SEATTLE – When she left Indiana and came west to begin college, Rachel Alexander had never heard of rowing. And she barely had heard of Seattle Pacific.

Now, nearly 30 years after earning her degree in psychology and helping the Falcons make two trips to nationals, Alexander continues to compete around the country and around the world. And she continues to train barely more than a stone's throw away from the campus where she and rowing first became acquainted.

Indeed, the sport is a part of her life in a way she never would have imagined when she arrived at SPU in the fall of 1977.

“It just turned out that way,” said Alexander, known back then as Rachel Engelberth. “My (college) roommate and I decided to check it out. She was the one who saw something about it, and she kind of dragged me along.

“She didn't even stay at Seattle Pacific. But I got hooked pretty quick.”

Stayed hooked, too. In fact, the former Falcon is one of the most successful female masters rowers on the entire planet today. She and rowing partner BJ Connolly of Sammamish have competed together in pairs for 12 years – and have never lost in their age category on a national or world level, no matter what that age category has been.

In addition, Alexander and Connolly have rowed together in a four-oared shell for the past dozen years with Kathrin Geffers of Germany and Ute Wagner-Hjobil , who now lives in Austria. And, just like the Alexander-Connolly pair, this foursome has never lost together.

“We're all within kind of the same age,” said Alexander, 51. “We all row hard, train hard, and we have the same competitive mindset. We never have to worry about whether anyone else is training, even though we all have lives we're busy with.”

When she's not focusing on the oars, Alexander focuses on her insurance agency in the suburb of Shoreline, north of Seattle, where she lives with husband Arthur and their numerous dogs, cats and birds. She has been in that business for 21 years, all with State Farm.

But she still finds plenty of time for pulling on the oars with the Lake Washington Rowing Club, a little more than a mile from the SPU campus on the east side of the Fremont Bridge.

“I get up at 4:40 in the morning, and I'm out there at 5:15,” said Alexander, who is also the club's president. “I enjoy competition, but the joy is in staying fit – and the real joy is the wonderful friendships I've made with rowers all over the world. They're the reason I stay in it. You share something that not a lot of people understand.”

BUILDING FOR THE FUTURE – HERS AND SPU'S
While SPU is now a prominent program at the NCAA level, Alexander's performances during her time in maroon helped the school stand out nationally then, as well, when rowing wasn't an NCAA sport.

“We were a really small team, obviously. But we were always really dominant in the women's varsity four,” Alexander recalled.

After helping Seattle Pacific to a bronze-medal finish in the varsity four boat at the Association of Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (AIAW) regatta as a senior in 1981, she was selected to the U.S. national team in 1982.

That didn't come as a surprise to current SPU crew coach Keith Jefferson, whose career on the men's team overlapped by two years Alexander's career on the women's team.

“I always remember being impressed by that (bronze-medal) crew, especially Rachel,” Jefferson said. “She always had confidence and ease, and yet had that intensity. And that was a good model on the women's side, for sure.”

Her selection to the U.S. team presented an opportunity to compete in Europe, and even made Alexander a candidate for the 1984 U.S. Olympic squad, although she ultimately was not chosen. Because of the U.S. boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics, the '84 team included many of those 1980 members who had stuck it out for another four years for the chance to row for gold.

“There were only a few new faces,” Alexander said. “It was kind of bad timing on my part, but that's OK. I was ready to move on.”

And Alexander did move on, getting married and entering the work world. A former basketball player and track sprinter at Whitko High School near her hometown of Pierceton, Ind., she returned to running to stay in shape.

Still, rowing was in her blood.

“I missed it all the time. I kept talking about getting back into it,” Alexander said.

RIGHT PLACE, RIGHT TIME
That chance came when she and Connolly hooked up in the mid 1990s. They've been a competitive – and wildly successful – duo ever since in U.S. masters nationals and masters world championship events.

But that's not the only combination that has fallen into place for Alexander. In 1998 at the World Masters Games in Vancouver, Wash., she and Connolly met Geffers and Wagner-Hjobil.

“They had come over from Europe. We had never raced or trained with them,” Alexander said. “Then we went out like we've been rowing together forever.

“In a sport where you practice and practice and practice to be perfect together, have rhythm and timing together, to go into a race with two people you've never done that with and adapt—it was just magical.”

Magical. It's one of the reasons Alexander has herself ready to get onto the waters of the Ship Canal by 5:15 in the morning. It's a special sort of feeling that she doesn't expect will be fading away any time soon.

And she doesn't want to keep it to herself, either.

“Part of racing all over the world is it makes us a little bit of an ambassador of rowing, as well – I do whatever I can do to let people know how much fun it is,” she said.

In fact, some of the biggest growth in rowing as a whole is among women in their 40s and 50s.

“They're joining the sport in droves,” Alexander said. “You can enjoy it at any time, you can learn how to row, and you can row at any level you want to.”

In the case of Seattle Pacific alum Rachel Alexander, that means rowing at one of the highest levels in the world.