'The Losses Stick With You More Than The Championships'
2/19/2019 9:39:00 AM | General, Women's Basketball, Athletic Training
Alex Olson in 20th Season as Athletic Trainer for Top-Ranked Lady Bears.
By Jerry Hill
Baylor Bear Insider
Just four months into his tenure as a full-time athletic trainer at Baylor, Alex Olson got a call from newly hired women's basketball coach Kim Mulkey, telling him to turn in his keys.
"She had no idea who I was or anything about me. I was the only one left from the previous staff, and it was going to be a fresh start," Olson said. "Fast forward nearly 20 years later, and we can practically finish each other's sentences."
The 48-year-old Olson is one of just two staffers that have been with the Lady Bear program for each of Mulkey's 19 seasons. Johnny Derrick, Assistant AD for Basketball Operations, came with Mulkey from Louisiana Tech when she was hired on April 4, 2000.
"Alex Olson is like a right hand to me," said Mulkey, whose top-ranked Lady Bears (23-1, 13-0) go for their ninth consecutive league title when they host Kansas (12-12, 2-11) at 6 p.m. Wednesday at the Ferrell Center "He was here when I got here, he's been with me, he's very good at his job. He goes beyond the call of duty. I look at Alex like a coach, I look at him like a parent. Without a doubt, I totally trust him."
Working with women's basketball for 20 years, and men's and women's tennis during his first 10 years at Baylor, Olson has been a part of three national championships, 47 Big 12 titles and all of Mulkey's 562 victories.
But, like Mulkey, he doesn't think about the championships or the wins as much as the excruciating losses.
After the men's tennis team claimed Baylor's first national championship with a 4-0 win over UCLA in 2004, Alex sat in agony as the Bears lost to that same UCLA team, 4-3, the next year.
"We won the doubles point, and I remember Coach (Matt) Knoll telling us, 'Guys, we're about to win another national championship,''' he said. "We went out and lost four of the singles matches and lost. I remember that loss, and I remember our women's basketball team's loss to Louisville back in 2013. I think about those two far more than I ever think about any of the championships we won.
"That's what drives me is I don't want to fail. I want to make sure our players are able to perform on the court and do the things they need to do to help us have success."
Success has followed Olson wherever he's been. A 1989 North Garland High School graduate, he was a student athletic trainer for football and baseball in his five years at Baylor, winning the 1993 Southwest Conference tournament and making two NCAA regionals in baseball and winning a share of the 1994 SWC title and making three bowl appearances with football.
Working for Hall of Fame baseball coach Mickey Sullivan, Alex still remembers all the "awesome one-liners and just the laid-back attitude he had."
"Every little detail matters in football," he said, "and then you transition to baseball and it's like, hey, days of summer, just relax and carefree. He was a player's coach, and everyone loved him. He cared more about the individual than a lot of the other stuff."
Even as a student trainer, he got more and more responsibility with baseball, handling travel, per diem, hotel bookings and other logistic issues on top of his normal routine as the team's athletic trainer.
"My typical day at baseball is I would take care of treatments, tape everybody, get them ready for practice," said Olson, who earned his bachelor's in health sciences with a concentration in physical therapy in 1994 and his sport management master's two years later. "But, I also had to get on the tractor, mow the field, chalk the lines, tamp the batting area and mound, then wash the player uniforms and get the buses and hotel lined up for trips. That's what you did, there was no other option. That forced me to have a good, strong work ethic and a well-rounded approach to my job that I do now."
Former head trainer Mike Sims said that "how much ever responsibility they could handle is how much they got put on them. Alex is such a good guy, he kept getting more and doing more and more stuff, until you get to be an integral part of the whole organization."
Back then, Alex carried the nickname, "Cubby," because he was a big Baylor fan and a smaller guy, Sims said.
"Except Mickey Sullivan called him 'Covey.' He would put a 'v' in there," Sims said. "Alex is one of those guys that I call a go-to person. If you've got something you need to get done, you take it to him, because you know it will get taken care of. Those are the kind of people you watch and hope at some point to bring back to work for you."
Alex's biggest victory during his Baylor days came on Oct. 29, 1994. And it wasn't the Bears' 52-13 Homecoming win over Houston, it was Beth Williams saying yes.
They met as Baylor undergrads, when Alex was working as a student trainer with baseball and Beth was a bat girl.
During halftime of that 1994 Homecoming football game, a group of Alex's friends unrolled about 40 or 50 yards of butcher paper on the field at Floyd Casey Stadium with a sign stretching across the turf that read, "BETH, WILL YOU MARRY ME? ALEX"
"I walked up into the stands with a dozen roses and a ring and asked her to marry me in front of a full house at Floyd Casey Stadium, and the crowd erupted," he said. It was a pretty cool moment. That's why Homecoming for us is a really special time to remember that day."
The Waco Tribune-Herald newspaper ran a photo the next day with a caption that read, "Cubby Gets his Gal."
During the taping of football coach Chuck Reedy's show the next day, Voice of Bears John Morris asked Reedy if he had seen the halftime marriage proposal. "And Coach Reedy said, 'Well, I hope she said yes.'''
Yes, she did.
Married on July 1, 1995, Alex and Beth went to work for the Mansfield Independent School District in 1996 after Alex spent one year at Champion Performance Physical Therapy in Austin.
"That year in a clinical setting was intense learning, but I also learned that I really missed the team dynamic, the camaraderie with the team and having a part in the outcomes," Alex said. "So, I transitioned to Mansfield High School and loved it there. I would go back to a high school in a heartbeat. And what was cool was that Beth was also there as a school teacher, so we had the same holidays, the same breaks. And that was a nice time to really bond with her early in our marriage and just have some time to do things we wanted to do."
Long before Baylor's "Year of the Bear" in 2011-12, when all 19 varsity sports made it to postseason play and the Lady Bear basketball program went 40-0 en route to its second national title, Alex was the trainer for a Mansfield program that sent all 18 varsity teams to the playoffs. The girls' basketball team went 38-0 and won the state championship.
"The camaraderie with the students was awesome, but the coaching staffs that I got to work with at Mansfield, I'll never forget my time there. I just loved, loved being in the high school setting," he said.
That's what actually made it tough when Mike Sims called the next year with a job offer to come back to Baylor as a full-time trainer.
"God is going to come and get you when you're at the most comfortable time in your life," Alex said. "Beth and I had just built a new home in Mansfield, our schedules were perfectly aligned, we were extremely happy at Mansfield. We had no intentions of leaving. And I get a call from Baylor saying, 'Hey, we'd love for you to come back and work.' I was like, 'Wow! Really, right now?' But, we talked about it and thought, college jobs don't come open all the time. If I go and I don't like it, I can always go back to a high school setting. And 20 years later, here we are."
Olson says that Mulkey, Knoll and former Mansfield girls' basketball coach Samantha Morrow are all very similar "in that they were able to get the most out of their players, no matter what."
"It's like ringing water out of a wash rag, they get every drop they can out of each player," he said. "And a lot of it is just from being intense and really knowing the buttons to push. And with me, too, being very demanding of my job."
The sports medicine field has evolved a great deal in the last 30 years since "Cubby" started as a student trainer "to the point now where we are trying to focus more on recovery and enhancing performance more than just trying to react to injuries once they've happened," he said.
One of the developments is blood flow restriction (BFR) training or rehabbing, which is a "pretty intense way of gaining strength in a body part, especially once it's been injured, and trying to prevent injuries in the future," Alex said.
"I just say the three letters – BFR – and you see the players cringe like, 'Oh no, not again!'''
Much like mowing the field and chalking the lines were not part of his official duties as the baseball trainer, there's nothing in his job description as Director of Sports Medicine about being the spiritual leader for women's basketball. But, when the Lady Bears are on the road and can't make it to church, Alex is the one who brings a message to the team.
"Part of my daily discipline is reading the Bible every morning. That's just the way I like to start my day. And I guess Coach Mulkey maybe noticed that," Alex said. "And she just asked me if I could share something with the team one Sunday morning. I thought it was a one-time deal, but the next time we were on the road she asked me again. So, I'm always looking, trying to get ideas. I don't feel like I'm really the person that should be doing it, but I'm blessed and honored to get that opportunity to share."
An avid runner who has done several marathons and triathlons, Alex took a break from running in the fall when he started feeling pain in his knee. But, when he started doing more weight-lifting, he tore a muscle in his shoulder and had surgery recently to reattach his pec tendon to his arm.
"I'm in a sling for six weeks, trying to do my job with one hand. And all that because I couldn't run," he said. "I definitely need to get back to running, because I'm not very healthy otherwise."
Beth Olson has been the principal at Woodway Elementary for the past two years, and also travels with the couple's daughter, Taylor, to volleyball tournaments around the state with her Waco Juniors club team.
"She grew up at the Ferrell Center, around the Lady Bears, so that's all she knows is athletics," Alex said of Taylor, an eighth-grader at Live Oak Classical School. "Taylor has turned out better than I could have ever dreamed. She is a combination of Beth and I. She has Beth's intelligence and probably some of my intensity and will to win.
"And she's just a good-hearted person. She brings me down to earth. When I'm driving on I-35 and getting frustrated, she's like, 'Dad, it's just a very small thing in the big picture.' I don't know how she turned out so good, but she is a joy of our lives, for sure."
Baylor Bear Insider
Just four months into his tenure as a full-time athletic trainer at Baylor, Alex Olson got a call from newly hired women's basketball coach Kim Mulkey, telling him to turn in his keys.
"She had no idea who I was or anything about me. I was the only one left from the previous staff, and it was going to be a fresh start," Olson said. "Fast forward nearly 20 years later, and we can practically finish each other's sentences."
The 48-year-old Olson is one of just two staffers that have been with the Lady Bear program for each of Mulkey's 19 seasons. Johnny Derrick, Assistant AD for Basketball Operations, came with Mulkey from Louisiana Tech when she was hired on April 4, 2000.
"Alex Olson is like a right hand to me," said Mulkey, whose top-ranked Lady Bears (23-1, 13-0) go for their ninth consecutive league title when they host Kansas (12-12, 2-11) at 6 p.m. Wednesday at the Ferrell Center "He was here when I got here, he's been with me, he's very good at his job. He goes beyond the call of duty. I look at Alex like a coach, I look at him like a parent. Without a doubt, I totally trust him."
Working with women's basketball for 20 years, and men's and women's tennis during his first 10 years at Baylor, Olson has been a part of three national championships, 47 Big 12 titles and all of Mulkey's 562 victories.
But, like Mulkey, he doesn't think about the championships or the wins as much as the excruciating losses.
After the men's tennis team claimed Baylor's first national championship with a 4-0 win over UCLA in 2004, Alex sat in agony as the Bears lost to that same UCLA team, 4-3, the next year.
"We won the doubles point, and I remember Coach (Matt) Knoll telling us, 'Guys, we're about to win another national championship,''' he said. "We went out and lost four of the singles matches and lost. I remember that loss, and I remember our women's basketball team's loss to Louisville back in 2013. I think about those two far more than I ever think about any of the championships we won.
"That's what drives me is I don't want to fail. I want to make sure our players are able to perform on the court and do the things they need to do to help us have success."
Success has followed Olson wherever he's been. A 1989 North Garland High School graduate, he was a student athletic trainer for football and baseball in his five years at Baylor, winning the 1993 Southwest Conference tournament and making two NCAA regionals in baseball and winning a share of the 1994 SWC title and making three bowl appearances with football.
Working for Hall of Fame baseball coach Mickey Sullivan, Alex still remembers all the "awesome one-liners and just the laid-back attitude he had."
"Every little detail matters in football," he said, "and then you transition to baseball and it's like, hey, days of summer, just relax and carefree. He was a player's coach, and everyone loved him. He cared more about the individual than a lot of the other stuff."
Even as a student trainer, he got more and more responsibility with baseball, handling travel, per diem, hotel bookings and other logistic issues on top of his normal routine as the team's athletic trainer.
"My typical day at baseball is I would take care of treatments, tape everybody, get them ready for practice," said Olson, who earned his bachelor's in health sciences with a concentration in physical therapy in 1994 and his sport management master's two years later. "But, I also had to get on the tractor, mow the field, chalk the lines, tamp the batting area and mound, then wash the player uniforms and get the buses and hotel lined up for trips. That's what you did, there was no other option. That forced me to have a good, strong work ethic and a well-rounded approach to my job that I do now."
Former head trainer Mike Sims said that "how much ever responsibility they could handle is how much they got put on them. Alex is such a good guy, he kept getting more and doing more and more stuff, until you get to be an integral part of the whole organization."
Back then, Alex carried the nickname, "Cubby," because he was a big Baylor fan and a smaller guy, Sims said.
"Except Mickey Sullivan called him 'Covey.' He would put a 'v' in there," Sims said. "Alex is one of those guys that I call a go-to person. If you've got something you need to get done, you take it to him, because you know it will get taken care of. Those are the kind of people you watch and hope at some point to bring back to work for you."
Alex's biggest victory during his Baylor days came on Oct. 29, 1994. And it wasn't the Bears' 52-13 Homecoming win over Houston, it was Beth Williams saying yes.
They met as Baylor undergrads, when Alex was working as a student trainer with baseball and Beth was a bat girl.
During halftime of that 1994 Homecoming football game, a group of Alex's friends unrolled about 40 or 50 yards of butcher paper on the field at Floyd Casey Stadium with a sign stretching across the turf that read, "BETH, WILL YOU MARRY ME? ALEX"
"I walked up into the stands with a dozen roses and a ring and asked her to marry me in front of a full house at Floyd Casey Stadium, and the crowd erupted," he said. It was a pretty cool moment. That's why Homecoming for us is a really special time to remember that day."
The Waco Tribune-Herald newspaper ran a photo the next day with a caption that read, "Cubby Gets his Gal."
During the taping of football coach Chuck Reedy's show the next day, Voice of Bears John Morris asked Reedy if he had seen the halftime marriage proposal. "And Coach Reedy said, 'Well, I hope she said yes.'''
Yes, she did.
Married on July 1, 1995, Alex and Beth went to work for the Mansfield Independent School District in 1996 after Alex spent one year at Champion Performance Physical Therapy in Austin.
"That year in a clinical setting was intense learning, but I also learned that I really missed the team dynamic, the camaraderie with the team and having a part in the outcomes," Alex said. "So, I transitioned to Mansfield High School and loved it there. I would go back to a high school in a heartbeat. And what was cool was that Beth was also there as a school teacher, so we had the same holidays, the same breaks. And that was a nice time to really bond with her early in our marriage and just have some time to do things we wanted to do."
Long before Baylor's "Year of the Bear" in 2011-12, when all 19 varsity sports made it to postseason play and the Lady Bear basketball program went 40-0 en route to its second national title, Alex was the trainer for a Mansfield program that sent all 18 varsity teams to the playoffs. The girls' basketball team went 38-0 and won the state championship.
"The camaraderie with the students was awesome, but the coaching staffs that I got to work with at Mansfield, I'll never forget my time there. I just loved, loved being in the high school setting," he said.
That's what actually made it tough when Mike Sims called the next year with a job offer to come back to Baylor as a full-time trainer.
"God is going to come and get you when you're at the most comfortable time in your life," Alex said. "Beth and I had just built a new home in Mansfield, our schedules were perfectly aligned, we were extremely happy at Mansfield. We had no intentions of leaving. And I get a call from Baylor saying, 'Hey, we'd love for you to come back and work.' I was like, 'Wow! Really, right now?' But, we talked about it and thought, college jobs don't come open all the time. If I go and I don't like it, I can always go back to a high school setting. And 20 years later, here we are."
Olson says that Mulkey, Knoll and former Mansfield girls' basketball coach Samantha Morrow are all very similar "in that they were able to get the most out of their players, no matter what."
"It's like ringing water out of a wash rag, they get every drop they can out of each player," he said. "And a lot of it is just from being intense and really knowing the buttons to push. And with me, too, being very demanding of my job."
The sports medicine field has evolved a great deal in the last 30 years since "Cubby" started as a student trainer "to the point now where we are trying to focus more on recovery and enhancing performance more than just trying to react to injuries once they've happened," he said.
One of the developments is blood flow restriction (BFR) training or rehabbing, which is a "pretty intense way of gaining strength in a body part, especially once it's been injured, and trying to prevent injuries in the future," Alex said.
"I just say the three letters – BFR – and you see the players cringe like, 'Oh no, not again!'''
Much like mowing the field and chalking the lines were not part of his official duties as the baseball trainer, there's nothing in his job description as Director of Sports Medicine about being the spiritual leader for women's basketball. But, when the Lady Bears are on the road and can't make it to church, Alex is the one who brings a message to the team.
"Part of my daily discipline is reading the Bible every morning. That's just the way I like to start my day. And I guess Coach Mulkey maybe noticed that," Alex said. "And she just asked me if I could share something with the team one Sunday morning. I thought it was a one-time deal, but the next time we were on the road she asked me again. So, I'm always looking, trying to get ideas. I don't feel like I'm really the person that should be doing it, but I'm blessed and honored to get that opportunity to share."
An avid runner who has done several marathons and triathlons, Alex took a break from running in the fall when he started feeling pain in his knee. But, when he started doing more weight-lifting, he tore a muscle in his shoulder and had surgery recently to reattach his pec tendon to his arm.
"I'm in a sling for six weeks, trying to do my job with one hand. And all that because I couldn't run," he said. "I definitely need to get back to running, because I'm not very healthy otherwise."
Beth Olson has been the principal at Woodway Elementary for the past two years, and also travels with the couple's daughter, Taylor, to volleyball tournaments around the state with her Waco Juniors club team.
"She grew up at the Ferrell Center, around the Lady Bears, so that's all she knows is athletics," Alex said of Taylor, an eighth-grader at Live Oak Classical School. "Taylor has turned out better than I could have ever dreamed. She is a combination of Beth and I. She has Beth's intelligence and probably some of my intensity and will to win.
"And she's just a good-hearted person. She brings me down to earth. When I'm driving on I-35 and getting frustrated, she's like, 'Dad, it's just a very small thing in the big picture.' I don't know how she turned out so good, but she is a joy of our lives, for sure."
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