Florida State football player Myron Rolle is undoubtedly the most famous of this year's crop of Rhodes Scholars—or, as former Towerview editor Sarah Ball wrote in 2006, the "twister-theory-studying, falconry-learning, cancer-curing, Darfur-saving overachievers."
Looks like we might want to add an athletic superlative to that list sometime soon.
On Monday, senior pole vaulter Sally Liu became one of two Duke students to win the Marshall Scholarship, meaning that two of Duke's three winners of the two most prestigious post-graduate scholarships were athletes. 2007 graduate Julia Parker Goyer, a former tennis player who founded a non-profit organization called Coach for College, was Duke's sole Rhodes winner.
The connection extends further than this year, though.
Before Goyer, Duke's last Rhodes winner—Chas Salmen, a fellow 2007 graduate—ran on the Blue Devils' cross country team. The three student-athletes are no slouches in the athletic arena, either. Liu's indoor pole vault mark of 11 feet, 9.75 inches at the 2007 ACC championships ranks fifth in the Duke record book, Goyer's community service centers on athletics and Salmen was captain of his team. Of course, they're not football players and aren't under the same microscope as someone like Rolle, but the three scholarship recipients do offer new meaning to the term student-athlete.
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