Year: 2013
Major: Political Science, Pre-Law
Hometown: New Port Richey, Fla.
After playing volleyball for about eight years, EC volleyball’s Alex Laton says goodbye to her collegiate volleyball career. Playing volleyball as a freshman in high school, Laton had a rough start. “I was absolutely terrible and was benched every game,” Alex says. However, since then she has risen to a great right side hitter for ECVB. Initially, she was not going to play volleyball in college, her mind was changed by her father who was a college athlete and wanted her daughter to get a feel for college athletics. After trying out freshman year at Eckerd as a middle blocker/right side hitter, she ended up loving it and kept the job as a collegiate athlete.
“Time Management,” Alex says, is the best and only way to overcome the struggle of being a student athlete. She explains how she manages her time by picking apart her day with time slots for certain homework assignments and studying for tests. Her advice for newcomers to the college athlete world is to “figure out who you are as a student as soon as you can and to plan accordingly.”
As the season ended it was hard to say goodbye. “It is bittersweet and sad to say goodbye to a team with teammates that were basically my family than a team, but it is also nice to move on and experience new things” she says. As the team captain it was nice to have girls look up to her as a role model. Surprisingly, Alex played injured all season–her own decision–and will have surgery soon.
On top of being an athlete, Alex is fierce on and off the court. If you notice her lip piercing and the sweet tattoo on her ear, you may be quick to judge, but she is an all-around leader in both academics and athletics. Sports aside, she is president of the leadership honor society Omicron Delta Kappa and the director of the Student Advocate Committee, an outreach program for students who have been sexually abused. Something you might never know about Alex? Not only does she enjoy hanging out with friends and teammates off the court, she loves the smell of fresh tennis balls right out of the can. “Only about five people know that about me.”
The one thing she won’t miss about Eckerd? Speed bumps. “I hate them, but I will miss having small class sizes and being able to say or act however I want and know that I won’t be judged for it.” “My favorite part of Eckerd College is how tight knit the community is and how supportive the students and faculty are,” she says. Her advice to the new freshman continuing into spring semester is to “gain a good reputation and stay out of trouble.”
Alex ended her last volleyball game with a solid eleven kills and four blocks. So what’s next for this superstar athlete? Alex will be taking one step closer to her future as an attorney, attending law school in the fall.