WATCH: Florida Tech’s Scholar-Athlete Spotlight Recognizes Lacrosse Player Brennan Banks

Banks is majoring in Ocean Engineering

ABOVE VIDEO: Florida Tech Panthers Lacrosse Player Brennan Banks

BREVARD COUNTY • MELBOURNE, FLORIDA – Being a scholar-athlete at Florida Tech takes an incredible amount of hard work and dedication to excel both in the classroom and on the field.

In this Scholar-Athlete Spotlight, we feature Panther men’s lacrosse player Brennan Banks, a senior midfielder who is majoring in Ocean Engineering.

Originally from Columbia, Maryland, Banks has appeared in all 27 games over his first three seasons as a Panther, recording three goals, three assists, 30 ground balls and nine caused turnovers.

He also serves as the President of Florida Tech’s Student-Athlete Advisory Committee and has previously been named to the Sunshine State Conference Commissioner’s Honor Roll and Florida Tech Athletic Director’s Honor Roll.

With so much on his plate, we sat down with Brennan to ask him how he makes it all work, his plans after graduation and his thoughts on the 2022 season.

What’s your major at Florida Tech and why did you choose this? Is it something that you’ve always wanted to be a part of?

My major is in Ocean Engineering and yes, definitely something I’ve always wanted to do.

I’ve always been really interested in the environmental sciences, and I’ve always seen it as a way that I can use my education to give back and help out people and communities.

When I first started looking at Florida Tech for lacrosse, I did a lot of research into Ocean Engineering and I was really drawn into the coastal sciences field.

What was it about Florida Tech that drew you here?

Definitely the unique opportunity to study engineering and play lacrosse at a competitive level. The location is also really great for my major and what I’m interested in studying for coastal engineering

How do you plan to use your degree after graduation?

Hopefully, I will go on to become a professional engineer. And I plan on working on projects like beach restoration and port/harbor design and coastal policy as well.

What are some of the exciting projects that you’ve been able to work on in classes here?

So my favorite project that I’ve worked on so far was last summer, my classmates and I completed our senior ocean engineering design project, and presented it at the Ocean Engineering and Marine Science Department Summer Symposium.

My team and I completed our project on a wave generator for Florida Tech’s newly constructed 85 foot-long wave tank and this project was really rewarding.

I learned a lot about the design process, and it was really cool to see the final product and have something physical that we could show to our classmates and our professors and family and friends.

I got to work on it with some really close friends as well, which was really, really fun, including some fellow Florida Tech student-athletes, including Ben Komita from the men’s rowing team and Caroline MacLeod on the women’s lacrosse team, which definitely helped the teamwork part of the project, which is always really important for any successful project.

What was your favorite part of the project?

My favorite part of the project was our four-day research cruise down to Fort Jefferson and Key West.

This cruise was really fun, we got to go on it with my team and we learned how to use a bunch of oceanographic instruments.

We used them to map the seafloor and search for shipwrecks, which was really, really cool to see with your own eyes. It was a really great experience because using these instruments adds a lot of value to your resume and your skill sets.

This is stuff that you really can only learn by gaining open water experience.

Being the President of SAAC, what would you consider to be the biggest responsibilities of the position?

I think the biggest responsibility of being the president of SAAC is trying to actively promote our image around campus and to the community.

We all have really, really busy schedules and, we’re all super understanding of that. But whenever we have our meetings, they’re always very productive. It’s very rewarding to see the final outcomes of our community events or social media campaigns.

So how do you manage all of it once you’re in season?

It can definitely be very challenging, especially when you know we get into our traveling part of the season.

But I wouldn’t be able to commit myself to all these things if I wasn’t passionate about them. Not to mention my coaches and professors, who’ve always been very understanding and very willing to work with me and my schedule.

How has being a collegiate athlete prepared you for what you’re doing now and what do you take from lacrosse that you apply to your studies?

I think the biggest skill that I’ve learned from across and have been able to apply in the classroom is the teamwork aspect of things and being able to lead your team through the chaos.

It’s pretty rare that you’ll have a practice or a game go completely your way and being able to navigate through that is a really important skill to have.

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