Adam Camillo is relentless. On the University of Rhode Island soccer field, he plays left fullback, a position that brings him up and down the field alternating between defense and offense for some 90 minutes. In the classroom, he pursues a Mechanical Engineering degree with the same vigor he shows on the field and consistently scores a place on the Dean’s List.

The junior from Ancaster, Ontario, is silencing the critics who said he could never balance an intense engineering degree while playing Division I soccer.

“I actually like it during the season,” Camillo, 20, says. “Soccer provides a structure and I know I have to get my schoolwork done before practice.”

Camillo’s love has always been soccer. Charging down the field, making a comeback that no one thought possible or going to the A-10 conference finals as the team did last year offers an amazing thrill. But Camillo has found engineering lets him tap into another passion – one to explore, question and create.

Growing up in Canada – where he moved at age 4 from New York – Camillo always wanted to know how stuff worked. He questioned everything and, in high school, discovered a love of math and physics. When he reached college, friends told him to find an easy major and focus exclusively on soccer. Camillo, who attended the University of Memphis before transferring to URI in fall 2013, wholeheartedly ignored that advice and became the only engineering major on the men’s soccer team.

“I’m not going to be a soccer player my entire life and engineering is something I enjoy,” he says. “I’d rather put in a few years of hard work and enjoy my future job than enroll in a major I don’t like.”

At URI, Camillo found a lot to like about his engineering major. The curriculum offers students the opportunity to study a broad array of topics and dig into why things work (or don’t). Camillo credits professors with bringing topics to life and Professor Donna Meyer with making fluid mechanics – typically a dry field despite its name – exciting. That branch of engineering has so appealed to Camillo that he’s thinking about pursuing it further by going to graduate school.

“I want to see and work in the real world,” Camillo says. “But when I do, I want to be really well educated.”

So does he think URI will offer him that by the time he graduates?

“Yes,” he says. “It’s awesome here.”