Tom Rowland Podcast Episode 387 is a conversation with professional wakeboarder Alexa Score, who grew up hunting and ice fishing in small-town Minnesota, survived a leukemia diagnosis that left her blood ninety-seven percent cancerous, and turned that scare into the push she needed to move to Orlando, ride professionally, and build a career in television. She talks about the doctor she trusted, the breakthrough drug Gleevec, the moment she first felt strong again, and how she is using wakeboarding to transcend the sport.
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Alexa Score is a professional wakeboarder from Spicer, Minnesota, a small town of about a thousand people, who is also a leukemia survivor and a television host. She grew up hunting and ice fishing with her father, moved to Orlando to pursue wakeboarding professionally, earned a finance degree, and has since moved into TV broadcasting.
Alexa was diagnosed with leukemia. By the time she was diagnosed, about ninety-seven percent of her blood was made up of cancerous cells. She was treated with the drug Gleevec, which worked extraordinarily well: her cancerous blood-cell count dropped from around 140,000 to roughly 10 to 15 within a week, though the treatment made her severely ill for about four months.
Alexa describes the diagnosis as the catalyst that pushed her to chase her dreams. After months too weak to brush her own hair, she remembers the moment she first felt no pain and then felt strong again, and she used that fire to declare she was moving to Orlando to wakeboard. As she put it, when you are the cancer girl, people cannot really say no to you, so she told everyone what she was going to do and went.
Alexa is from Spicer, Minnesota, a town of about a thousand people. She grew up with an outdoorsman father, hunting deer and ducks and ice fishing, often showing up to high school in camo before changing into a girly outfit. Minnesota's short warm season is part of why she became so passionate about water sports.
Alexa had wanted to pursue wakeboarding before her diagnosis, and the leukemia experience gave her the courage and the leverage to actually go for it. She moved to Orlando, where her sister was also into the sport, and competed against girls who had been wakeboarding their whole lives, pushing through real self-doubt while also earning a finance degree as a safety net.
Beyond competing as a professional wakeboarder, Alexa has moved into television broadcasting, using the platform she built in wakeboarding to transcend the sport and host on TV. Her story of resilience through a serious cancer diagnosis has become a central part of how she connects with audiences.
Two things caught my eye about Alexa right away: she is a professional wakeboarder, and she is from Minnesota, which did not seem to add up. The more I looked, the more I realized those were the least interesting things about her. She is a cancer survivor whose diagnosis became the reason she finally chased the life she wanted, and she is taking that into television now. I wanted to hear how someone turns the worst news of their life into a launch point. Press play in the YouTube player above.
Alexa grew up in Spicer, a town of about a thousand people, hunting deer and ducks and ice fishing with her dad, changing out of camo into a girly outfit once she got to school. She says the short Minnesota summer is exactly why she fell so hard for water sports. It is a fun origin story, and it sets up everything that follows. Listen to how she got from a frozen lake to professional wakeboarding in the episode.
Alexa is candid about the dark stretch: days too weak to lift a hairbrush, bone pain that kept her in bed, nights when she genuinely wondered if she would wake up. With ninety-seven percent of her blood cancerous, the drug Gleevec was working so hard that the treatment itself made her dangerously sick, and she and her family had to weigh blood work against an unlivable quality of life. She tells it without flinching. Hear it in her own words in the player above.
Alexa remembers sitting in class and feeling like she was high, then realizing it was simply the first time in six months she felt no pain. That was followed by the feeling of being strong again, and for a stubborn, fiery young woman that was the spark. With a prognosis that nobody could promise would last, she decided to move to Orlando and wakeboard, and as she says, when you are the cancer girl, nobody tells you no. Listen to that turning point in the episode.
Even after moving, Alexa wrestled with doubt. She came from a traditional household where a steady job, health insurance, and a 401k were non-negotiable, so she chased wakeboarding while also earning a finance degree as a hedge. She is honest that fear held her back at her first contests against girls who had ridden their whole lives, and how she pushed through it. Press play to hear how she balanced the dream against the safety net.
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The day after this one, what stuck with me was Alexa's line about feeling strong again being the thing that fired her up. Most people would have used a diagnosis like hers as a reason to play it safe. She used it as permission to do the opposite.
Her story is really about turning a deadline you did not ask for into a reason to stop waiting. Whether you wakeboard or not, that lesson lands. Listen to the whole thing.
The Tom Rowland Podcast brings you long-form conversations with the most accomplished anglers, hunters, conservationists, and outdoor professionals in the game. Listen to every full-length Tom Rowland Podcast interview.
Alexa Score is a professional wakeboarder from Spicer, Minnesota, a leukemia survivor, and a television host. Raised by an outdoorsman father, she grew up hunting and ice fishing before a leukemia diagnosis that left her blood ninety-seven percent cancerous became the catalyst for a move to Orlando to pursue wakeboarding. She competed professionally while earning a finance degree and has since carried her platform into television broadcasting, where her story of resilience is central to her work.
Full transcript of the Tom Rowland Podcast, Episode 387, Alexa Score...
"Having this prognosis of well, I don't know how long this medication is going to work for, because we still don't know how long it'll work. It hasn't been around that long it was like, I'm moving to Orlando, I'm going to wakeboard. I don't know what's going to happen after that, but that's just what I'm going to do. And when you're kind of the cancer girl, people can't really say no to you. So that's where I just told everyone what I was going to do. I'm Alexa Score, and this is the Tom Rowland Podcast."
Tom Rowland: Hey everybody, welcome to the podcast today. We've got a fantastic guest for you. I was introduced to Alexa Score, and she's a very interesting young lady. One of the things that caught my eye about her right away is that she's from Minnesota, and she's a professional wakeboarder. I wondered how those two things came together, so I looked into her story more, and she is way more than either one of those. She's a cancer survivor, and that has had a big impact on her life and she's still dealing with it today. So we're going to get to ask her all the questions I have about becoming a professional wakeboarder, and also how she's using that to transcend wakeboarding and go into television broadcasting. So without any further delay, Alexa Score. Alright, we have Alexa. Alexa, how are you today?
Alexa Score: Doing very well, thank you. How are you?
Tom Rowland: I'm doing great. It's approaching fall, and I know you're in Minnesota fall means something different there than it does to a Floridian, or even someone in the middle of the country. It seems like fall would be kind of a fleeting moment in time in Minnesota.
Alexa Score: Totally. It's been a quick transition this year straight from summer eighty-degree days into forty-degree weather. So everyone's busting out their fall gear. It's sad to see summer go, but there are so many different activities in the fall that we're pretty pumped.
Tom Rowland: What do you like to do in the fall?
Alexa Score: Fishing, for one.
Tom Rowland: Do you hunt?
Alexa Score: Yeah, I grew up hunting with my dad. I didn't get to do it much when I was living in Orlando for ten years, but I do some duck hunting and deer hunting, and then all the other fall activities making fires, still getting some fishing in, all that fun stuff.
Tom Rowland: You grew up in Minnesota is your dad the one who got you into the outdoors?
Alexa Score: It's funny yes. I grew up with my dad in a super small town, Spicer, Minnesota, about a thousand people. He was an avid outdoorsman and hunter. He didn't really fish much, but he never pushed me toward any of it I kind of got into it myself. I told him I was thinking about taking a gun safety course because I wanted to start hunting, and he just said okay. So in high school I'd go hunting with my buddies show up to school in camo, then change into a girly outfit once I got there. I'd deer hunt and duck hunt a little with my dad, and I was also big into ice fishing, mostly because my friends were into it.
Tom Rowland: Ice fishing can also be code for drinking beer and playing cards, right? I've never really gotten into it probably because the reason I ended up in the Florida Keys in the first place was that I tried to spend a winter in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and it was too cold, so I went as far south as I possibly could. But I like the idea of it. My friend Mark Zona up there used to talk about fishing the hard water versus the soft water, and I realized oh, that's ice. That's all winter long. It can be really good you get out on the snow machine, find the spots, and have some great fishing in the middle of winter. Anyway, one of the things I found interesting about your story right away was that you became a professional wakeboarder out of Minnesota, which seems like it would be a pretty fleeting window too how did that happen?
Alexa Score: That's everyone's first question Minnesota and water sports just doesn't seem to make sense. The season is so short. But honestly, that's actually why I became so passionate about it. Because the season here is only three months long, you're on the water every single moment you possibly can be. We have twelve thousand lakes, and lake life is a huge part of the culture any minute you can be out there, you're taking advantage of it. When I first moved to a lake in Orlando, it would be glass calm in the middle of the day and nobody would be out on it, and I thought that was so bizarre. Here, tubers are out at six in the morning until the sun goes down. I think that short season really contributed to my love of water sports. But you're right that I only had three months a year to train you'd spend a month just getting back in shape, and then you'd only have two months to actually learn new stuff. So that's why I decided to move down to Orlando when I was seventeen, so I could wakeboard year-round.
Tom Rowland: At seventeen? Were you still in school?
Alexa Score: I graduated high school early. I walked into my principal's office in this small-town high school and told him I wanted to graduate early. He said no one had ever done that and asked how it would even work. I told him I didn't know, but we'd figure it out and we did. I graduated a semester early and got in the car and drove down.
Tom Rowland: Tell me about that decision that seems like a moment where you're making a major life change. Were your parents part of that decision, or did you just tell them what you were doing?
Alexa Score: I basically just told them what I was going to do. My dad has always been the type to say, "Fine, but you have to figure it out yourself good luck." A big part of that move was my sister. She's nine years older than me, and she was living in Minnesota at the time but said she wouldn't mind moving to Orlando with me. So the two of us made that trip together, and having her there made it a completely different, much easier experience even though we were basically couch surfing and didn't really know anyone or what we were doing when we got down there.
Tom Rowland: Was she into water sports too, or did she just want to thaw out?
Alexa Score: She's actually the one who introduced me to wakeboarding she came home one summer, and she and her college buddies had started wakeboarding, and I remember thinking, what is this thing? I was a gymnast and kind of a tomboy, and I loved water sports, so wakeboarding was all of that in one. She and I wakeboarded together a lot and pushed each other. When we moved to Orlando, she wasn't pursuing it competitively like I was and then a week after we moved down, seven days in, she tore her ACL wakeboarding. That was the end of it for her.
Tom Rowland: Wow you're a week into your new life and your sister tears her ACL. She's nine years older than you, so she's a full adult, but you're seventeen. I have a seventeen-year-old daughter and I can't imagine her living on her own dealing with something like that. But it sounds like you'd already dealt with things in your life that gave you a lot of maturity and a different perspective.
Alexa Score: Definitely. A year and a half before I moved to Orlando, I was diagnosed with leukemia. I was sixteen, going into my junior year, and I was very, very sick the prognosis was really unknown. The plan was for me to have a bone marrow transplant, which at the time was the only treatment option, and it was dangerous and not always successful. But I had one doctor I really liked, and he suggested I try an experimental drug that was brand new at the time. He thought it might at least buy me some time if it worked. I started that medication, and it worked in controlling the level of cancer in my blood I actually still take that same medication today, fourteen years later. But at the time, we had no idea if it would work, or for how long. It was all unknowns. That whole experience definitely gave me perspective. I'd also been mostly on my own growing up with my dad, so I already had some maturity but a lot of maturity just takes time and living, no matter what you've been through. So even though I'd been through a lot by seventeen, there were obviously still so many things I didn't know yet.
Tom Rowland: What was that drug called?
Alexa Score: It's called Gleevec.
Tom Rowland: I had a similar kind of experience with my son he went through an experimental procedure on his eyes, and there was a moment where some people were telling us absolutely not to do it, and others were saying, what do you have to lose? It sounds like you were in a similar spot, weighing a bone marrow transplant against something experimental. What was it like analyzing those two choices?
Alexa Score: It was really interesting, because that one doctor was the only person who even mentioned this drug I was lucky he knew about it. Multiple other doctors told me, looking me in the eye, that I needed a bone marrow transplant or I was going to die. One thing I had on my side was that both of my parents are pharmacists, so they were able to provide some insight into the drugs themselves. But at the end of the day, they let me make the decision. It came down to the same question you're describing what do we have to lose? Let's try this drug. There was a timeline involved, because you can only get a bone marrow transplant if you're healthy enough, so I couldn't wait too long to decide, but I did have enough time to at least try the medication first. Once I started it, though, I got so sick from the side effects that the doctors thought the medication itself might kill me. We came within about twenty-four hours of pulling me off the drug and then I started feeling better the very next day. It was incredibly serendipitous. There's a girl who grew up forty minutes from me, diagnosed with the same rare disease at the exact same time it mostly affects people over sixty-five, so it's very rare for an adolescent to get it. She started the same drug, but her side effects got so bad that they pulled her off it and she had the bone marrow transplant instead. She'd been a three-sport athlete and was never able to play sports again because the radiation destroyed her bones. I spoke with her a couple of years ago and asked whether anyone had told her the side effects might eventually go away, and she said no. So really, it came down to having the right people around me that doctor, my parents that let me push through to the point where the side effects lessened and I could tolerate the drug. So many things could have sent me down a completely different path.
Tom Rowland: As pharmacists, what did your parents make of it? I'd imagine a pharmacist sees plenty of experimental drugs that work out and plenty that don't were they laying out the risks and rewards for you to weigh?
Alexa Score: There wasn't a lot of time for long discussions about it. I had such strong chemistry and trust with this doctor much more than with the other doctors, one of whom is now the president of the medical school at the University of Minnesota, but he didn't even know about Gleevec. I trusted this doctor enough, combined with my parents' insight, that I felt comfortable the downside of trying the drug wasn't that great, and we had enough time to try it and see what happened. There were some really dark moments when I was at my sickest days when I was too weak to hold up my own hairbrush, when I couldn't shower and had to just sit in the shower, when I couldn't get out of bed or walk because of bone pain. There were moments of real doubt, when you feel like you might not wake up the next morning and you wonder if you're even on the right medication. But I had a lot of faith in this person, so I just put the blinders on and said, let's get through it, let's hunker down. I owe that doctor a lot.
Tom Rowland: When you did start feeling better and saw real improvement, was that something the doctor was telling you, or something you could feel yourself, or was it showing up clearly in the blood work?
Alexa Score: The drug was working extraordinarily well. My blood cell count started at one hundred forty thousand, and a week later it was down to something like ten or fifteen. Part of the reason I was so sick was that my body was literally destroying the cancer ninety-seven percent of my blood was cancerous cells at diagnosis. So that number was dropping rapidly, but my quality of life was so poor that we genuinely didn't think staying on the medication long-term was realistic. It came down to a real question: do we wait and see if the side effects subside, or do we pull you off because they're essentially dying from the side effects? We were looking at the blood work and the medical side, but quality of life was a huge part of that conversation.
Tom Rowland: That must have been an incredibly difficult period for you, your parents, and the doctor. But then, by your account, you went from being diagnosed at sixteen to moving to Orlando at seventeen that's a complete 180. How did you go from feeling so sick to making that move?
Alexa Score: It happened really fast. The period when I was extremely ill was about four months, but once I started feeling better, it snowballed quickly. I still remember the exact moment I was sitting in class and thought, I feel high right now. I hadn't smoked anything, and I was confused about the feeling, and then I realized it was the first time in six months or more that I hadn't felt pain. I remember that feeling of strength coming back. I'd been a gymnast, a strong young lady, and then when I got sick I was laying in bed twenty hours a day and lost so much weight and muscle tone. So feeling strong again lit a fire under me I was a pretty stubborn, fiery young lady. And with this prognosis of not knowing how long the medication would keep working, since it hadn't been around long enough for anyone to know, I decided: I'm moving to Orlando, I'm going to wakeboard, I don't know what happens after that, but that's what I'm doing. And when you're kind of the cancer girl, people can't really say no to you so I just told everyone what I was going to do. I got lucky that my sister was just as into it as I was, so it turned out to be a really interesting time.
Tom Rowland: I've talked to a lot of people on this podcast who reach a moment like that, where they're just drawn to something. I mentioned to you before we started recording Jessica "Dixie" Mills, who I've had on a couple of times, decided after getting an engineering degree and working an oil field job in Oklahoma that she didn't like it, quit, and felt drawn to the Appalachian Trail. She ended up hiking that and then the Continental Divide Trail and the Pacific Crest Trail. It's interesting how clear it was to her, even though she couldn't fully explain why it went back to something from her childhood, her grandmother showing her a trail sign and telling her you could walk all the way to Maine from there. It stuck with her, maybe even subconsciously, her whole life. So when you decided, I'm going to Orlando to wakeboard was that kind of a similar, almost predetermined thing for you? Had you been thinking about it for a while?
Alexa Score: Yeah, I'd wanted to do this even before I was diagnosed I'd wanted to go to Orlando and pursue it. The leukemia diagnosis was really just the catalyst that got everyone else on board, or that let me actually pull the trigger. Without it, I think I would have eventually had the courage, but it would have taken a lot longer. There were still plenty of moments afterward where I doubted what I was doing, because I come from a very traditional family my dad's philosophy was basically, if you don't have health insurance or a 401(k), you cease to exist. If I didn't have a nine-to-five, I thought I wasn't even going to exist. So for a long time I was going for it in wakeboarding while also going to school and getting a finance degree, because I was scared to go all in. At my first contest, I saw how good the other girls were, girls who'd been competing their whole lives, and I was filled with doubt it really held me back. It wasn't a straight line. At one point, around nineteen, living in Orlando, I actually quit wakeboarding altogether because I told myself I wasn't good enough, that it wasn't realistic.
Alexa Score: I had a conversation around that time with one of my mentors, who was the editor of a wakeboarding magazine and a good friend. He told me, you don't have to be the best to be a pro wakeboarder. I asked him what he meant, and he explained that this is a lifestyle sport people want to sponsor good advocates for the sport, not just the best riders. I was still good, but I wasn't the best, and that conversation flipped something for me: just wakeboard my way, do it my way, and there's still value in that. I went through a lot of phases of doubting whether I was wasting my time, whether I was doing the right thing I still loved the sport, but I hadn't found my place in the industry yet. That's when I started sharing my cancer story. No one had known I'd had cancer until years after I moved to Orlando. Once I started sharing it and saw the effect it had on other people, I started using it to raise money for charities and tie it into everything I did it became a platform that was bigger than just being a competitive wakeboarder trying to win contests. So like a lot of people, it wasn't linear. I didn't move to Orlando at seventeen and ride off into the sunset there was a lot of internal struggle through that time, but I learned so much from it.
Tom Rowland: It sounds like there were a couple of key moments there especially that conversation about doing wakeboarding your way. Do you still think about that conversation today, and apply it to other parts of your life?
Alexa Score: I do. That conversation changed my wakeboarding career, but it also opened my eyes to the fact that you don't have to be the spitting image of someone else who's done what you're trying to do. In TV, for example, I didn't have to be the bright blonde with tons of makeup when I first wanted to get into television, I showed up as completely myself, because I knew I couldn't act, and if I started faking it now, that was going to be a very long career of faking it. So I just showed up as myself, and the feedback I got was that people liked that I was authentic, that it was clear I was just being myself. I've applied that thinking to everything else I do since you don't have to do it the way someone else did it. You can learn from what they've done, but you don't have to copy it.
Tom Rowland: Why did you gravitate toward TV?
Alexa Score: Growing up, I'd always thought about being a sports broadcaster that was around the time I realized I wasn't going to be the next Randy Moss, since I was five foot three. So I thought, what's the next best thing? Sports broadcasting. But coming from such a small town, I figured, me, on TV? Never going to happen even though I was telling myself I was going to become a professional wakeboarder. Then, through my wakeboarding career, a number of television opportunities just fell into my lap. I was on a twelve-episode MTV series called Wake Brothers, centered around Bob and Phil Soven I was dating Bob at the time, so I ended up as a character on the show. That was my first real TV experience. I also did some work for the Travel Channel, a couple of TV commercials, and I was in the opening scene of a movie things that fell into my lap that I hadn't even been chasing. When I was ready to transition out of wakeboarding, I struggled again, but I told myself that if I didn't go all in on TV right then, I'd regret it for the rest of my life. If I was going to do it, I had to go all in I couldn't have one foot in and one foot out. Watching that hard work pay off, getting those TV gigs after taking that risk, was incredibly fulfilling.
Tom Rowland: What did going all in actually look like at that point in your life? Did you have to quit wakeboarding?
Alexa Score: It wasn't really making money from wakeboarding by that point anyway it's hard as a female to make a living at it, there are only a couple of girls really getting by on it. So around that time I was working other jobs to pay the bills, and going all in on TV meant stopping everything else and blitzing the industry with full focus, instead of getting distracted by all the things I probably should have been doing to pay the bills. One of the hardest parts was just admitting to people that I was going to try this TV thing, and not being insecure about it telling myself and everyone else, this is what I'm going for, instead of trying to hide it or halfway do it. It was about being honest and mature enough to say, I'm going to try this, and if I fail, that's okay.
Tom Rowland: It's written about in every self-help book one of the big keys to accomplishing a goal is telling people that's what you're going to do. Now you're in it; you've told everybody, so you have to follow through. That's a huge motivator for some people, and it sounds like it was for you.
Alexa Score: Life going for it in anything is about stopping things: stopping the part-time jobs, stopping wakeboarding, saying no to a lot of things. Saying no to things can be just as big a jump as saying yes to other things.
Tom Rowland: Because it's easy to say yes to a little audition here or there while still keeping everything else going. But there's a moment where you decide, I'm not doing any of that anymore.
Alexa Score: It's hard to give those things up, because they're your safety net. If you keep them, you're always distracted, always making an excuse well, I've got to work this other job, so I can't do this. It's like baggage. You have to remove the safety net and jump in that was the only way it was ever going to happen for me. It was difficult, but also really freeing. Once I decided to give it a shot, I wanted to give it my best shot, not a half-hearted one.
Tom Rowland: Did you make that same kind of all-in decision with wakeboarding?
Alexa Score: My wakeboarding career was always something I did while also doing something else on the side, and by the time I figured out the mindset I needed, it was too late. It's a little disappointing to think about what could have been with wakeboarding, but I don't regret it, because I always knew I wasn't going to wakeboard forever that was never realistic as a long-term goal. Learning that lesson through wakeboarding and applying it to my passion for television made it worth it.
Tom Rowland: What were the first couple of breaks that made you think a career in television could actually work?
Alexa Score: It happened pretty quickly, with a couple of big things at once. I put together a demo reel from all my experience, and I also went out and faked some news broadcasts and travel-show segments myself went to a coffee shop and pretended I was hosting a travel show, stuff like that and sent it out into the world. I emailed every news person I could find. I didn't actually want to work in news, but those were the people I knew were in television. I reached out to people in Florida, people in Minnesota, anyone I knew who worked in TV. I made a couple of really good connections that way. One of the newscasters here in Minnesota does a lifestyle piece every Sunday, and when I met with him he told me he didn't have any opportunities himself, but that I should go talk to his friends at Ron Schara Productions, an outdoors production company. I met with them, and they said they didn't have any shows for me right then, but they'd keep me on the radar and yes, I did get to meet Ron Schara's dog, Raven, before she passed away, which was pretty cool. Around the same time, I had an Instagram follower from Minnesota who was always making videos, and I reached out to him and asked if he could put together a demo reel for me. He told me he didn't know I wanted to work in TV he was the digital content producer for the Timberwolves, and his best friend was the digital content producer for the Minnesota Vikings, who he said were looking for a female personality. So I packaged up my demo reel and sent it to him. That same week after months of nothing I got a call from Ron Schara Productions and a call from the Minnesota Vikings, both asking if I'd ever consider moving back to Minnesota for part-time gigs. When the Vikings call, you pick up the phone. It was a no-brainer, even though I never thought I'd move back to Minnesota it turned out to be an easy transition, since I was starting a brand-new career anyway. So I moved back, started working for the Vikings, and started hosting two shows for Ron Schara. There wasn't much time to doubt myself at that point, though there were plenty of people along the way who weren't very nice when I reached out editors of newspapers and so on who tried to make me feel stupid. But I knew I had to keep throwing things at the wall, knowing most of it wouldn't stick, but it only takes the one that does. It really was serendipitous that both of those calls came in the same week.
Tom Rowland: I wonder about that, though is it really serendipity, or does it just take time for things you've set in motion to develop? You'd been sending your reel out to everyone you could think of for a long time before that week so even if the timing lined up by chance, neither opportunity happens at all if you hadn't already put in that work.
Alexa Score: You're right, and I don't feel lucky, because I was working my butt off reaching out to people but it is ironic that both came at the same time. The conversation I'd had with Ron Schara Productions was at least a full year before they actually called me back. And I never would have met them if I hadn't reached out to that random newscaster who pointed me toward his friends. Neither Ron Schara Productions nor the Vikings would have known who I was otherwise I was still living in Orlando at the time. It took a lot of being uncomfortable, reaching out to people for advice without really knowing what I was talking about, but being willing to learn. I'd tell people, you might not have a job for me, but I'm new to this and I'm not pretending to know everything can I just learn from you? Being fully open and honest, and willing to soak up whatever knowledge someone was willing to offer, even if that was the only thing they had to give. It was a lot of hard work, and I'm really grateful for the opportunities I got right off the bat.
Tom Rowland: With Ron Schara, you're hosting two shows for him now?
Alexa Score: Yes. One is called Made for the Outdoors, which airs on Fox Sports North, Fox Sports Wisconsin, and nationwide on the Sportsman Channel. That one's a lot of fun we show how outdoor products are made, whether it's a pontoon, a revolver, or a fishing lure, and I get to go in and get my hands dirty, weld, do whatever they'll let me do. The other show is called Destination Polaris. We travel the world riding Polaris side-by-sides, mostly around The United States but other parts of the world too, showcasing the machines and the cool people we meet along the way.
Tom Rowland: The Made for the Outdoors format seems like it could keep going through COVID, but the traveling side-by-side show seems like it would run into more challenges. Is that where things are right now, or what's going on with that?
Alexa Score: Both shows were completely on hold for at least three months, which was a big stress for us because we were halfway through both seasons with no new content episodes eight through twelve for one of them weren't even filmed yet. We had to get really creative for a while, but we're back to filming both shows now, taking a lot of precautions to keep ourselves and everyone we work with safe. It's still challenging, because now it's a constant game of catch-up. It was a strange time just not knowing when, or if, we were going back to work. But I've also been lucky in the sense that people are consuming more television than ever, and with no live sports for a while, we were getting a lot of airtime on Fox Sports so it was a bit of a blessing and a curse: great numbers, but we needed to make a lot more content. It was a challenge, like it was for everyone, but we're back up and running now.
Tom Rowland: I've always liked the show How It's Made, where you might see literally anything being made, and when I watched your trailer and a few episodes, I liked that yours is all about outdoor gear specifically how does a snow ski get made, that kind of thing. Do you focus on a specific region, or is it more spread out?
Alexa Score: It's nationwide, and we try to mix it up we want to show a variety of products, all tied to the outdoors somehow, but different every time. It's similar to How It's Made in that it could be something totally ordinary, like a bowling ball, and you think, huh, I never really knew how that was made. One of the fun parts of the show is that we really tell the story of the people behind the products the people in the factory who've been doing the same job for years. Somebody who's been drilling the same hole for thirty-five years, and this is his moment to share his story and show his personality, even though he's not trying to be on television. So we cover a real variety of products all over the country as long as it has some connection to the outdoors, we're interested.
Tom Rowland: Do you have anything else cooking, or are you happy where you are right now?
Alexa Score: I'm also on air at CW Twin Cities. There are three of us hosts two gentlemen and myself on a variety show, Saturdays at 5 p.m. on CW Twin Cities, where we get to go interview or do whatever we want across the state, which is really fun. Right now I'm not doing anything with the Vikings, for obvious reasons the NFL is running a very tight ship because of COVID, so nothing there at the moment, though I'd love to get back to it next season if things return to normal. Beyond that, I'm working with a hat company called Melin I'm about to launch my own signature hat line with them, which I'm really excited about because I love hats, and they're a great company to work with. I'm also working with SteadyMD, a telehealth platform. I'm big into health care generally, deal with it every day, and I think it's the future they're great to work with, and I use their products myself. So I'm just trying to keep working with brands I believe in and making good television.
Tom Rowland: You have such a sunny disposition, a genuinely good, happy personality, and it comes through in your television work when I watched your reel, you're clearly just having a good time and doing it in an authentic way. I think that's part of why people gravitate toward you: it's not an act. So I wanted to ask it seems pretty obvious, but it seems like this darkest moment of your life, the cancer, has had an effect that causes you to be this grateful, this sunny. How many years has it been now since you were diagnosed at sixteen?
Alexa Score: It's been fourteen years. And technically, I'm still living with leukemia this drug I take is an oral chemotherapy pill I take every day, and it comes with plenty of side effects. So I'm forced to think about my cancer, whether I like it or not, every single day, because I take the medication and feel its effects. I get this question a lot did cancer change your perspective on life? And honestly, of course it did, and I'm grateful for that experience, filled with even more gratitude now. But I was already a really grateful, happy kid who loved to have fun before any of it I'd been through some hard things already, like my parents' divorce, when I was very young. I think those earlier experiences set me up for how I handled the cancer; my perspective was already forming before the diagnosis, and leukemia became part of that same journey. Going through something that deep genuinely not sure if you're going to wake up tomorrow is a heavy experience that changes you, taking you to a place in your mind, body, and heart you didn't know existed. But I've just always loved to have fun, no matter what if I have to clean a porta-potty on a hot summer day, I'm going to have fun doing it anyway, because we've got to do it regardless. I've always really, really enjoyed life, and enjoyed living, and I'm grateful for the people, the experiences, and the memories.
Tom Rowland: What advice would you give to someone who hasn't had that kind of experience whose life has been relatively easy up to this point?
Alexa Score: That's interesting, because there's actual research on this whether you have to go through that dark time in order to reach that same gratitude and perspective on the other side. My friend Al just sent me some material on it that I still need to read. But I think the biggest thing, regardless, is keeping yourself in check being honest with yourself, and having real gratitude for the things that are going right in your life. It's all perspective. I get carried away sometimes too, but I'm humbled every day by taking that pill a reminder that I still have cancer, I still deal with the side effects, I'm still human, and the future is still unknown. So it comes down to staying humble. No matter what you've been through, or haven't been through, I think staying humble and grateful is the biggest thing.
Tom Rowland: There's a phrase I come back to a lot that's been a big part of my life: weakness is strength. Whatever you perceive as your greatest weakness or whatever was once your greatest weakness at some point, if you work at it, it turns into your greatest strength. Maybe that's your cancer, or maybe it's a lack of experience that makes you feel like you can't do something. But because you don't have that experience, you end up trying things other people wouldn't try, doing things differently than you would if you already had the "right" background and that ends up becoming your greatest strength. Has that been a theme in your life?
Alexa Score: For me, I always say that whatever you think is holding you back becomes either your excuse or your reason. You're the only one who turns it into an obstacle. If you use it as an excuse, it'll hold you back but if it becomes your reason, it gives you this extra power, almost a superpower, a reason to push harder than everyone else. Something you said reminds me of a conversation I had a couple weeks ago with a professional skimboarder named Amber Torrealba. She came from a low-income family, without a lot going for her on paper her parents didn't have money for training or equipment but she sees that as having given her a different perspective, one that's actually valuable. Whatever your weakness is, it gives you a perspective nobody else has. It's such a cool way to look at the things you might otherwise use as an excuse for why you had a lesser chance of success when really, that thing gave you an advantage.
Tom Rowland: It certainly doesn't feel like an advantage in the moment, but ten years later you look back and realize that was actually the biggest advantage you ever had. I think it's amazing there's such a thing as a professional skimboarder in the first place that's probably an even bigger niche than professional fishing, which I do. But if she didn't have formal training or the best equipment, she probably came up with tricks nobody else thought of, because nobody was teaching her the "right" way to begin with. It's a little like chess Josh Waitzkin was a prodigy, but he learned to play in the park, on the street, not through formal training, and then he's playing against people who were taught to do everything exactly by the book, and he comes at it from a completely different angle and ends up great at it. I think your perspective on things is probably even more important than your actual skill level, because the skill will come but only if you can get through the times when it feels like you're at a disadvantage. Most people don't; most people treat it as an excuse rather than a reason.
Alexa Score: Exactly our weaknesses, our downfalls, are either our excuse or they're our reason to push. I always say I have the best excuse to get out of anything if I don't want to go to work, or go to school, or clean the house, I can just say, well, I have cancer, so I can't do it. But I know the minute I start actually using it as an excuse, that's the moment cancer holds me back, the moment it defines who I am. So instead I try not to make those excuses, and to say instead that this has fired me up even harder, pushed me even harder, because I have cancer. That's when it becomes my strength instead.
Tom Rowland: I love it I think we should stop right there, because I don't know how we top that. You have such a great story, and I wish you all the very best. I look forward to seeing you on more shows.
Tom Rowland: Tell everyone how they can follow you, support what you're doing, and get to know you better.
Alexa Score: Sure I'm on all the social platforms, with Instagram being the biggest one for me. My handle is at alexascore, same for Twitter, and I'm on Facebook as well. You can also head to my website, alexascore.com, and reach out from there. Follow the journey come along for the ride, the more the merrier. I'm out there.
Tom Rowland: I love it. Alright, well, thank you very much for doing this it was great getting to know you a little better. We look forward to watching you take off and go even further.
Alexa Score: Well, thanks I appreciate you having me on.
Tom Rowland: Alright, thanks. We'll see everybody next week with another great story.
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