“Journal writing is a voyage to the interior.”
Author Christina Baldwin
Alex Buck loves a nice walk to a coffee shop with her teammates. She is, after all, a U.S. Women’s National Team player, which means that getting out of the hotel for a stroll, clad in your coziest athleisure wear, grabbing your favorite coffee drink, and bonding with your teammates is part of her DNA.
Her favorite pastime, though, is finding a quiet spot in the morning at the team hotel, settling into a comfortable chair, perhaps with rays of sunshine coming through the window, with a mechanical pencil in hand and her journal in front of her.
The 20-year-old Buck hails from Medina, Washington, a Seattle suburb located directly across Lake Washington from downtown. Despite living in a city renowned as a technology hub during an age of iPhones, TikToks and AI, Buck is dedicated to the simple act of recording her thoughts in the old-fashioned way: on paper.
“I journal to clear my mind at the beginning of the day and center myself around gratitude and joy,” said Buck, who fills pages and pages with her extremely neat and tiny handwriting. “Even when I’m frustrated about some things and write about that, I can take a deep breath, and I always bring it back to writing about what I’m grateful for.”
She started journaling only about a year and a half ago. She was living in the dorms on campus at her hometown University of Washington and was having a tough quarter academically. There were a lot of thoughts and feelings running through her mind and she was looking for a way to process them.
“I just needed something to help me empty my brain and doing that on paper has made such a huge difference,” she said. “My joy for life is about the little things, little things that can make a big difference. I list them on paper and it just shows how much I have to be grateful for and the blessed life that I have.”
If she sits down in the morning and finds herself lacking things to write about, sometimes she looks on Pinterest for topics, like writing about something she did as a child that shaped her today, simple things that make her happy, or her bucket list travel destinations.
She occasionally rereads her past journal entries and finds that the process has helped her deal with the adversities, big and small, that life inevitably puts in one’s path. It has helped her learn more about herself and raise her level of emotional intelligence.
“When I read my entries as a freshman, I can see I’ve come a long way in handling things that might not go my way,” she said. “I feel like I’m much stronger now. I’m not going to deteriorate when things go wrong. I’ve gotten so much better at that.”
Sometimes she needs to rant about things. Who doesn’t? But she leaves those negative thoughts on the page and follows them up with more reminders of gratitude that she then carries into her day. She’sespecially grateful for her family — she’s the youngest of three kids — and her teammates for college and country.
“I sometimes will share with people if they are included in an entry,” said Buck. “I just tell them that I’m so lucky to have them in my life.”
While at the 2026 FIFA Under-20 Women’s World Cup, she’s filled numerous pages with musings about her experiences in Poland.
“This is a once-in-a-lifetime experience, and I don’t want to forget any of it,” said Buck. She has in fact been part of some unforgettable moments this tournament, including scoring three goals during group play, a dramatic goal vs. Japan in the 2-2 draw against one of the best U-20 teams in the world and two more against New Zealand in the 9-0 rout. The three goals tie her for the team lead in scoring with long-time Youth National Team veteran and team captain Kennedy Fuller.
“I’ve looked at all of this as gravy on top of my career,” said Buck of her U-20 WNT experience. “I’m already so lucky to be at a college I love and playing college soccer for the Huskies. I’ve loved my path, but I had never experienced the National Team until this year. I’m just extra happy to be given this opportunity.”
Anyone who has watched Buck play can see that pure happiness on her face when she scores a goal.
“It’s a surreal experience to score in a World Cup,” she said. “I just explode with emotion every time I score. I love scoring goals and celebrating with my teammates. Scoring goals is joy.”
Buck is not a long-time Youth National Team veteran. She is what some may call a late bloomer. Her first-ever National Team camp at any level was in January of this year when she attended the U.S. National Team Development Camp in Carson, Calif., an event that also featured current U-20 Women’s World Cup team teammates Caroline Birkel, Pearl Cecil, Y-Lan Nguyen and Nyanya Touray.
Her first-ever U.S. U-20 WNT camp was just seven months ago in February.
“Making the World Cup Team has been a dream come true,” said Buck, who admits she cried, maybe sobbed, when U.S. head coach Vicky Jepson called her to give her the good news. “I feel like I’ve followed the Youth National Teams my whole life, but I haven’t been in the system for very long. To actually be here and be with such an incredible group of girls is amazing.”
Of course, after that call with Jepson, she journaled about it the next morning.
She began her entry with: “I had my World Cup call with Vicky yesterday and I found out I’m going to the U-20 World Cup! OMG…what is my life?”
She is writing a heck of a story. And the best part? She’s only just begun to tell the tale of Alex Buck.