DURHAM - Duke and North Carolina are bitter rivals except, apparently, when it comes to reaching out to Vietnamese middle school students to show them the finer points of playing sports.

This summer, former Duke women's tennis player Parker Goyer will lead athletes from the two universities in a trip to Vietnam as part of the inaugural summer of the Coach for College program.

"I think what is most exciting is seeing a germ of an idea that I had a year ago ... on the verge of coming to fruition," Goyer said.

Coach for College will send 20 Duke and UNC athletes to Vietnam in July and August to run two three-week sessions of sports camps that will include classes where students can apply sports lessons to other disciplines.

"There is a big rivalry," said UNC rower Carly Dressler, one of the program's coaches. "But we already have the Robertson Program [for Duke and UNC undergraduates], so there's a natural connection. The rivalry is so well known that, when we do get together, it makes it that much bigger of an event."

Goyer, a 2007 Duke graduate, said she's amazed at how so many people from so many places have worked together to bring the program to life.

Goyer, who has raised $200,300 to pay for the pilot program, said getting the money wasn't hard once Duke Provost Peter Lange heard her pitch.

"I think it was a matter of finding the right people," she said, "and the provost has always been very encouraging to me."

Lange said Goyer swayed him with her confidence. She wanted to send college athletes to teach children in foreign countries how to play sports, then teach them practical lessons in English, science, leadership, and education.

One of Duke's goals for its athletes, Lange said, is to have them work in their communities, locally and globally, but it's hard to do because of their schedules.

"How do we give them experiences that they should have? Parker's idea allows us to do that. So I said, 'Sure. Go for it,' " Lange said.

Duke, with gifts from Lange's office, the athletics department and the Office of Undergraduate Education, has donated $130,000 to Coach for College.

Lange reached out to UNC Chancellor James Moeser, who pledged $43,000. The UNC Educational Foundation pitched in $15,000. Goyer also has received $2,300 in private donations and $10,000 worth of tennis shoes from Nike.

"Once that first big gift came in, it was easy to get it from other sources," Goyer said.

Lange also got the NCAA involved through Duke graduate Robert Vowels, NCAA vice president for education services.

Vowels backed the idea with a $10,000 gift from the NCAA. He also invited Goyer to present her plan to athletes at the NCAA Leadership Conference in Orlando, Fla., May 26-28.

Goyer started working on the project with inspiration from Lucy Haagen, a faculty adviser with Duke's Global Grasp club. Haagen, a specialist on English as a second language, had been to Vietnam several times and was eager for club members to create a literacy project that would team the Durham community with counterparts in Vietnam.

Goyer traveled to Vietnam and Belize last summer to do a feasibility study. She saw how children in both places had few chances to play organized sports and lacked a broad network of youth sports programs.

When she returned to the U.S., she began work as a Robertson Fellow, a Duke program that gives recent college graduates a chance to create their own projects. While doing research, she found that the U.S. State Department uses sports on diplomatic missions, often involving professional athletes.

Next page >