Emily Larrier marvels at the similarities between her son and her late husband.
Damon Larrier’s engaging personality, ever-present smile and penchant for diverse interests were passed down, even if Zac was too young to remember the father who was taken before his third birthday.
“For him not to have had his father in his life for very long, he’s very much a piece of his father,” said Emily, the “over the moon” proud mother of Zac, Air Force’s starting quarterback and Mountain West track champion.
“Things he says and behaviors he has are just like his dad. Those genetics are very strong.”
Emily knows she contributed some of those genes. A collegiate runner at Youngstown (Ohio) State whose strongest event was the 400 meters, she was so excited when Zac latched onto that race and became a California state champion in high school.
“Maybe he did get something from me,” she said. “My husband didn’t like running more than 5 feet in front of him.”
But Emily’s hand in Zac’s upbringing stretches well beyond pitching in on his plentiful physical gifts. And not a single bit of that is lost on her son.
“I think about it all the time,” Zac said in an exclusive interview with The Gazette. “I already feel like I’m pretty motivated, but it just makes it easy to work hard.
“There’s no way, ever, I’m going to feel sorry for myself when I’m in the position she put me in. It’s pretty easy to wake up with a smile on my face, fire in my blood, ready to attack the day. It’s a blessing.”
‘Zac’s village is strong’
Nobody knew of the heart condition that took Damon Larrier in his sleep on July 25, 2003. It was only after the fact that Emily said she was told his heart was nearly three times the size of what should have been expected for a man with his 6-foot-2, 300-pound frame.
Damon, a corporate lawyer who had met Emily in Dayton, Ohio, when they both worked for LexisNexis, suffered from sleep apnea and struggled to keep his machine on throughout the night. On this particular occasion, he had taken it off and never woke up.
“They say it was off just long enough,” Emily said. “It was too much for his heart. … And then it was just me and the kids.”
Damon was 32. Zac was 2½. His sister, Elyssa, was 5.
Emily said that, as a Virgo, it was in her nature to plan things out. So, after getting through the initial phase of simply trying to make it through each day, she began planning out voluminous activities for her two children. For Elyssa, that started with a mix that included sports and eventually moved into violin, band and orchestra.
For Zac, it was always sports and school.
These venues provided Zac with what he said were an endless supply of coaches who, along with his uncles and grandparents, collectively filled the role of father figure.
“Zac’s village is strong,” Emily said. “He has so many people who have positively affected him.”
All the while, Zac was filled in the details on the father who was taken so soon.
“Everybody talks about him. My grandpa tears up when he talks about him,” Zac said. “It’s crazy. I never see any emotion out of that guy, so you just know what kind of person he was. … It’s not easy, but it’s good to have a positive image to live up to and to strive for every day.”
After Zac finished seventh grade, Emily moved the family from Youngstown, Ohio, to Sacramento, Calif. It was there that Zac attended Monterey Trail High School and grew close to several coaches, including football coach T.J. Ewing, track and field coach Robert Longan and assistant football coach Rick Arcuri.
“Those guys molded me,” Larrier said. “I wouldn’t be anything near what I am today without them. They showed me what hard work looked like.”
Ewing said he’ll never forget the state track meet in whiche Zac won the 400-meter championship and then electrified the stadium packed with 15,000 people by taking the baton last in the 4-by-100 relay and outsprinting the competition for a come-from-behind championship.
Ewing said Zac’s connection with his mother was special, and his values had been instilled well before he arrived in California early in his teen years.
“He came to our school and he was already nails — academically, socially. He knew how to talk to people,” Ewing said. “We always thought he’d the president or something like that. That’s how we felt about him. He was something special.”
Behavior is caught, not taught
Emily Larrier deflects all praise for the way her children have turned out.
Elyssa and her husband, Michael Pallone, have a 4-year-old son, Mikey, and are expecting their second child this winter. Emily moved back to Ohio around the time of Mikey’s birth to be near them.
“She’s got a lovely little family,” Emily said of her daughter, who is balancing family with finishing college.
Zac’s successes have been of the high-profile variety. He has twice won Mountain West track and field titles in the 200-meter dash (and another as part of a relay team). This year, he won the starting quarterback position and is the team’s first quarterback to win his first four starts since Arion Worthman in 2016-17.
“I was just doing what my husband would have been doing had he been here,” Emly said. “Doing it without him was more difficult, but I felt like I was doing everything Zac wanted and needed, as well as what his father would have wanted him to do.”
But Emily did more than sign up her children for activities and serve as chauffeur. She kept active, running with a group at 5:30 in the morning and competing in 5K races, half marathons and completing the Napa Valley Marathon.
She returned to school, her kids watching her study off note cards late into the night as she completed the physical therapy assistant program through Penn State. She then began work in that field, assisting patients as they recuperate following injuries and surgeries.
“She worked her butt off every single day, and still she never missed a football game in my life since I was 5,” Zac said. “Even here during my sophomore year, I didn’t get a single snap. She was in the stands. She’s willing to go to great lengths.”
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“There’s definitely something that every single one of us can learn from her,” Air Force coach Troy Calhoun said of Emily.
Only when all of this is spelled out does Emily concede her impact in this way.
“I guess as a child, watching that, there’s some transference,” she said. “Right? I guess. I don’t know, I’m very humble about it.”
‘Never made those choices for him’
If there was a guiding principle to Emily Larrier’s parenting style, it was to provide direction but ultimately grant the autonomy to her children to make their own decisions.
That’s part of why, when she is congratulated for Zac’s success (a frequent occurrence), she points out that the successes are his and not hers.
“He did all the work and he made all the choices,” she said. “I just made sure that whatever choice he made was his choice. I’ve never made those choices for him.”
As a result, Zac has made some of the most important decisions of his life on his own. He’s done with the perspective gained by his upbringing, and while trying to hold himself accountable to the mother who has been there each step of the way and a father who couldn’t, but who remains an almost infallible ideal of man.
Damon was also a college football player, a center and nose tackle at NCAA Division II American International College who had an ear for Led Zeppelin and whose chatty, outgoing personality quickly let down the façade created by naturally intimidating look.
Orientated by these fixed guideposts, Zac chose to attend the Air Force Academy over scholarship offers from Pac-12 schools like California, Oregon State and Washington State as well as Brigham Young, multiple Mountain West programs and most of the Ivy League.
Ewing was awed by the integrity Zac showed through the process. Other recruits would play the game of offering verbal commitments to certain schools knowing that others would then sweep in with an offer. Zac wouldn’t go along, as he wouldn’t give his word until he was ready to fully commit.
Part of Zac’s reasoning for choosing the academy was a stated goal throughout the recruiting process to find a program that stressed education as much as athletics. But also, in choosing the Falcons, came the guarantee of financial security that he did not experience as a child of a one-parent household. His salary when he graduates in December and begins to serve as an aircraft maintenance officer in South Carolina will match the most money his mother has made in a year.
“It’s just a huge opportunity for me, for my family,” Zac said. “It’s just unbelievable. How grateful I am is unbelievable.”
Because of his unique speed, Air Force played Zac at tailback last year while three-year starter Haaziq Daniels held down the quarterback position. Following the season, offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach Mike Thiessen called Zac and gave him the choice for his final year of college: quarterback or tailback.
Staying at tailback would have been the safe move. An option offense that runs the ball about 56 times a game has no shortage of opportunities for a revolving door of running backs. Staying at quarterback, however, meant entering into a three-way competition with fellow seniors Jensen Jones and Ben Brittain, knowing playing time was by no means guaranteed.
“I said, ‘Yes, I want to play quarterback for the Falcons,’” Zac said.
The final decision for cadets is choosing someone to place the bars on their lapel upon commissioning as officers into the Air Force. Some choose family members who have served in the military, some opt for mentors.
For Zac, it was an easy choice
“He said, ‘Yeah, mom, you’re doing it,’” Emily said. “It’s going to be waterworks, for sure.”
Overcoming statistics
Through one third of the season, the Air Force offense that Zac Larrier directs has posted some of the best numbers in college football.
The Falcons lead the nation’s 130 programs in rushing offense (340.5 yards per game), passing efficiency (a rating of 248.87) and passing yards per completion (27.62). Larrier has rushed for 259 yards and three touchdowns and has completed 8 of 12 passes for 221 yards and an 84-yard touchdown.
But he has studied some different statistics and found that, in his class, there are only around 10 cadets who came from a true single-parent household.
His story started with the kind of tragedy that can lead some down a path to becoming a wholly different sort of statistic.
Nature may have resulted in Zac becoming, in some ways, a replica of the father he can’t recall knowing. Nurture has guided him on a trajectory to overcome his circumstances.
“It just shows, she’s unbelievable,” Zac said, pausing to compose himself when speaking of the mother who made all the difference for him. “I get emotional just thinking about it.
“It’s hard to find words, but she is everything you could ask for.”