PHOTOS: PVHS Football star is more than your average lineman

Pahrump Valley High School football star Julio Ackerman is far from your average offensive lineman.

As the saying goes, to be the best, you have to train with the best. That mantra is no stranger to his work ethic on and off the field.

Last weekend, after attending a private camp at the University of Redlands, the six-foot-three, 285-pound junior was contacted by coaches of Princeton and Brown University football programs to attend a “virtual junior day invitation” to get to further know the schools’ team and academic opportunities.

“Being young, his footwork was holding him back but he’s starting to get a lot better, and obviously he’s putting on the muscle that we want to see out of him,” Pahrump Valley High School football head coach Thom Walker said. “And we all know he’s a really smart kid.”

Ackerman, now heading into his junior year, holds a 4.6 overall GPA and recently was not entirely pleased with the score of 30 on his first-time American College Testing attempt.

“I wasn’t that happy with it because it turns out that the ACT is a lot different from the SAT and that was the main thing I was practicing for,” Ackerman said. “So I didn’t really do as well as I thought I would, or I could have.”

Football isn’t something that has always come as easy to Ackerman as school does.

In 2020, during Covid, Julio began playing football to get more active.

“I was kind of gaining some weight from Covid so I started playing football. I began with seven-on-sevens that didn’t work out too well,” Ackerman said. “The next scene I started playing tackle football for Vegas Strong 12 and under. I didn’t really play much seven-on-seven because I wasn’t good at it. But when I entered in, I would play on the line.”

Being able to beat the man across from him is what made Ackerman initially fall in love with the sport.

“I hated the practices. I hated the conditioning,” Ackerman said. “But after some time I started thinking, ‘hey, this is actually pretty fun, even if it sucks it’s all worth it.’”

For the last three years, Julio has hosted his “Julio Ackerman Football Camp” at Pahrump Valley High School’s football field. In the third year of the camp, Julio wanted to change up the dynamics and make the camp more of a combine for athletes to be able to complete their recruiting requirements to send off to colleges.

Ackerman gathered sponsors from Pahrump businesses, including Big 5 Sporting Goods, Pinkbox Donuts, SASA Squad Foundation, Westfield Jewelers, KPVM-TV, Chasing Aces Design, Inspirations Senior Living. Saitta Trudeau Dealership and Pahrump Valley High School.

“The first two years it was more like offensive line camp where we would just work four-column stance and fundamentals,” Ackerman said. “This year we’ve switched to more of a combine for free because a lot of colleges require some of this combine stuff that most people won’t have because it costs a lot of money to go to combines.”

Thanks to Ackerman’s dedication to bettering himself and athletes around him, over 20 student-athletes recorded their 40-yard dash time, measured their vertical and broad jump, 5-10-5 agility times and their 3-cone times to send off to prospective colleges.

“I used to live in Las Vegas for a while and I moved out to Pahrump my eighth-grade year. There wasn’t much here at all training-wise compared to Vegas, where there’s multiple different indoor gyms you can train in year-round,” Ackerman said. “My goal is to get them ready before high school, like how I got ready with my off-season training group so that’s why I’ve wanted to give them that instead of having to drive all the way out there.”

Julio isn’t a stranger to making the trip down Highway 160 over the hill to Vegas as he has been driving to private training drills for over four years with a non-profit group called the SASA Squad Foundation during the spring twice a week.

“It’s made me a lot better as a player. I first went to one of their camps, and that was before I started playing football. I started going every single year, and it would just make me a lot better,” Ackerman said. “I really got a lot better in between that freshman season going from my freshman year to my sophomore year. I would say they helped a lot with with my training.”

The two-time Nevada All-State Academic Team member in both football and wrestling also trains on Mondays and Wednesdays during PVHS wrestling team’s open practices following morning football practice. As a sophomore last year, Ackerman showed an impressive wrestling run, placing sixth overall in regionals.

“I got pulled into it because my freshman year our line coach also was the head coach for wrestling so I ended up joining,” Ackerman said. “I would say it’s helped me in just getting stronger and being more confident with running moves. I got really confident with one move, which is just a roll, and it became my main move.”

Going into the 2025 football season, Ackerman believes that with the new coaches, the Trojans will take the state title.

“Coach Baker and Johnson seem to really know what they are talking about and I’m just really excited for this year to see how everything’s going to play out,” Ackerman said. “We pretty much had the best offense in the league last year because we had the most points and any team that had scored more points than us had more games.”

When asked if Ackerman will only stay on the offensive line this year, PVHS head football coach Thom Walker was adamant about utilizing Julio this season on the other side of the ball more.

“Not having him on both sides is going to be a disadvantage so we’re definitely going to work him in there at tackle to stop the inside run,” Walker said. “His dedication to the town and his school and other kids in the town is great. He isn’t doing this looking for profit. He’s just doing it out of the goodness of his heart and trying to make everybody better. It’s awesome to have that kind of leadership.”

Contact Jacob Powers at jpowers@pvtimes.com. Follow @jaypowers__ on X