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Meet Al Buehler

WUNC News | By Laura Lee,

Frank Stasio

Published May 4, 2015 at 11:55 AM EDT

Members of the men's track team pose with Coach Al Buehler.

Members of the men's track team pose with Coach Al Buehler.

Today's show is a rebroadcast of an interview with Duke University coach Al Buehler.

Today, Duke University’s athletics program is world famous for basketball, but back in 1955 when Al Buehler came to Duke to coach the cross country team, football was the school’s big sport. The teams were all men and all white.

www.goduke.com

Coach Buehler had a big hand bringing in black and female athletes. He has coached Duke through six ACC championships and trained five Olympians, two of whom went on to win medals. Buehler also distinguished himself as a coach by his ability to touch the lives of his athletes off the field. He is the subject of a new book and documentary by Amy Unell called “Starting at the Finish Line: Coach Al Buehler’s Timeless Wisdom.” Host Frank Stasio will be joined by Buehler and Unell to talk about the coach’s life and legacy.

Copyright 2015 North Carolina Public Radio

Laura Lee

Laura Lee began her journalism career as a producer and booker at NPR. She returned to her native North Carolina to manage The State of Things, a live daily statewide show on WUNC. After working as a managing editor of an education journalism start-up, she became a writer and editor at a national education publication, Edutopia. She then served as the news editor at Carolina Public Press, a statewide investigative newsroom. In 2022, she worked to build collaborative coverage of elections administration and democracy in North Carolina.

Laura received her master’s in journalism from the University of Maryland and her bachelor’s degree in political science and J.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

See stories by Laura Lee

Frank Stasio

Longtime NPR correspondent Frank Stasio was named permanent host of The State of Things in June 2006. A native of Buffalo, Frank has been in radio since the age of 19. He began his public radio career at WOI in Ames, Iowa, where he was a magazine show anchor and the station's News Director.

See stories by Frank Stasio