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The Academy Insider Podcast - Your Guide to The Naval Academy Experience
The mission of Academy Insider is to guide, serve, and support Midshipmen, future Midshipmen, and their families. Through the perspective of a community of former graduates and Naval Academy insiders, this podcast will help you learn about life at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis. Through our shared experiences, Academy Insider guides families through the anxiety and frustration caused by lack of understanding, misinformation, and confusion. This platform is designed to better relationships between midshipmen and their loved ones. This podcast is not affiliated with the United States Naval Academy, the United States Navy or Department of Defense. The thoughts and opinions are exclusively those of your host and his guests.
The Academy Insider Podcast - Your Guide to The Naval Academy Experience
#113 Winter Break!
What Happens When Midshipmen Stay Behind During Winter Break
As we wrap up an incredible 2025 season, I'm reflecting on what an amazing year it's been for the Naval Academy community. From the football team's outstanding achievements to the daily dedication of midshipmen preparing for finals, there's so much to celebrate as we head into winter break.
In this final episode of the season, I'm sharing some exciting updates about what's coming next for Academy Insider and how we're planning to serve our community even better in 2026. Whether you're a current midshipman family, preparing for Plebe Summer, or part of our broader Naval Academy community, this episode sets the stage for what's ahead.
What We're Covering in This Season Finale
- Celebrating the Navy football team's remarkable 2025 season and standout performances
- Behind-the-scenes reality of winter break at the Naval Academy (yes, some midshipmen stay!)
- My vision for Academy Insider content in 2026 and beyond
- How your feedback directly shapes the episodes we create
- Exciting opportunities for businesses to connect with our engaged community
Looking Ahead: Your Voice Matters
One of the most important aspects of this episode is our commitment to creating content that truly serves our community. I'm actively seeking your input on topics you want to explore, from summer training programs to detailed breakdowns of different service communities and career paths.
What You'll Gain from This Episode
- Insight into the realities of Naval Academy life during winter break
- Understanding of how Academy Insider is evolving to meet community needs
- Information about upcoming content series on service communities and training pipelines
- Opportunities to influence future episode topics through direct feedback
- Details on how local businesses can connect with our Naval Academy audience
This episode serves as both a celebration of our community's achievements and a roadmap for the valuable content we'll be creating together. Whether you're navigating the appointment process, supporting a current midshipman, or sta
To stay most up to date with Grant, Naval Academy updates, and real estate insights, follow him on LinkedIn
The mission of Academy Insider is to guide, serve, and support Midshipmen, future Midshipmen, and their families.
Grant Vermeer your host is the person who started it all. He is the founder of Academy Insider and the host of The Academy Insider podcast. He was a recruited athlete which brought him to Annapolis where he was a four year member of the varsity basketball team. He was a cyber operations major and commissioned into the Cryptologic Warfare Community. He was stationed at Fort Meade and supported the Subsurface Direct Support mission.
He separated from the Navy in 2023 and now owns The Vermeer Group, a residential real estate company that matches service academy families with trusted real estate teams all across the country. Text (650) 282-1964 with any real estate questions.
We are here to be your guide through the USNA experience.
Connect with Grant on Linkedin
Academy Insider Website
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If you are interested in sponsoring the podcast, have an idea, question or topic you would like to see covered, reach out: email podcast@academyinsider.com or text Grant at (443) 951-3064
Hey everyone, and welcome back to the Academy Insider Podcast. It's gonna be our final episode of the 2025 season. I'm so excited. We're gonna be taking a break in coordination with the midshipmen at the Naval Academy, getting ready for winter break. Again, at the time that I'm recording this, the Army Navy game has not been played yet. So, but it's gonna release after. So fingers crossed, I'm hoping it was a great result, regardless of what happens. What an incredible season for the Navy football team. Unbelievable. Landon Robinson just received honors as the first team All-American, just unbelievable stuff. So really exciting for the entirety of the Annapolis community, which is so great. As we wrap up, again, good luck to all the midshipmen on their finals. Good luck to everyone as they're finishing out, you know, the fall semester and getting ready for an incredible winter break. Shout out to all the midshipmen that are gonna be sticking around to my homies on the basketball team and everyone that part of the community that will be in Bancroft Hall for portions of the winter break period. And shout out to all my restrictees as well. Bless up. More power to y'all who may who may be staying in Bancroft Hall over the winter break period. I hope it was an incredible time. And if you're a parent listening, you're like, wait, what? There may be midshipmen who are staying in the hall over winter break. Yes. Yes, it happens. It's unfortunate. It's not great. You know, a lot of times for the members of the sports teams, again, like on the basketball team, I was able to stay with my sponsors. Shout out to my sponsors. Like we would stay with my sponsors and sleep off the yard sometimes, but we'd still come back for practice. And a lot of times before we had games, we would we would stay in Bancroft Hall. We would stay in Bancroft Hall before those games. So that's the reality of it. Again, if you're on restriction, you don't get to go home for leave. If you're on restriction for something that happened, like you're you're in Bancroft Hall. Those days count, and uh and you're not able to leave. So a lot of crazy stuff that can happen. But anyway, I hope it's a really special time for all of you. I hope it's really great. There are a couple things heading into the 2025 season that I specifically want to call out. My plan for 2026 with Academy Insider is to listen to y'all and what you want to hear. Again, we're gonna have a new wave of midshipment families that are coming in that are preparing for plebe year. I know you remember that experience of getting the letter of appointment, being so excited, trying to do your research of what's gonna happen in Annapolis. So there'll still be a lot of plebe-related content. But if you are someone who is a fan of Academy Insider right now and want to know more about what's going on during the summer, et cetera, please send me your questions. I mean it so genuinely. It helps me to know what you guys want to know. I intend to make content about summer trainings. I want to do an entire series about all of the service communities that you could be a part of, what they actually do, what it means, what the training pipeline looks like for midshipmen who are gonna graduate commission and head into those communities. And so we're gonna do a lot of content like that. But if you have any specific questions about what may be happening in Annapolis or part of the midshipment experience or part of just the Navy and Marine Corps experience, then please let me know because I would love to take your feedback and try and make as many great episodes as possible with information that people want to know about. The second thing, this is a call out to any grad who may be out there or anyone who has a business that wants to reach the Naval Academy community. Again, since I've become part of the Naval Academy Alumni Association and the fleet of podcasts that we have, we do want to open up the Academy Insider Podcast for sponsorship. So if you're someone who wants to get in front of an incredibly engaged Navy and Marine Corps community, let's chat. Please send me a message to Grant at AcademyInsider.com. We'll loop the team in and make this happen. We want to give you an opportunity to speak directly to the midshipman audience and the midshipman family audience. And so if that is something that is interesting to you, if you have a small business that supports the Annapolis, Baltimore, Maryland, DC area or anything that would be great to get in front of the Naval Academy community, then please reach out. Otherwise, we're gonna keep this episode short. I just want to thank you all for an incredible 2025. I hope you have an incredible holiday break, and I look forward to seeing you in 2026. Thank you. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Academy Insider Podcast. I really hope you liked it, enjoyed it, and learned something during this time. If you did, please feel free to like and subscribe or leave a comment about the episode. We really appreciate to hear your feedback about everything and continue to make Academy Insider an amazing service that guides, serves, and supports midshipmen, future midshipmen, and their families. Thank you.
