By Moses Leos III
As an athletic trainer at Lehman High, senior Alejandra Gonzalez enjoys guiding injured athletes on the road to recovery.
But little did she realize that her second passion, art and design, could intertwine with the sports world.
That was the case roughly a year ago when she was first asked to create murals within several rooms of the athletic wing.
For Gonzalez, the murals not only allow her creativity to flow, but to leave a lasting mark as she graduates.
“When you graduate from high school, you want something that can stay there for a while,” Gonzalez said. “It’s cool because I can come back and it will be there.”
Her journey began two years ago during her sophomore year. That’s when former Lehman High boys soccer coach Jay Sansom noticed one of her art sketches.
Sansom asked Gonzalez to help design a logo for the team’s practice jerseys.
Once the logo was completed, Gonzalez was then asked to turn that drawing into a mural.
From there, other coaches began to chime in, also asking Gonzalez to construct a mural for them. It culminated with head athletic trainer Josh Young asking Gonzalez to create a mural for the athletic training wing.
“It started with one, and one thing led to another and another coach asked me (to get a mural done),” Gonzalez said.
To get the ball rolling, Gonzalez had to first get approval from Lehman High principal Michelle Chae.
But Gonzalez said Chae was familiar with her work; Gonzalez was commissioned to create a mural during Chae’s tenure as principal at Simon Middle School.
Once she got approval, “everything was good.”
Gonzalez started the process by sketching out the murals. During that time, she also gained input from the athletes themselves, gaining a better understanding of what they wanted.
“The murals represent what they do,” she said. “When I did the other ones, I asked the teams how they wanted it. I got their input as it represents them.”
Once she finalized how each mural would look, she began the process of transferring the art to the wall.
In total, her first mural took 15 man-hours to complete. But in terms of time, Gonzalez said the process took a “few months to get done.”
But in that time, Gonzalez created murals for the Lehman girls soccer team, along with a mural in the athletic training wing.
While there was a lot of elbow grease involved, Gonzalez said she’s received high praise from her clientele.
It’s to the point where she said some athletes have asked for her to create self-portraits of them.
Gonzalez is now focusing on college, where she hopes to enter into the medical field. She plans to attend Texas State to join their athletic training program.
Art and design, primarily in the sports realm, is something she hopes to continue beyond high school. Her dream job would be to help design graphics for the FIFA World Cup.
The chance to be able to design something that represents a client is her goal. So also is the ability to “make a lot of money, too.”
“I want a lot of people to see my stuff,” Gonzalez said. “I want to get known.”
