Military service runs in Adrienne Eckstein’s family and now she will be continuing that legacy.

Eckstein, a senior at St. Aloysius High School, has been accepted into the Air Force Academy where she will begin her career in the armed forces.

Eckstein will follow in the footsteps of her parents, who are both in the Army, and her brother Luke, a 2015 St. Al graduate, who is currently a cadet at West Point.

“Being in the military has been a dream of mine,” Eckstein said. “Both of my parents are in the military and my brother. It is a pretty big influence. It has been a part of my life and we moved around living on different bases so I got to see what the military is all about and it’s something I appreciated.”

Eckstein said she was attracted to the Air Force because of her desire to become a pilot after graduation.

The fact that she has a brother who is already attending a military academy will pay dividends for her because he has been able to tell her what she can expect life to be like at the academy.

“I think I know what will go down a lot more,” Eckstein said. “He is at West Point so it is not the Air Force, but it is really similar with how they are structured. They have a lot of the same training ideas. I knew what I was getting into and I knew it was something I could handle and wanted to do.”

Eckstein said her parents fully support her decision to attend the Air Force Academy, but the choice to join a different branch than the rest of the family has already created a rivalry that will pit her against her parents and brother.

“My parents said they would be with me 364 days of the year,” Eckstein said with the lone expectation being the day the Air Force Academy and West Point play football.

The U.S. Air Force Academy is located in Colorado, just north of Colorado Springs.

Eckstein made a trip up there last summer to get a feel for the school while participating in a summer program. She will report to the school June 28

“The first summer is pretty intense,” Eckstein said. “It is to get you used to military life. They call it beast and it is six weeks. You learn the military discipline, there’s a lot of PT, you learn how to use a weapon and just get used to military life.”

Eckstein plans to study civil engineering with a focus in environmental engineering before becoming an Air Force pilot.