By Jim Sumner, GoDuke The Magazine
DURHAM, N.C.-- Onome Akinbode-James is from Abeokuta, Nigeria, That’s about 5,500 miles from Durham, North Carolina.
Miela Goodchild is from Brisbane, Australia. That’s about 9,700 miles from Durham, coming the other way.
And yet, here they are, teammates, roommates and building blocks for Joanne P. McCallie’s Duke women’s basketball program.
They ended up at Duke for very similar reasons.
“It’s a great combination of athletics and academics,” Akinbode-James says, echoing generations of Duke student-athletes. She cites McCallie’s undergraduate degree from Northwestern and graduate degree from Auburn.