COLLEGE PARK, Md. – The menu changes by the day; sometimes it's balsamic chicken with fresh bruschetta, other days it's buckwheat pancakes with turkey bacon or sautéed vegetable omelets. But this isn't a restaurant – it's Alex Doody's kitchen.

Doody, a senior forward on the University of Maryland women's soccer team, has loved cooking almost as long as she's loved her sport.

“It's another way I can express my creativity,” she said. “I can bang out something from nothing. I like the challenge.”

She got her start in both as a child growing up in a multicultural neighborhood in Framingham, Mass. Her Brazilian friends played soccer, so Doody joined a YMCA when she was four years old. She'd come home to her grandmother, aunt and mother cooking up delicious meals from their Italian heritage.

In both cases, something just clicked.

“I became obsessed with [soccer] and fell in love with the sport,” she said. She also can't name a single thing she doesn't like to eat.

Despite never taking cooking classes or working in a restaurant, she'd recreate meals and make her own recipes. During high school, her mother's friends would pay her to throw dinner parties featuring dishes like seared salmon on a mint and Parmesan puree with a bright lemon sauce and flowerless chocolate cake with a raspberry coolie.

Most evenings after practice and classes, you can find her in her apartment with friends and neighbors, whipping up meals worthy of a tablecloth and fine china.

“It's never just us for dinner,” she said, joking with roommate Katy Dodds of the Maryland gymnastics team. 

The audience is only practice for her goal to own her own restaurant. After she graduates, the family science major plans to move to Los Angeles where her brother has connections with a local chef that needs some extra help.

She'd love to serve fusion fare inspired by her family and her travels to Italy, France, and the Caribbean. Her ideal restaurant would be rustic and comfortable with a relaxed dining environment that transitions into a music venue as the night goes on.

She favors full and dynamic flavors that draw from ingredients all over the globe. She keeps her methods simple and prefers healthy foods to baking.

Her favorite recipes focus on nutrition with an emphasis on quality ingredients.

“I'm always thinking [about] what will fuel my body best for playing,” she said.  

Together, she and Dodds cook at least once a day, but when they're too tired to start from scratch they head to local favorites Sweetgreen, Jason's Deli, and Busboy's and Poets.  

But while Doody loves to be blown away by a great restaurant, it's hard to beat her homemade meals, both for the taste and for the experience.

“I'm her sous chef most of the time,” Dodds said. “She just tells me what to do and I do it.”

“I like teaching her, though, so it's fun,” Doody said. “Cooking is a little escape for me.” 

Catherine Sheffo, a junior journalism major at the University of Maryland, is a contributing writer to umterps.com.