Stanford University’s rowing team will begin its 2013 season at the end of March and attempt to defend its IRA National Championship with Rossmoor native and Los Alamitos High graduate Alex Cours now a returning senior to the team.
Cours brought a strong rowing resume to the Cardinal with six consecutive national titles as a junior rower for Long Beach Junior Crew. She was part of Stanford’s 2012 National Championship team in June in New Jersey and it was the third consecutive national title for the Carnial I Eight team.
Heading into her final season, Cours is looking forward to her final season of collegiate rowing and looking forward to her post-college life. The human biology major plans to attend medical school at Icahn School of Medicine at Mt. Sinai in New York City. Cours has joked that it was her inability to excel at any of the mainstream sports, that led her to the sport of rowing. But her early days of rowing didn’t prove that she had a lot of natural ability at the sport. But her determination and her coaches helped develop her skills in the sport.
“My coach started putting me in lineups with the varsity girls, and speed came quickly after that. That’s the secret to rowing fast, rowing behind fast girls.” Cours said.
Cours said she had wanted to attend Stanford since she was in middle school and that it was a luck coincidence that she became a lightweight rower and that the school had a top-ranked lightweight rowing team. Getting to the point of being good enough to row for a program like Stanford was an uphill battle that Cours embraced.
She jokes that it may have also been a crush on her novice coach that also kept her coming back to practice. But at practice, she said she has had a lot of coaching support and also credited her teammates with giving her fast rowers to try and compete against. She said chasing fast rowers was a big part of her development as a rower.
“My coaches inspire me, my teammates push me, and my family supports me. I am well aware that my success has less to do with me, and much more to do with them and how they’ve all influenced my character and growth,” Cours said.
That development began to yield results in her sophomore year of high school. She was part of the junior 8+ championship. In her junior year she was a member of the 4X championship team and as a senior was part of the 2X championship team also the second place 8+ team. After that it has been three consecutive national championships with Stanford. She chalks up the success to luck, in having been paired with some talented teams.
But while the titles have been nice, Cours says that throughout her career, it has been the friendships that have brought most of the rewards for her. She said that not only in practices, but in trips and just hanging out with her teammates that are her fondest memories.
“I really love laughing with my teammates, possibly more than I actually like rowing itself,” Cours said.
And it has also been her teammates who have kept her motivated. While she admits that seeing the sunrise can be beautiful, she is only awake at 5 a.m. because she is committed to her teammates and her sport. Cours is the daughter of Rusty and Heather Cours and she has two siblings, Shea and Noah.
