During her first year as a �ֲ���ý runner, Isabel Alexander ’09 always sprinted clear of her teammates. Usually that’s a sign of great talent. But Alexander was doing it during warmups.

Apparently unaware of the potential for showing up her teammates, Alexander seemed to have just one speed — top.

Running ahead during warmups is “usually something that might really annoy your teammates,” says head coach Jay Hartshorn. “But she would get away with it because she’s so sweet and nice and fun and caring. People sort of said, ‘Oh, that’s just Izzy.’”

Heading into the outdoor season, Alexander is already one of the best female runners in �ֲ���ý history. Her athletic résumé includes three All-America honors in three events — the indoor distance medley relay, the indoor 800-meter run, and the outdoor 400-meter hurdles — as well as two NESCAC championships, four New England Division III titles, and last year’s �ֲ���ý Female Athlete of the Year award.

“She’s different from anyone I’ve ever coached,” says Hartshorn. Alexander’s laid-back persona masks incredible intensity that’s “only obvious in that she never misses a practice, and she’s the first one there and the last to leave. When I go home for the night I have to tell her, ‘OK, track’s over.’”

As a first-year, Alexander had a teammate who was a role model in terms of work ethic: Keelin Godsey ’06, the �ֲ���ý thrower nonpareil who won 16 All-America awards and two NCAA titles.

“I think he’s the toughest person I’ve ever met,” Alexander says. “Just knowing how much he practiced, how hard he worked, how good he was. He’s definitely a good person to look to if you want a great athlete in all senses of the word.”

Alexander’s name now dots the team’s record books, too: six indoor marks and three outdoor marks bear her name, and she’s among the top five on �ֲ���ý’ all-time performance lists in eight other events. She doesn’t exactly bask in her achievements, however.

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’s best memories.

“Some of my favorite races, in retrospect, have been the bad ones,” she says. “Having to walk away as that one person not up on the podium was special, in a way, because then there’s that extra motivation: I don’t want to be that last person again.”

Even when she established herself as an elite Division III athlete in some events (like the 400 hurdles and the 800), it didn’t 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. “I think it’s important to try and do things that you’re not as good at,” she says. “Dealing with frustrations not only keeps you humble, but I think it makes you more of a complete athlete and person.”

So it’s no surprise, then, that Alexander seems to be “plugged into everything” at �ֲ���ý, says Kevin McHugh, director of athletics. With men’s soccer and lacrosse player Nate Kellogg ’09, Alexander coordinated the first �ֲ���ý 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 �ֲ���ý student-athletes.

“Izzy has been really focused in terms of getting other athletes involved in community service,” McHugh says. “She seems to have the inherent feeling that that’s an obligation as student-athletes and people.”

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. “I’ve been having such a good time with this, and I have such a passion for the sport. Maybe it’s an underlying obsession, I don’t know.”

She has even bought into Hartshorn’s advice that going all out all the time, like during those warmups, isn’t always the most pragmatic approach, not only because of the risk of injury but because she wants to be a great teammate, too.

“I think we’re a good team, a good group of people,” she says. “I can’t think of anything else I’d rather be doing than what I’m doing with these people.”

Alexander pauses, perhaps trying to remember a day when she didn’t want to be on a track. She remembers last year’s first outdoor meet at Tufts, when wind chills hovered around 20 degrees, and “they were scraping ice off the pits for the steeplechase.”

Giving herself a reality check, she remembers that day, and others. “I ask myself: ‘Is there anywhere in the world that I’d rather be, or something else that I’d rather be doing right now?’ The answer has always been, ‘No.’”

By Andy Walter, photograph By Phyllis Graber Jensen

Slovenski, who retired from �ֲ���ý in 1995 after 43 years of coaching, led his Bobcat track and cross country teams to 726 victories, five undefeated seasons, more than 20 State of Maine championships and four New England regional championships.

A memorial service will be held at the �ֲ���ý Chapel on Sept. 24 at 4 p.m. followed by a reception at the Benjamin E. Mays Center on campus.

At a Sept. 4 campus ceremony attended by several hundred �ֲ���ý alumni, faculty and staff members, students, friends and Slovenski family members, �ֲ���ý College dedicated the indoor track at Merrill Gymnasium in honor of Slovenski.

“Walter Slovenski’s years of service to �ֲ���ý and his commitment to his family, to his student-athletes, to the importance of competition, and to achievement are all emblematic of the highest standards and expectations,” �ֲ���ý President Donald W. Harward said at Saturday’s ceremony. “�ֲ���ý is proud to have had the opportunity to be influenced by his decades of dedication, professionalism and humane good will.”

Slovenski combined competitive zeal, deep care for his student-athletes and a spirited sense of humor and fun to bring out the best in his performers.

“The Slovenski name is synonymous with track and field excellence,” Director of Athletics Suzanne Coffey said at the dedication. “Whether watching him chase alongside and cajole an athlete, or seeing him offer a word of advice and encouragement to a younger coach in the department, it was easy to see the fire in this man’s competitiveness and the humor in his soul. The Slovenski legacy is unparalleled.”

Born April 13, 1920, in Dupont, Pa., Slovenski left school after the seventh grade to join his father as a coal miner. One day, a local high school track coach, Jack Daugherty, saw Slovenski perform at a local summer field day and convinced his parents to enroll him in high school. A star athlete at Cherry Hill (Pa.) High School who led his football team to a 10-0 record in 1939, Slovenski was later the national prep school long jump champion at Seton Hall Prep.

After spending three and a half years in the Navy, Slovenski attended Syracuse University. While there, Slovenski was an All-America baseball player, a two-way football player whose name still appears in the Orangemen’s record books, and a member of the track and field teams, competing in the long jump and high jump.

At the Sept. 4 ceremony, Auburn resident and former �ֲ���ý assistant track coach Allen Harvie, a 1965 �ֲ���ý graduate, read remarks written by Slovenski, who was too ill to attend. “The �ֲ���ý community helped Ruth and me raise six children,” Slovenski wrote. “I’d like to thank every �ֲ���ý track athlete for enrolling at �ֲ���ý and making such terrific contributions to our track team. Everything I ever accomplished I have to give credit to Jack Daugherty. I learned through him the lessons of sports, the great joy of helping others through athletics. He single-handedly transformed my life.”

After graduating from Syracuse in 1949, Slovenski earned a master’s degree at New York University and coached track at Oneonta State College for two years before coming to �ֲ���ý in 1952 as assistant football and head track coach. From 1957 to 1960, �ֲ���ý compiled a 30-meet winning streak, including victories over schools like Boston University, the University of Connecticut and the University of Maine. The Bobcats’ state track titles in 1957 and 1958 were their first since 1912.

In 1958, Slovenski resurrected the long-dormant �ֲ���ý cross country program and built it, too, into a consistent winner, posting a 9-1 record by 1963 and winning the first four New England Small College Athletic Conference championships between 1983 and 1986.

Slovenski produced 26 All-Americans, including five national champions. Slovenski’s track and cross country teams produced the highest finishes by any �ֲ���ý team at an NCAA championship, placing fifth at the indoor track and field meet in 1989 and sixth at the cross country championships in 1977.

Slovenski has been inducted into the Clearfield County (Pa.), Indiana (Pa.) and Lewiston Auburn Sports Halls of Fame, as well as the Maine Running Hall of Fame. He was honored as a New England and NCAA cross country coach of the year. In the 1960s, Slovenski was selected by the Mexican government to upgrade that country’s track programs in preparation for the 1968 Mexico City Olympics. A competitor in the World Veterans’ track and field championships in 1989, Slovenski placed sixth in the hammer throw with a toss of 123 feet, 6 inches.

He will always be loved dearly by his wife, children and grandchildren for his own magnificent heart and love of family.

Slovenski is survived by his wife of nearly 49 years, Ruth; three sons, Peter Slovenski of Brunswick, Paul Slovenski of Cambridge, Mass., and Steven Slovenski of Lee, N.H.; three daughters, Patty Slovenski Gannon of Framingham, Mass., Sally Slovenski of Watertown, Mass., and Sue Slovenski Pucko of Webster, N.Y.; and 11 grandchildren.

Gifts in memory of Walter Slovenski can be made to �ֲ���ý College, 2 Andrews Road, Lewiston ME 04240.