2008 Woodie Awards
College athletes make peace in Vietnam
Ray Melick (AP)
Issue date: 5/2/08 Section: Sports
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. - As the provost at Duke University, Peter Lange encourages Duke students to think big. But he's used to seeing great ideas that produce limited action come across his desk.
So when Parker Goyer approached him with an ambitious plan to take athletes to Vietnam for a project Goyer was calling "Coach for College," Lange admits his first thought was, "She's 22 years old. She has a great idea. But who's going to do it?"
A year later, Lange found out the answer.
Goyer, a native of Mountain Brook, not only came up with the program to take college athletes to Vietnam to work with middle school children for two three-week camps this summer, she raised almost $200,000 to pay for it. And she applied for an International Sports Programming Initiative grant from the U.S. Department of State that could be worth $175,000 or more.
While many of her classmates spent their spring break this year on the coast soaking up the sun, Goyer was visiting Ho Chi Minh City and Can Tho in Vietnam, laying the groundwork to come back this summer with two five-person teams of athletes from both Duke and the University of North Carolina.
"She comes up with this idea, goes out and gets people excited about it, gets athletes to commit, raises money from the NCAA, from UNC, from me and our athletics department, and figures out how to make it all happen," Lange said.
And now, the NCAA has asked her to discuss her program at next month's NCAA Leadership Conference, in hope that other student-athletes will launch such a program at their schools.
Changing the world isn't necessarily what Goyer had in mind when she entered Duke after graduating from Mountain Brook High School. Goyer was one of the top amateur tennis players in Alabama, and helped the Spartans win the state tennis title as a senior.
Although she was recruited to play tennis by several schools, Goyer wanted to go to Duke for academic reasons. She played college tennis as a walk-on for most of her four years.
So when Parker Goyer approached him with an ambitious plan to take athletes to Vietnam for a project Goyer was calling "Coach for College," Lange admits his first thought was, "She's 22 years old. She has a great idea. But who's going to do it?"
A year later, Lange found out the answer.
Goyer, a native of Mountain Brook, not only came up with the program to take college athletes to Vietnam to work with middle school children for two three-week camps this summer, she raised almost $200,000 to pay for it. And she applied for an International Sports Programming Initiative grant from the U.S. Department of State that could be worth $175,000 or more.
While many of her classmates spent their spring break this year on the coast soaking up the sun, Goyer was visiting Ho Chi Minh City and Can Tho in Vietnam, laying the groundwork to come back this summer with two five-person teams of athletes from both Duke and the University of North Carolina.
"She comes up with this idea, goes out and gets people excited about it, gets athletes to commit, raises money from the NCAA, from UNC, from me and our athletics department, and figures out how to make it all happen," Lange said.
And now, the NCAA has asked her to discuss her program at next month's NCAA Leadership Conference, in hope that other student-athletes will launch such a program at their schools.
Changing the world isn't necessarily what Goyer had in mind when she entered Duke after graduating from Mountain Brook High School. Goyer was one of the top amateur tennis players in Alabama, and helped the Spartans win the state tennis title as a senior.
Although she was recruited to play tennis by several schools, Goyer wanted to go to Duke for academic reasons. She played college tennis as a walk-on for most of her four years.
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