{"id":9961,"date":"2022-06-08T16:01:21","date_gmt":"2022-06-08T20:01:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/2022\/06\/13\/walker-zimmermans-usmnt-journey-how-faith-and-fortitude-helped-him-become-americas-best-center-back\/"},"modified":"2023-03-24T14:21:48","modified_gmt":"2023-03-24T18:21:48","slug":"walker-zimmermans-usmnt-journey-how-faith-and-fortitude-helped-him-become-americas-best-center-back","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/walker-zimmermans-usmnt-journey-how-faith-and-fortitude-helped-him-become-americas-best-center-back\/","title":{"rendered":"Walker Zimmerman&#8217;s USMNT journey: How faith and fortitude helped him become America&#8217;s best center-back"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Nashville SC defender and USMNT member Walker Zimmerman &#8217;15 is set to become the third player in Furman University&#8217;s history to compete in a FIFA World Cup later this year in Qatar. Zimmerman, who played on the Men&#8217;s Soccer team in 2011 and 2012, was the subject of an <a href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/soccer\/united-states-usa\/story\/4681129\/walker-zimmermans-usmnt-journey-how-faith-and-fortitude-helped-him-become-americas-best-center-back\">ESPN<\/a> article, which chronicled his road to the World Cup. Sportswriter Dan Hajducky describes Zimmerman&#8217;s faith, drive to succeed, and generosity. Earlier this year, Zimmerman and his wife, Sally Tucker Zimmerman &#8217;15, an education alumna who holds a bachelor&#8217;s and master&#8217;s from Furman, established a <a href=\"https:\/\/furmanpaladins.com\/news\/2022\/4\/11\/mens-soccer-furman-announces-walker-15-and-sarah-tucker-zimmerman-15-endowed-scholarship-for-mens-soccer.aspx\">scholarship<\/a> for Men&#8217;s Soccer.<\/p>\n<p>Adding to the ranks of Furman players to appear in a FIFA World Cup, Zimmerman, the 2020 and 2021 MLS Defender of the Year, joins Furman Athletics Hall of Famers Ricardo Clark (2010) and Clint Dempsey (2006, 2010, 2014).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Nashville SC defender and USMNT member Walker Zimmerman &#8217;15 is set to become the third player in Furman University&#8217;s history to compete in a FIFA World Cup later this year [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":257,"featured_media":9962,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,3,24,28,43,74,6,1],"tags":[1475,1440,130],"class_list":["post-9961","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academic-department-page","category-alumni","category-athletics","category-education","category-graduate-studies","category-graduate-studies-in-education","category-in-the-news","category-uncategorized","tag-fifa-world-cup","tag-mens-soccer","tag-philanthropy"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9961","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/257"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9961"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9961\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9962"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}