University of Chicago soccer standout Ali Alamery aims to make saves off field

Just four years ago, the University of Chicago Men's soccer team won a national championship.

They've got a really good team again this season. They're anchored by a keeper who also hopes to be making saves off the field in the future.

Ali Alamery has been a standout in net for the University of Chicago men's soccer team.

"Very intense. He's one of our leaders. He's on our leadership council. He's a very boisterous personality in general, but especially on the field, you need that out of a goalie," said coach Phillip Kroft.

"Coach Kroft, he always expects us to do one percent mor and what I love about the team is that everyone wants to strive to win a national championship, to go undefeated. Everyone wants to push themselves one step more," Alamery said.

The work Ali puts in soccer is nothing compared to what he's doing off the pitch — where he does volunteer work both with Comer Children's Hospital and with hospice patients, all while being a double major in psychology and neuroscience.

"It's a lot of 15-minute short naps, but I think the biggest thing about it is being able to compartmentalize. When I'm on the soccer field, I really focus on the 26 guys next to me. If I have a neuroscience class, I make sure all I do is put my focus and attention to that. And if I'm eating lunch or dinner with a friend, I make sure I give them all of my attention, so in every moment I can give 100%."

And if it seems like Ali is especially motivated to be successful, even for a student at the University of Chicago, there's a reason for that.

"The thing that drives me the most is hearing the stories my family went through in Baghdad, Iraq," he said. "My father was a prisoner of war, spent a couple of years in Iran as a prisoner of war because of the Iran-Iraq War. When he came to the United States, he wanted my sister and I to have an education that he never had. My dad always reminded us that this is an amazing privilege. This is an amazing opportunity to go to high school, to go to college, and that we should make the most of it. Every time I think it's a late night or I'm studying for an exam, I just think about all the hardships my parents went through and how they gave me this amazing privilege to come to America to study"

And what he's studying goes back to his parents as well.

"As I got older, I wanted to understand the way my mom and dad thought, the way that my older siblings thought. A lot of it ended up coming down to neuroscience and different things in the brain that fired, different receptors, different part of the brain that will either have more or less expression based on what people went through their life with PTSD. So when I got to college, I was like, I think it'd be really cool to not just learn this to help myself but to also understand why my parents think the way they think, why people in difficult situations think and how I can benefit all of them."

With everything he's doing off the field, he says soccer helps him escape the day-to-day.

"The biggest thing I love about this is it gives me an escape from my day-to-day. Working with patients, doing research, even classes whether in neuroscience or economics major, it can always be stressful because you're always worried about 1, 2, 3, 4 years ahead of you. When you're on the field, you're worried about the 90 minutes ahead of you, right? Can I make this save? Can I make this pass?

It seems likely Ali will be doing plenty of saving well after his soccer career is over. 

The Maroons played to a nil-nil draw in their match against Rochester. They're 11-3-1 this season and Alamery has eight of those wins.