Shades of blue color language of sports
Dec 26, 2008
Much attention was paid when starting strong safety Myron Rolle placed an interview for a Rhodes Scholarship ahead of pre-kickoff arrival for a crucial November game in the ACC’s Atlantic Division. Rolle jetted from the interview in Alabama to join his Florida State teammates in a rout of Maryland at College Park.
The second team All-ACC performer also was awarded the prestigious scholarship to attend Oxford University in England. He is the first BCS starter to become a Rhodes Scholar since 1992, when the honor went to Stanford tight end Cory Booker, now mayor of Newark, N.J.
Rolle’s impressive personal achievement -- which nicely confounds prejudices about big-time football players -- is sure to be celebrated on ESPN’s Saturday afternoon telecast of the Champs Sports Bowl, in which FSU faces Wisconsin. What we probably won’t hear is an accompanying tale of achievement by another inspiring ACC athlete, Parker Goyer, whose path to a Rhodes scholarship neatly intersected with Rolle’s.
Only 32 Rhodes Scholars are picked annually in the United States. The two from District 7, which covers Alabama, Florida and Tennessee, were Rolle and Goyer, a former Duke tennis player raised in Birmingham, Ala. Goyer had not heard of Rolle until she interviewed, which was probably just as well. “He’s definitely a very compelling candidate,” she said.
So is Goyer, who graduated from Duke in 2007 with a 20-14 career record as a tennis singles player, as well as a degree in psychology with a concentration in neuroscience.
Rhodes Scholars must demonstrate proficiency in four areas that Goyer roughly defined as academic achievement, physical vigor, service and leadership. She should know. Goyer touched every base in orchestrating “Coach for College,” a program that brings athletes from UNC and Duke to Vietnam to teach sports to middle schoolers. “The power of sports, it’s kind of a universal language,” Goyer said.
These days Goyer is enrolled in a doctoral program in education at Harvard. Next fall she leaves for two years at Oxford to seek a Master’s degree in comparative and international education. Meanwhile, she is about to make her fourth 36-hour round trip to Vietnam within two years.
Goyer considered siting her program within the United States, but wanted to reach farther. Born in 1985, 10 years after U.S. forces withdrew from Vietnam, Goyer found the Asian country “really fascinating” and, like others her age, had no preconceptions about what she would find.
She discovered to her delight that the Vietnamese were quite eager to partner with Americans. “I’m overwhelmed with the generosity of the people there,” Goyer said.
The sports component of Coach for College suited everyone. “They’re really passionate about sports and don’t really have the infrastructure we have in the U.S.,” Goyer said of the Vietnamese. The outreach effort had the further benefit of providing a rewarding overseas experience for time-constrained student-athletes.
Specific and singular inclusion of Tar Heels and Blue Devils was key to a formulation Goyer hopes to replicate soon with students from Virginia and Virginia Tech and from Oklahoma and Texas. Goyer experienced competitively charged intertwinings as one of 36 fellows in an elite program that allows students to simultaneously take classes at Duke and UNC. She also knew that most athletes, unlike fans, leave their competitive animosities on the court or field of play.
Goyer’s collection of golfers, rowers, gymnasts, tennis and lacrosse players instructed 300 Vietnamese youngsters over a six-week period. Meanwhile the Americans were immersed in the language, culture and living arrangements of the Mekong Delta.
The eighth and ninth graders at a middle school about an hour’s drive south of Ho Chi Minh City, otherwise known as Saigon, were “very familiar” with soccer, tennis and volleyball, Goyer said. Badminton and basketball, not so much.
As part of her program, Goyer raised money to build a court with a protective canopy, essential in a region of heavy rains and tropical heat. Playing lines for all five sports are etched on the court near the middle school. So are familiar touches of the Duke-Carolina rivalry.
Portions of the playing surface are Duke or Carolina blue to denote the dimensions for various sports. Columns and crossbeams are painted in those same competing colors, opposites in harmony. The athletic yin and yang is rendered even on signs, Vietnamese in Carolina blue, English in the darker variety.
After all, appreciation of contrasts like Duke-UNC may be as universal as our love of the games themselves.
