Sports offer more than professors claim

In their recent guest column, Professors Richard Hain and Fred Nijhout overlooked the extraordinary value afforded to students engaging in university athletic programs or to faculty who have learned the lessons provided by team sports ("Let the athletic-academic debate begin," Oct. 3).

The Preston Robert Tisch Brain Tumor Center at Duke is admittedly run like a large college athletic team with a style of management that has led us to be one of the leading brain tumor centers in the world. Team sports teach students the advantages of working as a team, the need to work together to collaborate for a common goal, the necessity to make sacrifices to achieve that goal, the encouragement each member of a team receives to do their best and equally importantly the need to support the team members when things are not going well. Moreover, we have been fortunate to work on a daily basis with an extraordinary group of female varsity athletes as we mentor them for careers in medicine. These young women face amazing pressures to balance their academic and athletic demands and when they emerge from four years at Duke they are prepared to not only be successful in medicine but to ultimately be leaders in their respective medical disciplines.

It is a shame that Professors Hain and Nijhout spent time writing a parody rather than actually evaluating for themselves the impact of athletics on our students. More importantly, they can learn the extremely positive reaction of the real world to our student athlete graduates who are embraced by their future employers because of the lessons learned from athletics.

Personally, we joyfully embrace the benefit of Duke athletics to our brain tumor center and our lives.

Allan H. Friedman, MD

Henry S. Friedman, MD

Deputy Directors, The Preston Robert Tisch Brain Tumor Center