by Jim Sumner, GoDuke The Magazine
“I don’t want to be mediocre in anything,” the Duke sophomore basketball player told me earlier this summer. “That’s why I came to Duke. I want to be challenged.” Challenged on the court and in the classroom and everywhere else an elite academic institution helps grow someone intent on growing. Akinbode-James is a native of Abeokuta, Nigeria but came to the United States to attend Blair Academy in Blairstown, New Jersey.
DURHAM, N.C.-- Onome Akinbode-James isn’t the kind of woman to back down from a challenge.