A quick look at her stats and Alev Kelter appears to be just a run-of-the-mill athlete at first glance. Kelter is a senior midfielder on the Wisconsin women’s soccer team and her numbers during her three year career at Wisconsin – nine goals and three assists – would lead to a conclusion that she falls under the spectrum of what could be considered average. Dig a little deeper though, and any hint of mediocrity is a distant first impression.

Kelter is one of the few athletes on the UW campus, along with those who compete in both cross-country and track and field, who play two sports. But unlike the track and field and cross-country runners, Kelter’s two sports are hardly related.

In the fall, Kelter takes to the pitch with the soccer team and then, without a break and only a short adjustment period, hits the ice with the hockey team.

Playing two sports is something that used to be fairly common – before breaking the color barrier with Major League Baseball’s Brooklyn Dodgers, the late Jackie Robinson played four different sports while at UCLA – but has become somewhat of a rarity in more recent times with how much dedication it takes to excel at just one sport.

“I would say you have to obviously be passionate about both of them, which she was,” Kelly Jaminski, Kelter’s teammate on the Wisconsin hockey team, said. “It takes just a lot of dedication to both and that balancing act that she had to do was really tough – probably why most athletes don’t do it.”

But what has allowed Kelter to do what most athletes cannot comes from her competitive nature, which she remarked is due in large part to her twin sister, Derya.

“I think growing up, my twin and I, we just always were pretty competitive and aggressive with each other,” Kelter said. “Just that competitive mentality, I don’t think it’s necessarily … aggressive, ‘I want to hurt you.’ It’s more just like ‘Let’s win the game and do what we need to do.’

“It’s just like you have that [twin] growing up and it’s just exciting to have someone to push and pull off of each other, and I don’t think I’d be where I’m at right now without her.”

Growing up, Kelter moved around sporadically because of her dad’s involvement in the military, spending time in Florida, Colorado, Texas and Arkansas before finally settling in Chugiak, Alaska when she was nine. While in Arkansas, Kelter got her start in soccer, which was her first sport, at the age of four. Her start in hockey didn’t come until she was nine, after she had moved with her family to Alaska.

But although she didn’t start hockey until later, Kelter’s competitive and aggressive nature was fostered in her early years as she played nearly every sport she could. At one point, Kelter noted that both she and her twin were playing six different sports, which included softball, baseball, swimming, hockey, soccer and track and field.

And as her high school years approached, Kelter hardly slowed her sports binge. Kelter starred on the soccer team and led it to the state title in 2007. Her high school also boasted a female flag football team, which Kelter helped guide to a 17-0 season. During an interview Aug. 27, Kelter said she also relished in her other high school sports experiences, one of which was being a defenseman on the Chugiak boys’ hockey team.

But Kelter didn’t just play multiple sports in high school. She starred in them. Kelter was named Gatorade Alaska Player of the Year in soccer and the Daily News Girls Athlete of the year in 2008, among many other accolades that included being a member of the U.S. U-17 national team for soccer and the U. S. Women’s Ice Hockey U-18 National Team.

Since coming to Wisconsin, Kelter has played four seasons of hockey and three seasons of soccer, taking a year of leave absence from soccer last season to focus on hockey and the Olympic tryouts. So, with all four years of hockey eligibility used up, soccer will be the sole focus for Kelter in her last year at UW.

Without hockey on her agenda, Kelter was able to train with the soccer team in the spring and summer for the first time in her career, which Wisconsin head coach Paula Wilkins thinks will play only to Kelter’s benefit.

Wilkins also discussed the qualities, other than her competitiveness, that have allowed Kelter to succeed at so many sports, and how those qualities have helped her on the soccer field.

“Well, I think one of her strengths is her strength,” Wilkins said. “She’s extremely athletic, extremely powerful, and I think that really benefits her on the soccer field.

“And she’s really good in the air. Her aerial game, winning battles and winning and competing for balls is probably her strength.”

With the soccer season just underway, it remains to be seen how those strengths may pay off for Kelter this season, but no matter what she does this year, her experience is one that few other athletes can say they’ve had.

“I just think having the option and the ability to have the experience happen here at Wisconsin is a testament to the university and to the staff and to the people here. It’s just a great experience and also the teachers are phenomenal to letting this happen and being accepting of a dual athlete,” Kelter said, noting that she didn’t come to just compete in sports, but in the classroom, as an art major.

“Knowing it’s a lot of work, at the same time, I want to be a student first and excel in that area, too. I’m excited to be a student for the last semester, just a student. I’m looking forward to that and creating some art and working on that aspect of my life.”