Duke athletes get glimpse of medicine

Program crafted for female undergrads

DURHAM -- Georgia Beasley was practicing her jump shot and needed someone to rebound for her. Ten-year-old Sara Friedman was waiting for a ride after a Duke basketball camp session.

For Beasley -- a Duke basketball star who then went by her maiden name, Schweitzer -- this chance moment nine years ago proved momentous. It led to a conversation with Friedman's father, Henry, a Duke oncologist. Beasley was then a Duke junior with an eye on medical school. She wanted a better idea of what awaited her, but didn't know where to turn.

Friedman was sympathetic. He invited her to shadow him at the hospital. She balked at first, saying she couldn't commit to the fixed schedule doctors generally follow.

No problem, Friedman told her. Come when you can. Get a feel for medicine.

She did. A decade later, she's a Duke surgeon.

"It was very serendipitous," Beasley said recently, recalling that day in the basketball gym. "Who knows what I would have [otherwise] chosen to do?"

For Friedman too, that meeting led to something greater. In becoming Beasley's informal mentor, he discovered there were plenty of female athletes at Duke interested in careers in medicine.

The problem: There were few faculty mentors to help them and no support system for those taking on the most challenging undergraduate curricula with a heavy sports travel schedule.

Thus, the Collegiate Athlete Pre-Medical Experience was born. Known as CAPE, the program is a year-round venture with a very specific clientele: female Duke athletes who plan to pursue a career in medicine. It creates pre-med experiences for busy schedules, like a shortened internship in which students spend two weeks in the summer in a hospital in Guatemala.

"The kids who aren't involved in sports can go for three months," said Terry Kruger, the program's director.

The students also now connect with Duke doctors on hospital rounds, an unusual opportunity for undergraduates and one Friedman said he had to "pull some strings" to provide.

Looking beyond sports

Kruger, who played softball at the University of Minnesota and was an administrator with the Duke Brain Tumor Center before heading the CAPE program, is the den mother for the 49 students currently enrolled. She pops up at Duke athletic events, a women's soccer game one night, a field hockey contest the next. And students will drop by the CAPE office just to chat.

"We talk about life -- boyfriends, whatever -- so I'm another person taking care of the kids," she said. "The parents love it."

So do the coaches. The program has become a recruiting asset for coaches looking to snare a young athlete with dreams of a medical career.

"We're the only program in the nation that works with pre-med students," Kruger said. "The coaches see that as a very, very valuable tool."

Kruger and others say the program has been successful because the students understand their athletic careers will eventually end. Kelly Hathorn, a Duke senior who just finished her final season with the women's soccer team, thinks women have a more practical view of college athletics in part because far fewer can play professionally.

"As much as I love soccer, I also love the idea of medical school," Hathorn said. "For women, it's not as much of a dream to be a professional athlete."

Small but effective

The program's success has brought limitations. It has a small staff and relies entirely on donations. Aspirants must apply for admission, and enrollment is capped at 50.

But Kruger said there's no interest in expanding its capacity.

"It is exclusive, but we want it to be exclusive," she said. "We want these kids to get as much out of it as possible."

Hathorn has. A Durham native, the Riverside High School graduate credits the CAPE program with helping her navigate four years of college athletics during which she took exams in hotel rooms and lobbies, spent two Thanksgivings away from home, and learned the value of touching base with professors far ahead of time to alert them of her hectic schedule.

One example:

"We found out on a Monday this year that we were leaving on Wednesday to play UCLA," she said of an experience during the NCAA national soccer tournament. "It's a shock to your system."