Central Michigan University Athletics
CMU Alumnus Punches Ticket To Olympics
5/19/2016 12:00:00 AM | MTF
Andy Sneddon, CMUChippewas.com
Alex Rose holds a bachelor's degree in English with a concentration in creative writing.
His story, however, isn't fiction.
Rose, a 2014 Central Michigan graduate, will compete in the Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro in the discus for Samoa, a country of some 190,000 people in the South Pacific near the International Date Line.
Rose was raised in West Branch, just over an hour north and east of Mount Pleasant. His father Ross is a native Samoan, making Alex eligible to compete under that country's flag.
Rose, an All-American at CMU, exceeded the Olympic qualifying standard of 65 meters in placing first against world-class competition on Sunday in the Field of Dreams Throws Meet at Claremont (Calif.) College.
His throw measured 65.74 meters and it marked the eighth time he has set the Samoan national mark in less than a year. The distance ranks him 10th in the world.
"It sounds kind of odd," Rose said, "but it was a mixture of being caught between laughing and weeping uncontrollably. It's been a dream of mine for so long. It has to be sort of a borderline obsession in order to achieve something like that.
"I'm still in awe really. I don`t know if my brain has fully processed it at this point."
Rose's competition on Sunday included the likes of Lance Brooks and Russ Winger, two of the top U.S. throwers. He won by nearly 2 meters.
"It was huge for my confidence," he said. "I never really thought about winning the meet. I just wanted to do my best and prove myself to all these athletes I've looked up to for so long.
"It's such a great feeling to go out there and not only compete, but to finish first against those guys -- even if it is just one meet that I've done it so far."
His ticket punched to the biggest stage in track and field, Rose said he will tailor his competition and training schedule to peak in Rio.
"I may have opened up some doors in regards to sponsorships and other international championships where I could potentially earn some money for throwing for the first time in my life," he said. "Everything at this point is setting up for those two weeks in August."
Rose earned All-America honors by placing fifth in the discus at the 2011 NCAA Championships while at CMU. He won the Mid-American Conference title in the event as a junior in 2013. It was during his time at CMU that he reached out to Samoan authorities in an effort to represent his father's homeland and he began competing under the Samoan flag internationally in 2013.
An injury wiped out his senior season in 2014 and, during rehabilitation, began training to play football.
Football?
Rose was a standout on some very good teams at Ogemaw Heights High School, from which he graduated in 2009. Central Michigan was among the schools that recruited Rose - then a 6-foot-2, 220-pound tight end/defensive end who ran 4.7-second 40-yard dash - to play football.
Although he never set foot on the football field at CMU, his time rehabilitating the pectoral tear gave him time to reflect. Why not, he figured, take a swing at football?
He attended Canadian Football League tryouts, graded out well, he says, but got no offers. Still, the turn of events served a purpose, and help re-invigorate Rose's interest and drive in the discus.
"It was hard for (teams) to take a chance on me because I didn't have any game film," he said. "It was a lot of fun and in a way it was good to get my mind off of discus.
"I always loved football. I really could have seen my life going in two different directions, one to professional football and the other to being an Olympian. One came true and we'll never know about the other one.
"I just wanted a sense of closure for football. I didn't want to be 60 years old in my rocking chair, talking about what could have been."
Today, Rose is a track & field graduate assistant at Aurora (Ill.) University, where he trains while working toward his master's in business administration.
He has added about 6 meters - a substantial increase - to his throws in less than a year.
"The biggest thing is just being a bit older, a bit wiser and having a few more throws under my belt," Rose said, adding that while his strength has improved, flexibility has been perhaps more crucial in taking him from good college thrower to world class. "Training by myself has given me some insight. It's easier to make corrections now. There's never a throw where I'm lost and don't know what to do."
Like most athletes, particularly those in individual sports, there have been starts and stops, experimentation and a learning curve for Rose.
Just like life.
"It (Olympics) hasn't always been the goal," he said. "I was a little bit more realistic about what I wanted to achieve when I was at Central. At the time I thought I'd eventually be in a rock band touring the nation."
Rose and Renaldo Powell, a sprinter on the CMU track team, formed a two-man band while they were roommates in Mount Pleasant.
"He rapped, I played guitar and sang," Rose said. "We made our own demo album."
These days, Rose the guitar serves only as a welcome diversion.
"I'll pick it up every other day and play something for fun to relax," said Rose, 24, who was recently engaged to former CMU high jumper Samantha Stein. "It's always good to have a creative outlet. I feel like it makes everything better in life.
"Maybe one day I'll be back on the stage. I'm decent at being a music, but I doubt I'd be the 10th-ranked musician in the world."
The number on Rose's mind now is 12. The top 12 throwers from the starting field of 32 make the Olympic final.
He said it will likely take a throw of at least 62 meters to make the final. That number may appear to be a layup for a thrower of Rose's caliber.
Not quite, he said. Throwing inside a stadium, such as the athletes will do in the Olympics, is entirely different from the environment in which they typically compete, a fully open area adjacent to the track on a college campus.
And, Rose and his competitors will be throwing in front of some 60,000 spectators in Rio's Olympic Stadium, with the all the pressure of the world watching.
"The hard part is throwing in a stadium," he said. "The wind bounces around in a weird way. It will probably take the throw of my life in order to get into the top 12.
"This has already been a crazy season. Why stop my dreams now? It's taken me so far in the last year -- just believing."
