Spring Creek High School’s Heather Alexander plays… volleyball, softball, basketball, and tennis; competes in dance, is a volunteer and coach plus has a job. Is there anything she doesn’t do?

“I don’t play golf?” Alexander laughed.

She puts the Extra in Extra Effort, but it’s what’s in her heart that makes her stand out.

“Just a warm-hearted person. She’s just a good person to be around, and one you like to have in your program,” head basketball coach Paul Hayes said.

“She has the biggest heart, she’s always there for people, always wanting to go the extra mile,” assistant basketball coach Cassidy Davis added.

“She’s just a fantastic young lady that you just can’t say enough good about,” said teacher Christy Shivar.

It’s basketball season, but volleyball is her true love. She’ll play after she graduates at Lenoir Community College, less than an hour away from home.

“It means the world to her, she finally dug herself in and got to work and that’s how she earned going to college for (volleyball),” Davis said.

Life hasn’t exactly been easy for Alexander. In eighth grade, her father died. Then as a freshman, she lost her grandmother as well.

“Life changes once you lose someone, but it depends on how you take it,” Alexander said.

Her coaches have helped make it easier.

“Them both really just made it feel like home here,” Alexander said with tears in her eyes.

“I’m very sensitive… can you tell?” She laughed.

But the relationship makes her cry for a reason, they mean the world to each other.

“Hayes and Davis will definitely be at my wedding if I get married one day, because it’s that kind of bond,” Alexander said.

“She is proof that you can, that tragedy doesn’t have to speak for everything in your life, that you can choose to make your own story and make it the way that you want it,” Shivar said.

And that’s why Heather Alexander is this week’s winner of the Tom Suiter Extra Effort Award.