Woman Suing Duke Praised By H.S. Coach

A woman suing Duke because she was cut as a place kicker was praised by her high school coach Tuesday an accurate kicker.

Heather Sue Mercer "is very good and very accurate," Ron Santavicca testified in federal court. "I'd say her range was 35 to 40 yards. Not too many high school kickers can do much better than that. But the key to Heather's success was her accuracy."

Santavicca coached Mercer in the early 1990s at Yorktown High School in Yorktown Heights, N.Y. She was the first-string place-kicker during the 1993 season, when she made 28 of 31 extra point attempts and four of seven field goals, he said. The team was 11-1 that year and a state champion, he said.

Mercer, who walked on as a kicker her freshman year at Duke in 1994, contends that Duke violated the Title IX amendment that prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in educational programs receiving federal funds.

Mercer sued the university three years ago and graduated in 1998. She now works for Charles Schwab & Co. in New York.

Duke attorney John Simpson asked Santavicca about the high school team's one loss in the 1993 season. "Isn't it true that you lost the game because Ms. Mercer missed a 30-yard field goal?" he asked Santavicca.

"No," the coach responded. "We lost because we stunk. She made one out of two that day."

Simpson also asked if it were true that Mercer did not handle kickoffs because she lacked the leg power. "I didn't need her to do that," Santavicca said. "She could have kicked off."

In opening arguments Monday, Mercer's attorney, Burton Craige, said Mercer was excluded from the Blue Devil because of her gender, not because of a lack of talent. Simpson said Mercer was cut because she didn't have the range of skills as other kickers.

But Simpson conceded that former coach Fred Goldsmith made errors in judgment when he dealt with Mercer, giving her an opportunity he would not have given a man with the same skills.

In 1994, Mercer, then a freshman, asked Duke's football coaches for a tryout as a place kicker. After a 10- to 15-minute session, the coaches told her she wasn't ready to be a member of the team, but she attended football practices that fall and again in the spring of 1995. In the 1995 Blue-White spring game, she kicked a 28-yard game-winning field goal.

Mercer attended spring practices in 1996, but in the fall was told officially that she'd been cut from the team.

Mercer wasn't given a uniform when she returned in the fall of 1995 to continue practice and was told she couldn't sit with the team on the sidelines.

Mercer's witnesses include former Washington Redskins kicker Mark Moseley and Duke president Nan Keohane. Duke's witnesses include former North Carolina coach Bill Dooley and Mike O'Cain, former head coach at N.C. State and an assistant at North Carolina.

The case moved forward after a federal judge iGreensboro issued a series of rulings last week that narrowed the focus of the case to the Title IX issues and removed Goldsmith as a defendant.

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