From wakeskating champion to NFL hopeful, Oklahoma State's Alex Hale chases another dream

FRISCO, Texas — You’ve probably heard a hundred stories like Alex Hale’s.

Growing up on the southeastern coast of Australia, he was your typical tennis-loving, watersports-addicted soccer prodigy.

As a teenager, he became a Junior Wakeskating World Champion.

And on Saturday, he’ll try to prove to scouts that he should be a professional placekicker in the NFL.

OK, so maybe you haven’t heard a story like Hale’s.

He’ll be one of 10 former Oklahoma State football players auditioning for NFL scouts at the inaugural Big 12 NFL Pro Day, a three-day event set to begin Thursday morning inside the Ford Center at The Star.

It’ll be Hale’s second opportunity in front of NFL types, following his inclusion among a select group of players invited to the specialists-only combine in Indianapolis a few weeks ago.

Of the 10 Cowboys at Big 12 Pro Day, Hale has as good a chance as any at getting an NFL shot. He was a two-time semifinalist for the Lou Groza Award — once before tearing his ACL in 2020 and again after working his way back in 2023.

Yet if the NFL doesn’t work out, rest assured Hale will find another avenue for success. He always does.

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Tennis and waterskiing were his early loves. His family lived on the coast in Point Frederick, New South Wales, so Glenn and Mira Hale would take their jetskis onto the water and pull their sons, Andre and Alex, behind them.

“At the age of 4, Alex could stand up and ski behind a jetski,” Mira told The Oklahoman. “He always loved water, and Australia is great for surfing, so Dad and the two boys always surfed.”

Around the same time, he began playing tennis.

“The teachers came up and said, ‘Do you want to put him in lessons, because he’s very good,’” Mira said. “So then we started tennis lessons and he got identified for his talent in tennis.”

With Andre, his older brother, excelling in soccer, Alex followed that path, too.

Before long, he had earned a spot on the regional roster for the Australian World Cup future team.

Alex will tell you soccer was his passion, but his father sees a bigger picture.

“He just wanted to play sport,” Glenn said. “When he played soccer, he wanted to play for the Australian team. If he was playing tennis, it was Wimbledon.

“He wasn’t obsessed. He was just naturally good at things.”

Around age 14, Alex left soccer behind and fell in love with wakeskating — a sport similar to wakeboarding, but the board is smaller, close to the size of a skateboard, without bindings to hold your feet in place.

He blossomed quickly in that sport as well, and over the next four years, he competed internationally, winning the Junior Wakeskating World Championship in Dubai.

Andre was a gifted athlete himself, yet kept his focus on soccer. When he finished high school, he had about 20 scholarship offers from American colleges and landed at San Diego State.

So Alex followed his big brother to the U.S., potentially seeing if there was a future in wakeskating. But on the side, he began to learn placekicking, working with longtime NFL kicker John Carney in San Diego.

After taking a few months to hone the craft, he began exploring college opportunities, ultimately landing in Stillwater.

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As a redshirt sophomore in 2020, he won the starting job and made his first field goal attempt in the season opener against Tulsa — the first field goal he had ever made in a game.

That year, he made 13 of 14 kicks before tearing his anterior cruciate ligament during pregame warmups for the Bedlam game.

Rushing back to be ready for 2021, he wasn’t quite the same and lost the job to Tanner Brown, who excelled for two seasons. But Hale found himself back in the starting role last fall and made 27 of 34 tries, including multiple kicks from 50 yards and beyond.

OSU coach Mike Gundy occasionally joked about Hale’s relaxed demeanor on the sidelines, even in tense situations. But no one who knew him was shocked by that revelation

“A soccer coach he had called him the Iceman,” Glenn said. “No matter what you did out there, you weren’t gonna ruffle him, you weren’t gonna upset him. He was ice.

“And those things have actually prepared him for the composure you need to be a kicker at this level.”

Alex doesn’t know how far football will take him, but the opportunities it has afforded him already have made it a worthwhile journey.

“I grew up wanting to be a soccer player, but things change,” he said. “I fell in love with wakeskating, but then, I always dreamed of competing at a high level like this in front of a great fanbase like we have at Oklahoma State.

“What any sportsman would dream of is just going out there and enjoying the moment. I’m blessed to have had the opportunity to go out there and kick in front of our amazing fans.”

This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Once a wakeskating world champion, OSU's Alex Hale chases NFL dream