14
ATHLETICS
MAPPING
IT O
When you ask about her
innate
navigational skills, Alison Crocker ’02
will tell you that she “has a terrible sense of
direction.” But put a map and a compass
in her hand and the Reed College phys-
ics professor is a world-class orienteer,
who learned the sport in less than three
years while completing a Ph.D. at Oxford
University.
Since 2010, Crocker has been a mem-
ber of the five-to-seven-member U.S.
Women’s Orienteering Team, competing
in championships all over the world map.
Her prowess has taken her to competitions
in France, Italy, Norway, Finland, Scotland,
Sweden, Switzerland, and Kazakhstan,
among other places. Her 15th-place finish
in the sprint at the World Orienteering
Championships (WOC) in Scotland in
August represented the best-ever finish
for an American – man or woman – in
the sport, eclipsing Crocker’s previous
mark of 18th in the long-distance event
at the 2013 WOC in Finland.
Three times, in 2011, 2012, and 2015,
Crocker has been the U.S. Individual
Orienteering Champion in the women’s
open division. It was at St. Paul’s that
Crocker first was introduced to orienteer-
ing, responding to a Chapel announcement
made by former faculty member David
Harvey and then signing up in the Upper
for excursions to traverse the woods of
nearby Carlisle, Mass., and Durham, N.H.
Crocker was a decorated three-sport
athlete at SPS and the recipient of the
Loomis Medal as best female athlete as
a Sixth Former. She excelled in cross
country running (SPS course record,
All-NE), Nordic skiing (two-time World
Junior Championship and U23 World
Championship athlete), and crew (NE
and Henley champion), so the idea of
trying a new sport intrigued her.
“I didn’t know I was going to like it so
much,” she says of her initial forays into
orienteering around the woods of New
England. “It’s very athletic, but it’s also
about problem-solving. It presents men-
tal and physical challenges at the same
time, so, in some ways, it is the perfect
sport for me.”
In a busy freshman year at Dartmouth
College, Crocker, a dual major in physics
and mathematics, competed as an in-
tercollegiate Nordic skier and rower. She
eventually settled on skiing and, by her
senior year, was a contender for the U.S.
Olympic Nordic Ski Team. When she fell
three places short of a shot at the Winter
Olympics in Turin, Italy, Crocker thought
her days as a competitive athlete might
be over. She arrived in Oxford, England,
as a Rhodes Scholar in the fall of 2006,
knowing she’d have to focus on academ-
ics to complete her Ph.D. in astrophysics
and determining to abandon her athletic
aspirations.
“
I
I
lik
it’
pro
Astrophysicist and U.S. National Team member
Alison Crocker ’02 has quickly become one of
the world’s best orienteers
by Jana F. Brown
