Posted: 02/16/2012
Lehigh women’s track and field senior captain Alexandra Doersam is a two-time indoor track and field All-Patriot League member. She is the defending Patriot League indoor track and field long jump champion and will look to repeat at the Championships this weekend in Lewisburg, Pa. Doersam is having another stellar season, highlighted by being named the Patriot League Female Field Athlete of the Week on Jan. 30 after she broke a pair of her own school records.
In a dual meet against Lafayette on Jan. 28, Doersam set a Lehigh record in the long jump with a distance of 18-10 ft (5.74m), surpassing her own record of 18-5 ft (5.61m) which she set last season. Doersam’s jump also qualified her for the ECAC Championships, which takes place March 3-4 in Boston, Mass.
Doersam also set a school record in the 60-meter dash with a time of 7.84 seconds, breaking her own record of 7.89 seconds which she had set at a meet the week prior.
Doersam also holds the school record in the outdoor long jump with a distance of 19-9.5 ft (6.03m) which she jumped to win last year’s event at the outdoor track and field Patriot League Championship.
While the accolades continue to build up for the Islip, N.Y. native, Doersam is humble and quiet and would rather let her performances do the talking.
“I was always quiet and I still am,” she said. “When I was voted a captain though, it made it easier for me to speak up. It was definitely a confidence booster.”
While Doersam may be quiet, her work ethic and effort on and off the track inspires her teammates and friends alike.
“She has inspired me to always strive to be better,” said Doersam’s roommate, Cynthia Casmay. “She’s never satisfied. She’s always trying to out-do herself and continually improve. She is very humble about her accomplishments, another reason why I think her teammates find her such a good role model."
Doersam’s role models are her mother and her cousin. In Doersam’s senior year of high school, her mom was diagnosed with cancer. She survived and continues to live a strong, healthy life, but Doersam’s aunt did not survive the disease and her daughter – Doersam’s cousin – moved in with Doersam and her family.
Both her mom and cousin were resilient facing devastating situations, something Doersam will always admire.
“I am always proud of them and I think they are such strong people,” she said.
Whatever Doersam is facing in life, she will take on that same resilient attitude and it has led her to great success not only on the track, but off it as well.
Doersam is a two-time member of the Patriot League track and field Honor Roll in which a student-athlete must have at least a 3.20 GPA. Doersam, an Art History major, has a passion for museums and first fell in love with art history as a sophomore at Lehigh after taking her first art history elective class with Professor Nicholas Sawicki, who is now Doersam’s advisor.
He said in an email that Doersam is “one of the most diligent, hard-working majors that Lehigh has in its art history program."
Doersam said that one of the reasons she loves art history so much is because she is a very visual person and a big American history person. Doersam hopes to follow her grandfather’s footsteps by gathering further information about her family’s history. Her grandfather kept pictures and family records from the past and one day, Doersam hopes to travel back to her family’s original homeland.
Over the summer, Doersam may participate in a Lehigh archeological dig in Alabama where the possibility of finding bones and pottery from the historical Trail of Tears lurks.
Doersam hopes to eventually work with a major museum in New York City such as the Metropolitan museum or the Museum of Modern Art.
But before Doersam makes the jump to the real world, she still has plenty more long jumps left for the Brown and White.
The Lehigh track and field teams will head to Bucknell this weekend to compete in the Patriot League Championships, which will begin Friday and come to conclusion Sunday. This season has been filled with some stellar individual performances on the men’s and women’s side, and now the teams will look to put it all together in the meet they have been training for all season.
The Lehigh men’s track and field team, which currently ranks No. 11 in the Mid-Atlantic region, will look to improve upon its fourth place finish in last year’s Championships which were held at Navy. The Mountain Hawks had some great individual efforts as Niall Buckley earned 10 points for Lehigh as he won the 800-meter run with a time of 1:53.09 as he was one of two Mountain Hawks to earn All-League honors.
The other was Stephen Tutunjian, who placed second in the triple jump with a distance of 14.89 meters. Tutunjian will look to continue his impressive 2012 season which was highlighted by breaking the Lehigh record in the triple jump with a distance of 50-3.6 feet (15.35m).
Also at last year’s Championships, Evan Flach finished third with a time of 8:16.40 while Christopher Buck placed fourth in the shot put.
Lehigh’s season included a win at the Mountain Hawk Multi Invite and a dual meet win over Lafayette. Most recently, Lehigh tuned up for the Championships with some impressive performances at the Lafayette/Rider Invitational at the NYC Army last weekend. The Mountain Hawks had 17 top 10 finishes, which was highlighted by a fifth-place finish in the 500m dash by sophomore John Ciavardelli and a fifth place in the high jump by freshman Adeolu Adesida.
On the women’s side, Lehigh will look to again crack the top three after finishing third at last year’s Championships. The Mountain Hawks had seven All-Patriot League performances including freshman Jessica Kendzor who was named the women’s Rookie of the Meet after she finished second in the 1,000-meter run with a time of 2:53.39, earning eight points for the Mountain Hawks.
Doersam won the long jump with a distance of 18-00.25 ft (5.49m) to earn First Team All-Patriot League honors.
Katherine Pierce took second in the 3,000-meter run and the 500-meter run while Lehigh’s 4X400-meter relay team and the distance medley team also took a second place.
E’Lana Lemon also took second in the weight throw as she will look to continue her stellar 2012 season this weekend. Lemon has been named the Patriot League Female Field Athlete of the Week four times this season, and now has eight for her career which is four away from tying the Patriot League record.
The Mountain Hawks won three straight meets during this season – West Point, Mountain Hawk Multi Invite and Dual with Lafayette.
To go along with Doersam’s two new records this season, the Mountain Hawks also set school records in the distance medley relay with a time of 11:57.24 while freshman Savanna Plombon set the school record in the 3,000-meter run with a time of 9:55.83.
After the Championships, the Mountain Hawks that qualified will compete in the ECAC/IC4A Championships in Boston, Mass. on March 3-4.