him a deep sense of gratitude for numerous opportunities.
“They’ve also helped me clarify what success means to me: not just personal achievement but contributing meaningfully to those around me and honoring the values instilled in me by my family and community,” he said. “I know that the road ahead will have its own challenges, but I feel ready to face them, equipped with the strength and perspective that my college experience has shown me.”
To read the full magazine article, which included Tufts University’s Haley Leimbach and Cameron Delcristo, UCB’s Will Siemens, Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Ashley Lederman, and Rochester Institute of Technology’s Ella Wilson, visit https://tinyurl.com/MechEngineeringMagazine.
