01/25/2026
**STAFF SPOTLIGHT: Alex Sawicki**
Alex shares, “Growing up, my family life revolved around competitions. Our Christmas parties were held at ice rinks or swimming pools where my cousins and I would play giant games of hockey or do endless swimming relays. Our summer reunions down the shore usually revolved around boogie boarding competitions and races in the sand...it wasn't possible for us to get together and NOT turn something into a competition. I started dancing when I was 2 (continued for 13 years), soccer when I was 4 (continued for 18+ years), softball at 8 (continued for 14 years), and briefly played basketball in grade school. Soccer and softball were the two sports I pursued through high school where my softball team was 4x AACA league champs (the 1st softball team in school history to 4-peat), 2x district 1 champs, 1x district runner up, and 4 time state tournament qualified. Despite finding more success in High School playing softball I ended up walking onto the West Virginia University women’s soccer team where I unfortunately spent my freshman year as a red shirt and was eventually medically retired.”
In 2011, she ran her first Spartan Race and fell in love with trail running. Since then, she’s run 100+ obstacle course races across Spartan, Tough Mudder, Savage Race, Mud Guts and Glory, and Bonefrog. She has podiumed 20+ times in distances from 3k-50k, and has 50+ top 10 finishes. She spent several years chasing the Spartan Race National series and finished top 20 3 times. She was a 4x world championship qualifier (2015-2018) and ran in 3 of them at Squaw Valley in Lake Tahoe, CA. In recent years she has moved more towards trail running vs. obstacle course racing and has also started to pursue hybrid racing/events such as DEKA, Rally in the Valley, and Hyrox. In 2022, she earned 3rd place at DEKA strong world championships in the 30-34 age group (AG) and in 2025 finished 9th at Hyrox North American Championships in the 30-34 AG. In the future she is planning for more Hyrox races as well as 50k-100mile trail races.
With little exposure to strength training in High School, the curiosity of the successful integration of strength training into athletic performance excellence led Alex to choose Exercise Physiology as a major in college so she could better understand and apply the concepts to herself as well as other athletes. During freshman year at WVU, while sidelined from soccer with a leg injury, she was also introduced to another side of S&C which was post-injury rehab that could be done after a normal Physical Therapy cycle to bridge the gap between injury and the field. This was a front row seat to see how high-performance programs operate and both learn and see how training was similar, and different, across other sports (including how football, swim, riflery, wrestling, and women’s soccer team trained throughout the in-season and off season). Alex even focused her senior thesis on the efficacy of prevention programs for ACL tears in young female athletes and sought out that population of individuals for a long time post-grad.
Her college internship and then first job was at a facility outside the university where she worked with a wide range of clients from hosting “gym class” for local home schooled kids, to a local high school football player who went on to play for WVU, to a 70 year old who was training to hike the Appalachian trail with his wife. This was her first time being exposed to training individuals outside of college athletes and really helped develop understanding how to handle programming for different ages and abilities and what these populations require. While college prepared her with knowledge, this first job opened up a new world of performance that went beyond competing and focused on just living well and aging well. Immediately post-college, Alex spent time interning with the Temple University strength program working with women’s soccer, rowing, dance, track and field, cross country, men’s soccer, volleyball, women’s lacrosse, field hockey, women’s tennis, and gymnastics.
For the last 10 years, she worked as an athletic performance coach for soccer and softball players ages 10-18, covering sport specific drills as well as strength training. Alex was the head strength and conditioning coach at Nazareth Academy High School for girls in Philly, where she collaborated with their coaches to write strength programs for their teams and work with them on injury prevention. She has taught adult group classes that specialize in weightlifting, kettlebell work, and interval training – as well as specifically coaching individuals in preparation and strategy for endurance events (road marathons, to trail 100k, to 24 hour events). Collegiate women’s hockey players, rowers, soccer, softball, and basketball players have all benefited from Alex’s expertise, as well as countless individuals who just want to live and move better in their daily lives for themselves and their families.
The world of endurance racing, especially trail running, is also a realm of performance that she has spent a lot of time learning about - both for her own pursuits as well as working with clients who were racing. The human body goes through the ringer when it comes to 50k, 50 mile, 100k, 100 mile, or 24-hour events and learning how to best prepare and strategize for these events has always been one of her favorite things.
Alex was born and raised in northeast Philadelphia and lived there until moving to York in 2023. She and her husband Tyler live in Felton with 3 dogs - Aspen, Timber, and Cedar. Outside of the gym, her hobbies include hunting (with grand dreams of one day hunting Alaskan moose and hopefully filling a bull elk tag), fly fishing, running and adventuring with the dogs, working in my garden, taking care of their countless chickens, and just spending as much time outside as possible. Alex is a Philly sports fan but the Phillies hold the #1 spot without a doubt. You can also find her in the spring following along with as much college softball as possible - Texas, OU, and Nebraska are currently my top teams.
Alex shares, “In the last (almost) 3 years since joining the team at YorkFit, I’ve been lucky enough to teach our large group classes as well as an endurance class once a week. I’ve worked with some of our own member’s kids field hockey and soccer teams in small group settings, as well as several other local soccer teams, and my current personal training clients range from 11-year-old volleyball players to 60+ year old women. Finding YorkFit and having a gym that allows me to cover such a diverse group of clients has truly been a blessing and I love working at a gym that truly believes in being fit at any age.“
