Duke's greatest athlete

[jimsumner]

Trust me on Plunkett. I've had people absolutely swear about their memories of the game when Plunkett and Leo Hart played each other and it never happened. Neither was around when Duke and Stanford played in 1971.

That was Mike McGee's first year as head coach at Duke. His first game was a win against Florida and the Stanford win put Duke at 14th in the AP poll. Then Satyshur was injured. Duke literally did not have a back-up QB. Remember the depth we talked about. So McGee inserted Searl at QB and he joined Jackson as a 60-minute man. Searl had been a good high-school QB but he was a senior and it had been four years, so he struggled. Duke went from 5-0 to 6-5 and didn't get back in the polls until Spurrier's last year.

Not sure what any of this had to do with Dave Sime.

[dkbaseball]

That was Mike McGee's first year as head coach at Duke. His first game was a win against Florida

We beat a team with Reeves and Alvarez? Damn, how could I forget that?

[roywhite]

Not a multi-sport guy, but the Duke athlete who IMO best combined size, speed, power, coordination, great hands, agility...Grant Hill.

Little known fact about Grant's dad, Calvin---he was an NCAA (indoor) long-jump champion with a leap of approx. 26 feet. It's not hard to imagine Grant having success in track and field or football, instead of "just" being one of Duke's best-ever basketball players.

[dkbaseball]

Not a multi-sport guy, but the Duke athlete who IMO best combined size, speed, power, coordination, great hands, agility...Grant Hill.

Little known fact about Grant's dad, Calvin---he was an NCAA (indoor) long-jump champion with a leap of approx. 26 feet. It's not hard to imagine Grant having success in track and field or football, instead of "just" being one of Duke's best-ever basketball players.

Grant was probably the best one-sport athlete Duke has had, but I don't see him as having multi-sport ability. Don't know about track, but he's always had kind of a fragile build and I just can't see him as a football player. His mother is tiny. I was always amazed at how much he was able to get done on the boards for Duke. Plus, he threw like a girl, though admittedly the evidence I have for that came on a play that historically got the job done.

Wasn't 26 feet pretty close to the world record in the long jump in 1968, prior to the launch of Mr. Beamon?

[roywhite]

We beat a team with Reeves and Alvarez? Damn, how could I forget that?

No TV at Parris Island?

[dkbaseball]

No TV at Parris Island?

Ah yes. Guess I was blocking out that painful period. I had made my sorry way to Camp Lejeune by September, and there was probably a TV around somewhere, but I don't think the camp harbored too many Duke fans.

[roywhite]

Wasn't 26 feet pretty close to the world record in the long jump in 1968, prior to the launch of Mr. Beamon?

Yeah, Beamon took the world record from something like 27'4" to 29'2" in one fell swoop in the 1968 Olympics. So a long jump (esp. indoors) of close to 26 feet by Calvin was quite impressive.

Speaking of another impressive track performance by a superstar athlete from another sport, did you know that David Thompson won an ACC Triple Jump championship? Not greatly surprising when you consider his leaping ability, but still impressive for a person with limited track and field experience to win a conference title in a secondary pursuit.

And...even back to the original topic, great all-around Duke athletes, a guy whose name came up here earlier, Ed Newman, should get some recognition. He was an outstanding lineman at Duke, played something like 13 years for the Miami Dolphins, and was an ACC Heavyweight Wrestling Champion at Duke. Then, after pro football, he became a judge.

[dkbaseball]

Another name has to be added to the list (though I'm still deferring to Al and Jim on Dave Sime). He was arguably Duke's most successful athlete at the professional level. A teammate of Sime's on the baseball team, where he was a pretty good third baseman. Better known for throwing a football. Mr. Christian Adolph Jurgensen. Best pure passer I ever saw.

[jimsumner]

RE: Thompson. DT messed around with t&f early in his career at State and showed considerable promise. But he gave up the sport. He never won an ACC championship in track and field.

RE: Jurgensen. Lots of folks remember Sonny as a strong-armed but pot-bellied QB with the 'Skins. But in his younger days, he was quite the athlete. Some folks thought that his best sport at Wilmington was hoops. He was an outstanding youth tennis player. Even at Duke, he was better known as a defensive back then as a quarterback. He was hurt a lot at Duke and Murray's teams didn't throw the ball much in those days. But Duke assistant coach Ace Parker (that man again) had contacts in the NFL and he made sure they knew that Jurgensen had an NFL arm, even if he never had much of a chance to show it off. We know the rest.

[roywhite]

RE: Thompson. DT messed around with t&f early in his career at State and showed considerable promise. But he gave up the sport. He never won an ACC championship in track and field.

I stand corrected on that point, thanks. Thompson does show in the Pack track & field guide as a 3-year (1972, 1973, 1974) letter winner in track.

[Olympic Fan]

Some great stuff here ... and I have to admit when I saw the title of this thread, my first thought was "I hope they mention Dave Sime."

But if we concede first place to Mr. Sime --who should have won the 100-meter gold medal in 56 and 60 -- let me offer a few other candidates:

-- Bob Gantt -- a two-time first-team All-American in football and an all-conference performer in basketball, leading Duke to two SC titles. He was also a stellar track performer. I don't think he played baseball -- although his father was perhaps Duke's first athletic star, known as Bob "No-hit" Gantt. BTW, that was the golden age of two-sport stars, since he overlapped with Gordon Carver, who was also a great player in both football and basketball.

-- Dave Dunaway -- a first-team All-ACC wide receiver in 1966, he was also a track and field phemon. He was a decathete, but since the decathalon wasn't an event in most ACC meets, he spread out his talents. I can't remember the exact details, but during a dual meet with UNC, he practically single-handed beat the Tar Heels (I keep thinking he won seven separate events).

-- Ray Farmer was a football/baseball guy. My best memory of him is starting in the outfield against Clemson, hitting the winning home run, then changing uniforms and rushing down on the football field to star in the spring game.

Glad to see somebody brought up Jurgenson. Before coming to Duke, he played in the NC prep all-star game -- in basketball, not football. Lot of two-sport stars in that area -- his contemporary, Roman Gabriel, played freshman basketball at NC State.

More recently, Ed Newman was not only a two-way player for McGee in football, he was also the ACC wrestling champion. The most unusual two-spot mix might have been a football player who was also an ACC fencing champion (was that Denis Turner?)

PS Jim Sumner is absolutely right about Jackson intercepting Bunce and not Plunkett in 1971. His TD on the interception return was the winning margin in Duke's 9-3 win. Despite the loss, Bunce led Stanford back to the Rose Bowl and to a second straight Rose Bowl victory that season.

BTW That 1971 Duke team is a great story -- from all the two-way players (Searl at FS/QB; Jackson at CB/TB; Newman at OT/DT; Clayton at OT/DT) -- to the injury to Steve Jones to the heartbreaking story behind the injury to PK Dave Wright -- which cost Duke a season. Just the story behind that 3-0 Oyster Bowl loss to Clemson would be worthy of an epic poet.

[77devil]

Mr. Christian Adolph Jurgensen. Best pure passer I ever saw.

He was pretty good holding court for the Georgetown coeds at Pall Mall back in the day.

[Abraxas]

A Duke recruit for the 2008-9 Duke Women's Fencing team (Fr) already has:

"At [age] 16, she becomes the youngest Senior World Champion in history.

She becomes the only fencer to ever win the Cadet, Junior and Senior World Championships in a single season. Her Cadet and Junior victories came at the 2006 Cadet/Junior World Champion-ships in Taebaek City, Korea, in April.

She became the only fencer to simultaneously hold all five possible World Championship gold medals (her three individual medals, plus the 2006 Junior Team World Championship and the Senior Team World Championship from Leipzig in the 2005 Senior World Championships). "

She is competing in Beijing 2008, and is currently ranked #2 in the world entering into the Olympics.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebecca_Ward

http://www.oregonlive.com/olympics/o...880.xml&coll=7

http://www.theregalcourier.com/sport...67173264508300

I also know (and have fenced) a very good Men's Epee recruit for the same class with significant international experience including a Panamerican Cadet medal, but he is not in the same league.

[JasonEvans]

This thread is sexist. What about Nancy Hogshead?

-Jason

[sagegrouse]

When I was trying my hand track in the early 60s, the guy people mentioned as a fabulous athlete was Joel Shankle. He won the bronze at the Melbourne Olympics (1956) and was ACC Athlete of the Year in 1954.

I never met or saw Shankle, although Dave Sime, who was in med school and just back from the Rome Olympics, used to come down to the track from time to time. Shy, but a really nice guy. Trivia time: Dave is the father-in-law of former Bronco/Giants/Stanford wide receiver Ed McCafferty -- Billy's brother.


sagegrouse