Several years ago, on a long night in February of my freshman year, I sat through my first annual multi-hour sports editor elections for the Chronicle. One of the aspiring candidates, who eventually won the job, avowed in his speech that he desperately wanted this position because he had been a lifelong fan of Duke men’s basketball.
He said little about the school’s other 25 varsity teams—many of which were and still are national-championship caliber—and clearly based his candidacy on his appeal to other diehard supporters of Duke’s most storied program in the room.
I don’t fault him for being honest (although perhaps he was not best suited to be the sports editor at a college paper), because he was simply reflecting a common sentiment in the student body.
Certainly I have thoroughly enjoyed the privilege of sitting in the Cameron press row for the highlight-reel spectacle that is men’s basketball games, and the excitement surrounding the team serves as a unifying force for the student body, a means of attracting some of the most dynamic and vibrant high schoolers, and a way of encouraging alumni donations.
But the success of men’s basketball also has the unfortunate effect of rendering other sports on campus invisible. In my four years and 140-plus articles with the Chronicle, I know that Duke athletics is so much more than a one-team show.
I have had the pleasure of watching, interviewing and writing about some of the nation’s finest athletes, many of whom go through Duke with relative anonymity.
Take the women’s tennis team, for example. My freshman year, I watched Ansley Cargill have one of the most successful seasons in school history, and since she left for the professional tour after only one year, I have seen her compete against the likes of the Venus Williams in Grand Slam events.
Sophomore and junior years it was 5-foot-2 sparkplug Kelly McCain, who I got to cover for two seasons before she turned professional as well. McCain’s ranking has shot up in the last year, and she is currently No. 176 in the world.
And this year I have seen four-year player Amanda Johnson take the reigns of the team as a senior. Despite her success as a soon-to-be four-time All-American, Johnson remains one of the most humble athletes you will meet, and her commitment to the program is admirable.
I have also witnessed the dedication of the rowers and swimmers, some of the hardest-working but least-heralded athletes at Duke. Chronicle writers tend to do most of our interviews for preview after teams get out of practice, but the rowing and swimming squads have often completed multi-hour morning workouts before most of the student body has stirred
Unfortunately, when I cover most of the non-revenue sports (anything other than football or basketball), I am often one of the few spectators besides friends and family, and that’s truly a shame.
I’m not sure why more Duke students, who are such incredibly passionate men’s basketball fans, don’t go out to cheer on more of their teams. Certainly we are a campus full of former high school athletes with letters galore in varsity sports, so I would figure that the interest would carry over into college.
One message that is thankfully beginning to resonate among the student body—and hopefully will continue long after the graduation of Alana Beard—is the talent of the women’s basketball team.
In the past two years, Cameron has sold out for games against North Carolina, Tennessee and UConn. I had the honor of covering those events for the Chronicle, and the devotion of the Crazies gave me hope for the future support of women’s basketball at Duke.
Sure, the Blue Devils’ greatest senior class will be moving on—Beard and Iciss Tillis to the WNBA, and Vicki Krapohl to put her engineering degree to work at NASA—but the team is still brimming with talent. Look no further for excitement than returning point guard Lindsey Harding, whose freakish speed and athletic prowess will be featured more prominently next year.
I urge anyone who hasn’t already done so to give the women’s basketball team and the other under-appreciated programs a chance. Head over to Cameron to see the volleyball or wrestling teams compete; go to the track team’s annual Duke Invitational at Wallace Wade Stadium; or check out the ridiculously talented women’s golf team when it tees off nearby.
I’ve had a chance to do all this and more in four years with the Chronicle, and it’s been one of the most rewarding activities that I could have ever hoped to have found in college. Sure, it’s a hell of a lot of work, but it also has its perks (trips to New Mexico, Florida and Purdue, not to mention a would-be journey to New Orleans had the women’s basketball team made the Final Four).
This year’s sports editor, Mike Corey, truly valued the talents of all of Duke’s teams, and I hope that we conveyed that to the public. I can only hope that my devotion to this school’s athletic programs—and women’s basketball in particular—has been evident in my writing, and that perhaps, in some way, this passion has rubbed off on would-be fans who might otherwise have passed up a chance to witness some of the greatest athletic talents in the nation right here at Duke.
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