TALLAHASSEE – Alex Steen doesn’t remember when he picked up a hockey stick and laced up a pair of ice skates for the first time. The best he can remember is that he was about two years old when his fascination with the game commonly referred to as The Greatest Show on Ice first began.

Steen was a high scoring left-winger who loved the openness of the game, loved bringing the puck up the ice, loved being aggressive, and especially loved scoring.

Wait … a hockey stick and ice skates?

Yes.

For Steen, who grew up in Minnesota, ice hockey was his first love. It wasn’t until he was 11 years old that he traded his ice skates for basketball sneakers. It wasn’t until 2017 when he was 13 years old that he moved with his family to Panama City Beach, Fla. – his current home.

“Back in my younger days when I was growing up, I was much more comfortable wearing skates than I was wearing basketball sneakers,” said Steen. “I was too young to remember the first time I picked up a hockey stick, but I do remember it was a number of years before I started bouncing a basketball.”

Steen grew up in Medicine Lake (population 1,343) with a pond in his backyard. Most days during the long winter months, he and his friends had to shovel the snow off of the frozen pond to play the game which they had grown to love.

But, as he went through a growth spurt between his freshman and sophomore seasons in high school, he turned his concentration to basketball.

“My earliest memory of basketball is when I decided to give up hockey and play hoops,” said Steen. “I remember when I first started playing, as I was getting taught the mechanics of shooting and dribbling, I was so frustrated that I was ready to quit. But there was something about the excitement I had when watching and playing the game that really made me fall in love with it.”

Steen chose basketball after excelling in ice hockey and testing his skills on the baseball diamond, the soccer pitch, and the tennis court.

Entering his first season at Florida State under head coach Luke Loucks, Seminoles fans are quickly going to realize they will be glad he didn’t decide to scrap the hardwood for the ice, the baseball or soccer fields, or the tennis courts.

Steen will complete his collegiate career at Florida State after starring for three seasons at Florida Southern (2023-25). An all-around player, he scored 1,168 career points, totaled 709 career rebounds, earned 65 assists, and 62 steals in 87 career games.

He finished his career at Florida Southern ranked second in school history with 194 career blocked shots. His 86 blocked shots during the 2024 and 2025 seasons are tied for the second highest single-seasons in school history.

When he chose to transfer at the end of his junior season, he selected Florida State over Kentucky, Louisville, Ole Miss, Virginia Tech, and Alabama.

While he has scored nearly 1,200 career points, Steen has made his reputation as a defensive player. He was named as the Defensive Player of the Year and to the All-Defensive team in the Sunshine State Conference in both 2024 and 2025. He totaled 627 rebounds and averaged 10.6 rebounds per game in both his sophomore and junior seasons at Florida Southern.

“II think what helps me be a great rebounder are two aspects of my game that I have worked very hard to be good at every night. No. 1 is working to be relentless and go for every shot that misses. No. 2 and more importantly being able to position myself in the right spots and getting a read on where the rebound might end up based on the shot path off the ball.”

“As far as blocking shots go, my secret is timing. Obviously, it helps to be tall, but I really try and time the shot to where I can go get it as soon as it leaves their hand.”

It’s that high basketball IQ and relentless effort that drew Loucks and his staff to the highly sought after power forward.

“What we really liked about Alex, and what made him a great candidate for our roster during the recruiting process, was that he never took a possession off from playing hard,” said Loucks. “What we saw was a player who is smart on the basketball court, gives it his all, and produces on both ends of the court. When you watch him, you immediately see how hard he plays. At the end of the game his statistics illustrate how hard he plays.

“We continued to see his incredible effort throughout the summer. He is going to benefit from our strength and conditioning, player development, and nutritional programs to become a productive player for us this season.”

Steen is one of 11 newcomers on Florida State’s roster of 14 players as the fall semester begins. He’s third on the team in career games played (Chauncey Wiggins, 97; Kobe Magee, 88; Steen, 87), and has played in two NCAA Division II National Championship tournaments.

As he begins his fourth collegiate season looking to add to his career statistical totals on the court, Steen is focused on earning his bachelor’s degree in May. He earned First-Team Academic All-American honors, was named to the Sunshine State Conference Commissioner’s Academic Honor Roll, and to the NABC Academic Honors Court in 2025.

“Getting my degree is definitely very important to me and my family because a degree is something that has to be earned and not just given out. It represents the end of one journey and beginning of another.”

Steen’s journey has taken him from the frozen ponds of Minnesota to the beaches in Panama City to the basketball court in Tallahassee. Luckily for Steen, playing ice hockey is in the distant past, and success as a Seminole is what his immediate future is all about.