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QuickTake:
This year’s annual event brought more than 700 student-athletes and speakers to Oregon, including one former athlete still figuring out his place in sports.
Denali Duncan arrived in Oregon this week for the first time in his life while, as he described it, living in “the grey zone.”
Duncan is an athlete — or at least he was one. He grew up in Tampa and played two years of junior college basketball at Hillsborough Community College before finishing his psychology degree earlier this month at Florida A&M University.
He came to Eugene this week for the Black Student-Athlete Summit, a three-day event that began in 2015 and is bringing more than 700 student-athletes and speakers to town. He just didn’t know exactly what he wanted out of it.
His playing career is over, but he’s not so sure his life in sports is complete. In a crowded conference room inside the Graduate hotel, he said he wanted to make some connections and learn about his options.
“I’m in this transition area in my life, and I think the summit is just great for me to use as a starting point,” Duncan said. “I can network around here, figure out what I want to do and talk to people who have been in the same position as me and see what they did, then take from them what’s required.”
Not all the athletes in Oregon this week are in the same position. Some are just getting going in their collegiate careers and are looking to the summit to learn about finances, branding and how to succeed as Black student-athletes in the modern NCAA landscape.
Athletes will be talking with experts all across the professional sports landscape, from fellow athletes to trainers, agents, lawyers and those who ended up in the media.
The variety is what drew in Daethan Harris, a basketball guard going into his senior year at Voorhees University, a historically Black college in South Carolina.
“I’m just trying to make the most out of this experience,” Harris said. “Not too many of my peers or anybody that we really know can say they did something like this.
“Everybody has been having fun and trying to get to know each other.”
Added Harris’ friend, Voorhees freshman baseball player Edrick Dawkins: “We’re just trying to make everyone feel welcome.”
The two felt Oregon was doing the same. Neither had been to the state before — “There’s so much nature and scenery. It’s so peaceful,” Harris said — and they were both looking forward to touring the campus of the University of Oregon, this year’s summit host.
“One thing I want to do is see all the Oregon stuff,” Dawkins said. “Like, all the jerseys and facilities? I’ve always wanted to see that.”
But the summit isn’t just a sightseeing tour. Things were just getting started Wednesday morning as Duncan filled out his registration and chatted with dozens of athletes who were passing time shooting on the room’s pop-a-shot basketball hoops and dancing to a DJ, but Duncan had already started to learn a little more about himself.
“I want to do sports psychology,” he said. “My major was clinical psych, and I was going to do pediatrics, but literally in the couple of hours that I’ve been here, three people have asked me about it, and I’ve never really thought about it, but I love sports, I love talking to athletes, and I think I’d do really well with that.”
