Fifteen minutes before our interview Alex Buscaglia ’11 emails me to let me know that he’ll be a little late, but he still arrives at the CoHo before I do. When asked for his time management secret — he balances a 20 hour/week sport with a biomechanical engineering major — he demurs, but it’s clear his casual charm must belie some serious intensity. Alex and his teammates won the NCAA gymnastics championship last Sunday, Stanford’s 100th title but also stand-alone a spectacular accomplishment, topped off by Alex’s individual title on high bar and an All-American on parallel bars, yet he reports spending Monday morning geeking out over developments in prosthetic limb technology. He raves about his courses this quarter. I don’t really understand what BIOE 282 is about, but I’m fairly certain it’s not included on any kind of easy course list.
Alex radiates sincerity, and gives me a direct answer to every single question. Directness seems to be a trademark of his; before each meet he mentally informs the universe that the next time he steps into his hotel room, it will be victoriously. He recounts this to me in the exact same tone of voice with which he tells me that he plans to study BME at the graduate level — no ego, just simple, straightforward confidence. His attitude obviously works: Alex is a six-time All-American and
Olympic hopeful, and definitively the one-to-beat on high bar, his favorite event.
His advice for an aspiring gymnast? “To speak it into existence, to know what you love to do and go for it.” Alex himself cites David Sender ’08 and Sho Nakamori ’08 as his own mentors, along with assistant coach J.D. Reive, whom he calls the first coach he completely trusted. It’s his older sister Ashley, however, who he really wants to thank, acknowledging her at this year’s senior banquet as the reason he continued with college gymnastics despite the occasional moment of self-doubt. He’s called her every day for the last four years, and when he’s talking about her the emotion on his face is apparent even at first acquaintance. Alex is, reportedly, always a heart-on-the-sleeve type of guy, as anyone who watched the NCAA finals on ESPN this weekend can attest.
“I had to remind myself to pull it together,” he laughed. “The moment was awesome in every sense of the word. We were completely in awe of what we had just accomplished.”
“We” being the operative word. Despite an exciting individual career ahead of him Alex is all about the team.
“To be totally, unequivocally accepted for who you are and what you’re doing by not a couple guys but 15 or 16 teammates is life-changing. It’s made me a better person.” Alex is part of an unusually large and competitive senior class, which he believes that over the last four years has actually helped unify the entire team across grade levels. He’s grateful not just to his team but to the sport as a whole, crediting gymnastics with helping him through a rough childhood. A tumultuous past seems to have endowed him with an unexpectedly zen air, and he tells me calmly with two NCAA team championships and a stellar individual college career securely behind him, that he just wants to go as far in the sport as he can. Accounting for his modesty, I think that means we can expect to see him on cereal boxes by 2012.