Bishop Dunne Senior Has Big Shoes to Fill
DALLAS – DeSoto resident Jared Michael Alex has big shoes to fill. Fortunately, he has size 15 feet.
“My father has size 13 feet, so he wears my old shoes sometimes,” he admits with a shy laugh.
As defensive back for the Falcons this year, he’s replacing Jovan Pruitt, the 6’6″ 300 pound player sought after by 30 colleges last year, before committing to Arkansas. In the first football game of this year, the Falcons won 51-0, “But they kept running the ball to the other side of the field,” Jared said. “So I basically got to watch a lot of plays.”
At 6’3″ and 185 pounds, Jared is intimidating on the football field which could explain the opposing team throwing the ball away from him all night.
Only two players on the team are taller than he is, A.D. Miller and Darrien Daniels, both considered a top ten player by The Dallas Morning News.
“He’s a smart guy,” Daniels says of his teammate. “And really sarcastic.”
That sarcasm isn’t evident in class. With a 4.23 average, Jared is better known for answering questions correctly and turning in perfect homework.
He came to Bishop Dunne from Merrywood, where he got a good education and learned to read music and play drums. “My mom said I used to bang on everything at home, so the drums made sense,” he explains.
Four classmates came with him: C.J. Ramsey, Lily Guy, Sofia Rana, and De’Stini Henderson. “I was a little bit afraid of the bigger school,” he admits now, “but with friends around me, it didn�t scare me for long.”
In fact, he now puts younger potential students “and their parents” at ease, working as a Bishop Dunne student ambassador. With many AP courses on his transcripts, it seems likely that he’d be in the National
Honor Society, and he is, and was elected Vice President for his senior year.
His favorite teacher in 7th grade was Sister Carol George. “She was so funny and so clear in her teaching that I learned to love math,” he says.
He’s hard pressed to pick a favorite teacher this year, but admits, “Mr. Braun is also pretty funny and an excellent AP Calculus BC teacher.”
He attributes the good teaching of Mr. Halevy in Human Geography class to the “4” he received on the AP exam, and admits that he passed all the rest with a “3” which means he has college credit in World History, US
History, English, and Calculus AB. He also is earning dual credit in English and calculus this year.
So what’s a brainy football player do on the weekends? “Apply to colleges,” he said, “The Stanford application is really intensive.” He knows his friends on the team also hope to attend there, so thinks it would be great to have Micah Simon and Travis Cook in college with him. He’s also applying to Yale, Columbia, OU, Texas Tech, Florida, Texas A&M, Baylor, UCLA, USC, and the Colorado School of Mines. But the Air Force and Cornell have already made Jared offers. “I’d play football for the Academy if I go there, and Cornell is offering a merit scholarship.” Those are good choices, and they make him a hero to his parents who’d love to see him earn a full scholarship.
Jared was a hero this past summer, working as a lifeguard at a local pool.
Twice he had to jump in and pull struggling swimmers out of the deep end.
“It’s an adrenaline rush, after, when you realize what could have happened,” he says simply. “I’m just glad I was there and could do my job.”
His job now is to continue his straight-A streak and help his team on the football field, should the ball be tossed his way. On Sundays he attends Oak Cliff Bible Church with his parents, and prays for his older sister Jorden Alex, who is a freshman at the University of Missouri. “I do miss her,� he says, “but now there’s more food at home for me and I get the use of the family car more frequently, so I’m not complaining.”
In fact, the only time he’s complained was when he couldn’t go on the Mission Trip to Nicaragua this past summer. He explains: “I was feeling a little bit ill and the doctor thought it might be mono, so I couldn’t go. Then a few days later I was much better, but I’d missed the trip.”
His days of serving others began early, when he served 100 hours as a freshman in a city program, helping out at a local clinic with his sister and her classmate Caitlyn Jones, now attending Oklahoma University. The Youth Volunteer Corps was a great way for him to spend a summer and he’s happy to lead the NHS students to other service sites last year and this fall.
His father works as Assistant District Attorney of Dallas, prosecuting some high profile animal cruelty cases, and Jared says of his father, “I admire him greatly, but he’s downright scary in a court room. I look at this giant man making a case against a criminal and I think, “that tough guy is not my dad.” He’s really very good at what he does.”
But it�s his mother, Bonnie, who runs circles around them both. “If I were ever in a car wreck, she would know about it before I would. She�s so organized and proactive. She knows more school gossip than I do,� he laughs. His parents met when his father was in a gap year between college and law school, and then within the first two years of their marriage, they had Jorden and Jared. “I know it wasn’t easy on my father to be studying for the bar exam with two little kids in the apartment,” Jared remembers. “I give credit to my parents for working hard through that and getting us to where we are now.”
Jared is willing to follow their example and work hard to get where he wants to be: in a good college, to study to become a mechanical engineer.
Would law school be in his future too? “No way,” he says, “I’m not interested in that arena or politics. I’d rather create things to help others, than help others in a courtroom.”
He may finish his senior year as a triathlete, and join the soccer team after football season, and play on the basketball team, which he was on in 9th and 10th grades. He gave up both “and the band, where he played in the drum line” to concentrate on his grades and football. “I played soccer all through middle school, then joined the band in 8th grade here to play drums, and played basketball for two years. But it is senior year and I’ve got to set my priorities. Homework and college applications take a lot of time,’ says Jared.
Time that will fly by fast for this Falcon, who may find himself on the Air Force Academy’s football field next fall.
“Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters.” Colossians 3:23
