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jimsumner
04-16-2008, 06:26 PM
FYI,

http://www.theacc.com/sports/c-track/spec-rel/041608aaa.html

JBDuke
04-16-2008, 06:38 PM
Jim,

Thanks for sharing your article with us. I'd heard of Dave Sime, but didn't really appreciate just how great he was until I read your article.

For everyone else, I highly recommend reading the article linked in Jim's post. A great story with a happy ending. It sort of reminds me of "Moonlight" Graham in "Field of Dreams".

dkbaseball
04-16-2008, 07:01 PM
Sime was the first name that popped into my head before reading the piece. Probably basketball-baseball stars Dick Groat and Bill Werber would be his closest competition for the title of Duke's greatest athlete, both before Buehler's time. A name popping up here lately -- Leo Hart -- would likely be in the conversation, as well as Jim Spanarkel. Rich Searl and Dennis Satyshur were terrific all-round athletes. May be shortchanging the later generations, as I imagine playing two sports became rarer as time went on.

The usual great article, Jim.

jimsumner
04-16-2008, 07:06 PM
The thing that makes Sime so unique is that he was a great baseball player and a great track athlete in the same season. That's impressive in high school but to accomplish that at the ACC level is just off the charts.

Speaking of multi-sports athletes, let's try a trivia question. What former Duke athlete hit a home run in his first major league at-bat?

phaedrus
04-16-2008, 07:28 PM
Let's not overlook 2-sport star Steve Johnson.

dkbaseball
04-16-2008, 07:48 PM
let's try a trivia question. What former Duke athlete hit a home run in his first major league at-bat?

Ace Parker

jimsumner
04-16-2008, 07:55 PM
Correct. Football great Ace Parker.

Multi-sport stars like Werber and Groat were more common in the days before specialization. Eric Tipton, another Duke football great, had a nice career in the major leagues and George McAfee could have had he selected baseball over football. Gordon Carver started off as a football-basketball-baseball-star but dropped the latter for track at the insistence of Wallace Wade. 1970 ACC football POY Ernie Jackson was a track star. Many more examples.

dkbaseball
04-16-2008, 08:04 PM
Correct. Football great Ace Parker.

Multi-sport stars like Werber and Groat were more common in the days before specialization. Eric Tipton, another Duke football great, had a nice career in the major leagues and George McAfee could have had he selected baseball over football. Gordon Carver started off as a football-basketball-baseball-star but dropped the latter for track at the insistence of Wallace Wade. 1970 ACC football POY Ernie Jackson was a track star. Many more examples.

Ernie was ACC player of the year as a junior? I hadn't remembered that. He could fly down that track, and had a nice long career in the NFL. I've clearly overlooked some of the best candidates for Duke's greatest athlete, so I'll defer to your perspective. Sime it is. He certainly had that rep back in the '60s.

jimsumner
04-16-2008, 08:05 PM
BTW, dkbaseball, Al Buehler was a great half-miler at Maryland. He and Dick Groat were contemporaries. Clearly, Buehler might be prejudiced towards tracksters but in this case, I think he's on target, and I love Groat.

jimsumner
04-16-2008, 08:06 PM
'71 for Jackson. Thanks, dk.

johnb
04-16-2008, 08:16 PM
That was a great read. Lots of Duke fans had never heard of Sime, which is, I suppose, a point of writing the story.

Thanks, Jim.

dkbaseball
04-16-2008, 08:16 PM
'71 for Jackson. Thanks, dk.

Yeah, my vague recollection was that we had two in a row -- Steve Jones the next year.

Indoor66
04-16-2008, 08:24 PM
If you want to read about great Duke Athletes, our own Jim Sumner has written a book on the subject ("Tales from the Duke Blue Devils Hardwood" By Jim L Sumner, James Sumner, Published 2005, Sports Publishing LLC (http://books.google.com/books?q=inpublisher:%22Sports+Publishing+LLC%22&source=gbs_summary_r&cad=0)).

You can find some info on Gordon Carver and other excerpts here: http://books.google.com/books?id=PmlkVxHLR-gC&pg=PA16&lpg=PA16&dq=gordon+carver&source=web&ots=Iy69Up9MRw&sig=u505IKLmisp7nzIyib73e7NeYY4&hl=en#PPA16,M1

I hope Jim doesn't take exception to my posting this and I imagine his failure to do so was merely modesty. :)

CameronBlue
04-16-2008, 08:27 PM
Randy Jones (Johnson?) Duke football standout and Olympic Bobsled team member.

roywhite
04-16-2008, 08:36 PM
'71 for Jackson. Thanks, dk.

Ernie played both ways, on offense as a TB and on defense as a CB, for parts of that year. Duke had some talent (Ed Newman, Steve Jones, Willie Clayton, etc.) but was awfully thin, particularly when injuries struck.

If I recall correctly, Ernie took back an interception all the way to give us a win over Stanford on the West Coast.

Tappan Zee Devil
04-16-2008, 09:25 PM
Both Ernie and C.G. Newsome were in my house - Frats then were not very accepting of blacks and so they both ended up in what was, to be truthful, a rather dorky independent house.
Ernie has to be the quickest person i have ever known. I played on our IM b'ball team with him. I kid you not - He once made a pass, realized that the person he had passed to had broken the other way, took off and caught up with the ball before it went out of bounds. Now - it was a lazy pass, but even so -

A couple of other points - in those days, they folded the bleachers back in the Indoor Stadium (it wasn't yet Cameron) and we played IM b'ball on courts going crosswise across the main court. The IM finals (which we never made) were played on the varsity court - which must have been a trip
Also, in those days you had to take four semesters of PE. One semester, I took a Volleyball course that was held in the Indoor Stadium, although not on the main court.

Also - yes Ernie intercepted a pass thrown by Stanford quarterback Jim Plunkett and ran it back in what may have been the last Duke football game on national TV. If I remember correctly, he had one arm in a cast when he did that

Finally Ernie was a dedicated member of the house tube team - I remember several times when he threw his shoes at the TV in response to Jesse Helms editorials. On the othe hand, I never remember Newsome watching TV down in the Commons Room. He was always studying - which is probably one trait that has led to him now a University President.

Jim
T 70 (Class of Stray Gator)

jimsumner
04-16-2008, 10:26 PM
Plunkett was in the NFL by then. Don Bunce was the Stanford QB.

Steve Jones missed the Stanford game after being in an automobile accident on campus, so the Duke defense did yeoman's work that day.

FWIW, Leo Hart, Wes Chesson, Ernie Jackson, Steve Jones, Ed Newman, and Rich Searl overlapped for one season at Duke. Some serious talent. But no depth.

Tappan Zee Devil
04-16-2008, 10:32 PM
OK - I will take your word for it - but my memory is certainly that it was Plunkett - but that was more than 35 years ago and maybe my memory is not accurate :confused:

Jim

dkbaseball
04-16-2008, 10:49 PM
OK - I will take your word for it - but my memory is certainly that it was Plunkett - but that was more than 35 years ago and maybe my memory is not accurate :confused:

Jim

Was it Ernie's junior or senior year? If the former, Plunkett would have been the Stanford QB -- that being the year of the quarterback, with Plunkett, Joe Theisman, Archie Manning, Leo Hart, and I believe Dan Pastorini all seniors. If Ernie was a senior, Bunce was the Stanford QB. I'm guessing Jim is right, because I know we played Stanford in Durham the year after Ernie graduated, and it makes sense that Duke would have played at Stanford the year before (and also because Jim is our resident Duke historian).

BTW, my recollection of Ernie as a hoopster is that he was indeed quick, but unskilled. One reason that I mentioned his classmates Rich Searl and Dennis Satyshur in this thread is that in addition to being fine two-sport athletes at Duke, they were tremendous basketball players who, as freshmen, virtually by themselves won the IM basketball final against a Phi Kap team that had five starters who had been high school all-state players. Roywhite no doubt will recall the game. Satyshur wasn't a big guy, but for pure, all-round athletic skill he was right up there with most anybody I've known.

Inonehand
04-16-2008, 10:54 PM
There's no disagreement with Dave Sime here but Q should be way up on the list of Duke's best athletes. Man, he was fast. Played pretty good d-back and was good enough to switch hit in the majors for 10 years. Bobby Brower was also a freak of an athlete. Could jump and run like a hoops player and cover some serious ground in the outfield. If not mistaken, he gained 100+ yards in his last football game (UNC?) before deciding baseball was his choice. Played some with the Rangers and Yankees.

jimsumner
04-16-2008, 11:02 PM
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
04-16-2008, 11:08 PM
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
04-16-2008, 11:09 PM
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
04-16-2008, 11:29 PM
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
04-16-2008, 11:29 PM
We beat a team with Reeves and Alvarez? Damn, how could I forget that?

No TV at Parris Island?

dkbaseball
04-16-2008, 11:39 PM
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
04-16-2008, 11:56 PM
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
04-17-2008, 11:36 AM
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
04-17-2008, 11:52 AM
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
04-17-2008, 12:09 PM
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
04-17-2008, 01:25 PM
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
04-17-2008, 09:59 PM
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
05-07-2008, 01:56 PM
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/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/sports/1209439544120880.xml&coll=7

http://www.theregalcourier.com/sports/story.php?story_id=116067173264508300

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
05-07-2008, 02:28 PM
This thread is sexist. What about Nancy Hogshead (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nancy_Hogshead)?

-Jason

sagegrouse
05-07-2008, 02:34 PM
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