Katie-Rose Alligood prepares for last season at Mercer

From a young age, Katie-Rose Alligood said she was pushed to be an athlete. By the time she could walk, her father — a former college football player — had her with a softball and a soccer ball.

Her introduction to sports at such an early age has translated into a success while at Mercer University.

Before coming to Mercer to run track and cross country, Alligood was a five-sport athlete at Trinity Christian Academy, a small private school in Dublin, Georgia.

“I played basketball, softball, soccer, and I ran cross country and track,” Alligood said. “At that school it wasn’t that weird to play five sports.”

Alligood’s coach, Ryan Bailey, described her aggressiveness and competitiveness as a runner as a major part of the reason he recruited her.

“The thing that struck me when I was recruiting her was how tough she was,” Bailey said.

The head coach for both men and women’s cross country as well as women’s track and field said that even though when he first saw her she was not an incredibly fast runner; he saw the potential.

The perfect runner for Bailey is one that, in his words, has an attitude of “controlled fury”. For him that means a runner who can run aggressively but also intelligently.

“I value the aggressiveness,” Bailey said. “It just sometimes makes an athlete a little bit more difficult to restrain. But I’d rather have an athlete I had to pull back then one that I had to push.”

The past three years have been ones of great improvement for Alligood. When she came as a freshman she was eleventh on the team while only ten get to travel for meets. By the end of the season, she was able to prove herself and run at regionals, and has gone every year since.

“I am very competitive,” Alligood said. “I’ve found that I’m not only competitive in running but every area of my life.”

Alligood has proven this statement with her performance in the classroom as well. She maintained a 4.0 average last year and recently earned the Southern Conference Commissioner’s medal.

Alligood was born in Macon and raised in the area, so she knew of Mercer growing up, but it was never her intention to attend the school. In fact, running in college was never part of her plans.

“I was going to leave all that behind and start over,” Alligood said. “My dad, he has come to every sporting event I’ve ever had. He was like, ‘You know you don’t want to miss out on this opportunity and regret it.’”

So Alligood decided to attend Mercer to remain close to her family and to also remain an athlete in college. From her experiences, she said it is a decision she does not regret due to the relationships she’s built over the past several years.

“I could not have picked a better school if I tried,” Alligood said.

Alligood is studying to be a holistic child education major, following her mother’s footsteps in the field of education. After she graduates, she plans on staying in the Macon area to teach in order to complete her master’s degree.