INDIANAPOLIS --- The NCAA has named one current and two former student-athletes, who overcame life-altering experiences, recipients of its 2006 Inspiration Award.

Raul Altreche, a senior men’s lacrosse student-athlete at Amherst College, John Doar, a four-time letter-winner in men’s basketball at Princeton University in the 1940s, and Lois Taurman, a former three-sport standout at Bellarmine University, will be presented the award at the NCAA Honors Celebration Saturday, January 7, during the annual NCAA Convention in Indianapolis.  The Convention will serve as the kick-off to the NCAA’s Centennial with the theme, Celebrating the Student-Athlete.

The Inspiration Award, created by the NCAA Honors Committee in 2001, may be presented to a coach or administrator currently associated with intercollegiate athletics, or to a current or former varsity letter-winner at an NCAA institution who, when confronted with a life-altering situation, used perseverance, dedication and determination to overcome the event and now serves as a role model to give hope and inspiration to others in similar situations.

The Inspiration Award winners are selected by the NCAA Honors Committee, which comprises eight athletics administrators at member institutions and nationally distinguished citizens who are former student-athletes.  The committee members are:  Cedric W. Dempsey, president emeritus, NCAA; Susan Hartmann, professor of history, Ohio State University; Calvin Hill, consultant, Dallas Cowboys; Gibbs Knotts, faculty-athletics representative, Western Carolina University; Valerie A. Richardson, associate athletics director and senior women’s administrator, University of California, Santa Barbara; Julie Power Ruppert, associate commissioner and senior women’s administrator, America East Conference; Thomas J. Brown, commissioner, Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference; and Timothy W. Gleason, commissioner, Ohio Athletic Conference.

Raul Altreche

Current Amherst College student-athlete

For Raul Altreche, who lost both parents to AIDS as a young child and became an orphan with his two brothers, school was not a priority.  Living off of a meager $1,200 monthly stipend to pay for rent, food, utilities and clothing, was reality.

Beginning in the second grade, Altreche regularly switched school systems, often missing several months of school at a time.  At age 12, Altreche decided he wanted more out of life and found a junior-high guidance counselor who could teach him to read and help him navigate through the high school application process.  As a bright and resourceful student, Altreche’s counselor thought he would qualify for A Better Chance (ABC), a program that places intelligent, motivated students of color from disadvantaged backgrounds into environments that promote academic success.

Altreche navigated the interview and application process and was extended an invitation to Daniel Hand High School in Madison, Connecticut.  Located between the Long Island Sound and farms and woodland, the town of about 16,000 was very different from his home, the South Bronx.  Altreche became the second freshman in the history of Daniel Hand’s ABC program to obtain the equivalent of an A- grade-point average.  As a sophomore, he was class president and was a member of the National Honor Society as a senior.

As part of the ABC program, Altreche was paired with a host family, the Mesas, who first introduced him to organized team sports.  Lacrosse became his favorite and by his senior year, he was captain of the lacrosse squad.  Currently, Altreche is enrolled at Amherst College, where he is a three-time letter-winner with the men’s lacrosse team and also plays rugby.  On campus, he has worked planning orientation trips for incoming students and, as a sophomore, served as a residence counselor in a first-year dormitory.

Altreche has also learned the importance of giving back.  He spent one summer teaching underprivileged black and Hispanic children as part of a Harvard University program, and also worked with at-risk middle school youth in a New York City suburb this past summer.

John Doar

Former Princeton University student-athlete

It was at Princeton where John Doar, a four-time letter winner in men’s basketball, was first exposed to the attitude of several Southern college classmates that the racial problems in the South would only be made worse by ‘Yankee’ interference.  Doar, a 1944 Princeton graduate who later earned his law degree at the University of California, was motivated by his Princeton classmates and became a catalyst in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s.

Following graduation, Doar spent the next decade earning a law degree and working in private practice in a small town in northwestern Wisconsin.  He accepted a job in the newly established Civil Rights Division of the United States Department of Justice and spent the next eight years working to ensure a free and open society for all American citizens, black or white.

As a member of the Civil Rights Division, Doar was involved in a number of events that changed American Civil Rights history.  Beginning in 1960, he litigated cases in the U.S. District Courts in Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana to enforce federal voting rights.  In 1962, he escorted James Meredith, the first black student to attend the University of Mississippi, on campus.  Doar also participated in the 1965 march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama that led to the passage of the Voting Rights Act, allowing equal access to registering black voters.

In 1967, often at the risk of his own personal well-being, he successfully prosecuted seven men accused of murdering three Civil Rights workers in Mississippi and prosecuted others who resisted federal law.  Through the work of the Civil Rights Division, the Civil Rights movement pressed forward with the support of the federal government.

After spending eight years with the division, Doar later served as the special counsel for the House Judiciary Committee in the Watergate hearings.  He continues to practice law in New York.

Lois Taurman
Former Bellarmine University student-athlete

The Bellarmine Athlete of the Year in 1983, Lois Taurman is the only Bellarmine student-athlete in history to compete in three sports for four consecutive years.  In 1984, she was cleaning the gutters of a house with a garden hose when she fell from the ladder and hit a stair rail, landing at the bottom of the stairs, covering a drain.  Taurman was paralyzed and the water from the still-running hose flooded the area.  By the time she was discovered by the paramedics, she was submerged in water and presumed dead.

The accident left Taurman with no brain damage, but she faced life in a wheelchair as a quadriplegic and had to re-learn most basic skills.  In 1985, while still in the hospital, she completed her nursing degree.

A year later, she began participating in wheelchair track and field sports.  Taurman won four gold and three silver medals while representing the United States in the 1988 Paralympic Games in Seoul, Korea and the 1987 World Stoke-Mandeville Games in Aylesbury, England.  She was also a 16-time gold medalist in the National Wheelchair Games.  Recently, Taurman has started wheelchair fencing, representing the United States in domestic and international competitions.

Taurman earned a master’s degree in education from the University of Louisville in 1987 and a juris doctorate in 1997.  She is a nationally certified specialist in poison information and established her own law practice specializing in estate and probate law.  Currently, she works as a lawyer during the weekdays and during the weekends, works as a nurse affiliated with a national poison control center that provides recommendations on treatment options.

Taurman has served on several boards and committees and serves as a demonstration guest to the physical therapy program at Louisville.  She is also a public and motivational speaker to people of all ages and abilities.