Since her recent transfer to CU-Bloomsburg, Lexi Tepper has been nothing short of a breakout star. Within her first season here, Tepper has shattered two school records in the mile and 800m, both of which were long-standing records for multiple years. Just this past weekend, Tepper took first in the mile, 3k, and the Distance Medley Relay with her fellow Huskies at the 2026 Indoor PSAC Championships. Despite the immediate successes of her first season, Tepper’s journey to this point has been far from easy.
A Cherry Hill, New Jersey local, Tepper comes from a family of collegiate runners. Her running career began in middle school as a side gig sport to stay in shape for soccer but after tearing her ACL, she was faced with a big question on what to do next. Feeling inspired by her parents, who both ran in college at DeSales University, Tepper decided to pursue her dream of following in their footsteps. “Initially, I wanted to get back into soccer 100% but that would have taken longer to recover due to the stress on the ACL. It would’ve been 9-12 months to get back into soccer full time. As I got into it, I realized I missed running way too much. When I would go to my brother’s meets for high school, I would cry and sit there thinking how much I miss it all. I think it was some sort of calling. I started running after 2-3 months but I had to wear this huge brace. My junior or senior year I started cross country and I started out so slow. I started running 20 seconds at a time. It was just taking a long time. But once I got my brace off, I dropped crazy times.”
After committing to college running, Tepper’s start to her career proved to be much harder than expected. While at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, mental health issues and burnout got in the way, causing Tepper to reconsider her views on a sport she once loved. “I think running definitely had to do with me being super stressed and then leading me to different areas of my life which got to a point where it didn’t feel worth it if I wasn’t having fun at all. I was in my head and I would get super nervous before races to the point where it was debilitating.”
By her sophomore year at UMBC, Tepper struggled to see running as anything more than a chore. However, instead of continuing to suffer and fall further out of love with her sport, Tepper decided a change of scenery would do her some good. “Coming to Bloomsburg, I wasn’t really thinking about running. Of course, I was going to run but I was honestly thinking about taking the season off for some mental and physical recovery. I was still planning on training but I hated racing because it would cause me so many nerves. I would get in my head way too much; it was super mental. When I met with Coach Empie before I committed here, he said, ‘You know, you could do winter track; you have some time before our first meet,’ and I was like, ‘Actually, I’m feeling great.’ Getting here, running with my brother, running with the girls, it was great. I no longer felt nervous.”
Tepper credits her twin brother and teammate, Peter Tepper, as her best friend and biggest help when it comes to rebuilding her broken relationship with running. Before her transfer to Bloomsburg, their time training together were some of the few reasons that brought her back to the sport. “Whenever I would go home and run with him, especially during the summer, that’s when I actually liked running. It just felt different. I felt like myself more when I was at home and with him.”
When asked about how she searches for the motivation to keep running after such a long, strained relationship with the sport, Tepper discussed her new, inspiring perspective. “I’ve been working on positive reinforcement and looking at things not as ‘I’m going to do terrible, I’m not good enough, or everybody else is so much better than me.’ It’s now more of, ‘I’m having fun or I’m going to have fun with it.’ When I used to focus on times and being better than my teammates, it brought me down and added a lot of unnecessary stress that would lead to me not doing as well. Just having a more positive outlook and knowing that even after a hard day of classes, running is my friend. The endorphins, the feeling, I love it. This is definitely is the outlook for me.”
Tepper looks to the future with excitement, ready to leave her old running relationship behind while refusing to put any unnecessary pressure on herself. “I don’t really have many goals, I can’t lie. I would say my one and only goal is to keep that positive outlook and not get dragged into ‘I need to hit this time, I need to be better than this person, or I need to prove to people that I’m still decent.’ I just want to stay in love and stay engaged with the sport.”