{"id":7000,"date":"2009-03-01T13:01:50","date_gmt":"2009-03-01T17:01:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/batesviews.net\/?p=3191"},"modified":"2017-02-23T13:28:24","modified_gmt":"2017-02-23T18:28:24","slug":"sports-notes-2-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/2009\/03\/01\/sports-notes-2-2\/","title":{"rendered":"A Step Ahead"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Isabel<\/a><\/p>\n

During her first year as a Bates runner, Isabel Alexander \u201909 always sprinted clear of her teammates. Usually that\u2019s a sign of great talent. But Alexander was doing it during warmups.<\/p>\n

Apparently unaware of the potential for showing up her teammates, Alexander seemed to have just one speed \u2014 top.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Running ahead during warmups is \u201cusually something that might really annoy your teammates,\u201d says head coach Jay Hartshorn. \u201cBut she would get away with it because she\u2019s so sweet and nice and fun and caring. People sort of said, \u2018Oh, that\u2019s just Izzy.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Heading into the outdoor season, Alexander is already one of the best female runners in Bates history. Her athletic r\u00e9sum\u00e9 includes three All-America honors in three events \u2014 the indoor distance medley relay, the indoor 800-meter run, and the outdoor 400-meter hurdles \u2014 as well as two NESCAC championships, four New England Division III titles, and last year\u2019s Bates Female Athlete of the Year award.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe\u2019s different from anyone I\u2019ve ever coached,\u201d says Hartshorn. Alexander\u2019s laid-back persona masks incredible intensity that\u2019s \u201conly obvious in that she never misses a practice, and she\u2019s the first one there and the last to leave. When I go home for the night I have to tell her, \u2018OK, track\u2019s over.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

As a first-year, Alexander had a teammate who was a role model in terms of work ethic: Keelin Godsey \u201906, the Bates thrower nonpareil who won 16 All-America awards and two NCAA titles.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think he\u2019s the toughest person I\u2019ve ever met,\u201d Alexander says. \u201cJust knowing how much he practiced, how hard he worked, how good he was. He\u2019s definitely a good person to look to if you want a great athlete in all senses of the word.\u201d<\/p>\n

Alexander\u2019s name now dots the team\u2019s record books, too: six indoor marks<\/a> and three outdoor marks<\/a> bear her name, and she\u2019s among the top five on Bates\u2019 all-time performance lists in eight other events. She doesn\u2019t exactly bask in her achievements, however.<\/p>\n

For example, as a sophomore competing at the NCAA Outdoor Championships, she was one of nine athletes to make the finals of the 400-meter hurdles. The top eight would earn coveted All-America honors, but Alexander finished dead last. Yet this race is one of Alexander\u2019s best memories.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome of my favorite races, in retrospect, have been the bad ones,\u201d she says. \u201cHaving to walk away as that one person not up on the podium was special, in a way, because then there\u2019s that extra motivation: I don\u2019t want to be that last person again.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even when she established herself as an elite Division III athlete in some events (like the 400 hurdles and the 800), it didn\u2019t change her desire to compete in events less suited to her, such as the shot put in the heptathlon or running cross country all four years. \u201cI think it\u2019s important to try and do things that you\u2019re not as good at,\u201d she says. \u201cDealing with frustrations not only keeps you humble, but I think it makes you more of a complete athlete and person.\u201d<\/p>\n

So it\u2019s no surprise, then, that Alexander seems to be \u201cplugged into everything\u201d at Bates, says Kevin McHugh, director of athletics. With men\u2019s soccer and lacrosse player Nate Kellogg \u201909, Alexander coordinated the first Bates Field Day last spring, a much-hailed event that brought together an estimated 200 local children to campus for a day of serious game-playing with about 100 Bates student-athletes.<\/p>\n

\u201cIzzy has been really focused in terms of getting other athletes involved in community service,\u201d McHugh says. \u201cShe seems to have the inherent feeling that that\u2019s an obligation as student-athletes and people.\u201d<\/p>\n

The second of four children of Matthew and Pamela Alexander of Harvard, Mass., Alexander is a double major in Spanish and psychology with a 3.7-plus GPA. Like her classmates, she will be thrust into the real world come Commencement on May 31. But at the moment she admits to being preoccupied with track, not the future. \u201cI\u2019ve been having such a good time with this, and I have such a passion for the sport. Maybe it\u2019s an underlying obsession, I don\u2019t know.\u201d<\/p>\n

She has even bought into Hartshorn\u2019s advice that going all out all the time, like during those warmups, isn\u2019t always the most pragmatic approach, not only because of the risk of injury but because she wants to be a great teammate, too.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think we\u2019re a good team, a good group of people,\u201d she says. \u201cI can\u2019t think of anything else I\u2019d rather be doing than what I\u2019m doing with these people.\u201d<\/p>\n

Alexander pauses, perhaps trying to remember a day when she didn\u2019t want to be on a track. She remembers last year\u2019s first outdoor meet at Tufts, when wind chills hovered around 20 degrees, and \u201cthey were scraping ice off the pits for the steeplechase.\u201d<\/p>\n

Giving herself a reality check, she remembers that day, and others. \u201cI ask myself: \u2018Is there anywhere in the world that I\u2019d rather be, or something else that I\u2019d rather be doing right now?\u2019 The answer has always been, \u2018No.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

By Andy Walter, photograph By Phyllis Graber Jensen<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Izzy Alexander \u201909 set a fast pace right from the start.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":148,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_hide_ai_chatbot":false,"_ai_chatbot_style":"","associated_faculty":[],"_Page_Specific_Css":"","_bates_restrict_mod":false,"_table_of_contents_display":false,"_table_of_contents_location":"","_table_of_contents_disableSticky":false,"_is_featured":false,"footnotes":"","_bates_seo_meta_description":"","_bates_seo_block_robots":false,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_id":0,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_twitter_id":0,"_bates_seo_share_title":"","_bates_seo_canonical_overwrite":"","_bates_seo_twitter_template":""},"categories":[24,130,220],"tags":[10856,2499,6365,10930],"class_list":["post-7000","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-athletics","category-collaboration","category-service","tag-bates-magazine","tag-community-service","tag-nescac","tag-track"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7000","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/148"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7000"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7000\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":88914,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7000\/revisions\/88914"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7000"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7000"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7000"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}