Student athletes at Duke

Like my close friend Josh Brewer, author of the column “UnAthletic Duke,” I was a varsity student athlete on the track team. Like Mr. Brewer, I probably would not have attended Duke without athletics. I chose Duke because it had the best coaches (Norm Ogilvie and Kevin Jermyn).

Though I greatly respect Dr. Kevin White, Dave McClain, the head equipment manager, Joe Ferraro, the assistant athletic trainer, and everything Duke Athletics stands for, I, like most of my peers, identified first as a student. Duke set me up for both success in post-collegiate academics and a fulfilling professional career.

Personal tributes aside, a central question remains: Why does Duke need Division I athletics?

Duke needs Division I athletics because when I meet fellow Blue Devil graduates, we reminisce about where we were for “Duke 61 Butler 59,” regardless of major, greek status, freshman dorm or graduating class. Duke needs Division I athletics because employers scanning my resume often notice my personal best in the mile run before my undergraduate GPA.

Duke needs Division I athletics because the Roman poet Juvenal famously exhorted us to aspire to a “sound mind in a sound body” (I will spare you from running for a Latin-English dictionary, especially after you dutifully fumbled through your literary theory reader to make sense of “heterosexual/homosexual programming upon homosocial allowance”). I was privileged to compete alongside Rhodes and Marshall scholars; graduate students in computer science from Harvard, biomedical engineering from Duke and medicine from Washington University in St. Louis; Teach For America corps members; Air Force fighter pilots; consultants for IBM, Stryker, Delta, American Bridge and JP Morgan; Presbyterian ministers and two NCAA champions.

I propose Mr. Brewer and the Duke community embrace our student athletes. Alhough they may go to class tired, I dispute Mr. Brewer’s assertion that they are “sometimes—or always—unprepared.” We have an unparalleled tradition of academic and athletic excellence—what are we afraid of?

Ken Sullivan