The NCAA Honors Committee has selected one current and two former student-athletes as the Association's 2006 Inspiration Award winners.

Raul Altreche, a senior lacrosse student-athlete at Amherst College; John Doar, a four-time letter-winner in basketball at Princeton University in the 1940s; and Lois Taurman, a former three-sport standout at Bellarmine University, were selected.

The Inspiration Award, which is not automatically awarded annually, recognizes a current or former coach, administrator or varsity letter-winner at an NCAA institution who when confronted with a life-altering situation used perseverance, dedication and determination to overcome the event and now serves as a role model for others.

Altreche, Doar and Taurman will be recognized during the Honors Celebration January 7 at the 100th NCAA Convention in Indianapolis.

Following are descriptions of the winners' accomplishments.

Raul Altreche

When a high school lacrosse teammate nominated Altreche to become the team's backup goalkeeper -- the current second-stringer was afraid of the ball -- Altreche had no clue how to play the position, but he stepped up anyway.

It wasn't a surprising move given that the South Bronx native had been doing just that all his life -- stepping up and making his way. Both of Altreche's parents died of AIDS when he and his two brothers were young, leaving the three orphaned. Over the next few years, the boys shuffled from relative to relative. Essentials such as rent, utilities, food and clothes were covered by a meager monthly stipend of $1,200.

With all of the moving around, school was difficult for Altreche to manage. Beginning in the second grade, he regularly switched school systems and missed months-long chunks of class time. Consequently, by the time he reached junior high school, he could barely read. At not quite 12 years old, though, Altreche made a wise and life-changing decision. He wanted something more out of his life and set out to find a teacher who would help him with his reading skills and a counselor who would help him earn entry into high school.

The counselor believed Altreche was bright and thought he would qualify for "A Better Chance," a program that places intelligent, motivated students of color from disadvantaged backgrounds into environments that promote academic success.

Altreche successfully navigated the grueling, multi-interview application process and received an invitation to attend Daniel Hand High School in Madison, Connecticut. Situated between Long Island Sound to the south and farms and woodland to the north, the town of about 16,000 was very different from New York City. But Altreche settled and excelled. In the classroom he became just the second freshman in the history of Daniel Hand's ABC program to hold the equivalent of an "A-" grade-point average. He was class president as a sophomore and a member of the National Honor Society as a senior.

Also as part of the ABC program, Altreche was paired with a host family, through which he was introduced to organized team sports.

Altreche threw himself into football and two sports he'd never heard of -- wrestling and lacrosse. While he enjoyed all three, lacrosse became his favorite. Three weeks into lacrosse practice during his freshman year, a teammate suggested Altreche for backup goalie. He accepted. By his senior year, he was captain of the team.

Altreche's hard work and determination earned him entrance into Amherst, where he is a three-time letter-winner in lacrosse. Although not a starter, he has contributed to the Jeffs' recent success, including having made a game-saving stop in a quarterfinal game against Bowdoin College during the 2004 New England Small College Athletic Conference tournament.

Off the field, Altreche, who by his own admission feels an obligation to give back some of what has been given to him, has stepped up as well. He spent one summer teaching underprivileged African-American and Hispanic children as part of a Harvard University program, and he also worked with middle school youth in a New York City suburb last summer.

Said Altreche, "I see too much not to do something about it."

John Doar

It was a similar kind of sentiment that motivated Doar, a 1944 Princeton graduate who earned his law degree at the University of California, Berkeley, to become a force in the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s.

Doar grew up in Wisconsin, where there was little racial unrest. But he recalls that his mother was open-minded about religious matters. Doar first learned of the racial inequalities bubbling over in the South during his years at Princeton.

"I had a lot of friends from the South. They would say we know we have a problem, but let us solve it," he said.

A decade later, Doar was practicing law in a small town in northwestern Wisconsin, when he was presented with an opportunity to join the newly established Civil Rights Division of the United States Justice Department. At the time, he didn't know much about that particular division, but he understood that things hadn't changed much in the South since his Princeton days, and it was a chance to help right something he thought was wrong.

Beginning in 1960, he helped enforce federal voting-rights laws by litigating cases in the U.S. District Courts in Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana. As part of his work with the Civil Rights Division, Doar was involved in a number of events that have found their way into the American history annals. In 1962, he escorted James Meredith, the first African-American student to attend the University of Mississippi, onto the campus. Doar also was among the masses who participated in the 1965 march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama. In 1967, he successfully prosecuted seven men accused of murdering three civil rights workers in Mississippi.

"They would work the counties. That's how they developed information and knowledge," said Doar of the lawyers and paralegals who worked with him during his tenure at the division. "When you try to do something like change a culture, the one thing you have to do is know your territory and keep going back. The thing about the Civil Rights Division was the lawyers knew the territory. They knew individuals and they knew families."

Doar spent eight years with the division, and later became part of another important history event when he served as the special counsel for the House Judiciary Committee in the Watergate hearings. He continues to practice law today in New York.

Through the work of the division, the Civil Rights Movement pressed forward with the support of the federal government.

"It was certainly a conviction that if we kept at it the way we were working at it, we would break the caste system one way or another," said Doar, who noted that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 would not have been enacted without the work of members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, nor without support from lawyers and paralegals in the Civil Rights Division. "I'm getting credit for a lot of hard work by a lot of young lawyers and paralegals who worked with me during that period. They were a remarkable group of young people. They made a difference."

Lois Taurman

It was sports that made a difference in the life of Taurman, not only because of the opportunities that competition has afforded her, but also because sports saved her life.

Taurman's love affair with sports began in
the fourth grade. That's when she started playing organized sports. At Bellarmine, she excelled in basketball, volleyball and softball to become the only student-athlete in school history to compete in three sports for four straight years. She averaged 13.9 points and 7.4 rebounds per game on the court and led the volleyball squad to a pair of Kentucky state championships. She guided the softball team to a state championship as a senior. During her senior year, while finishing her coursework in biology, Taurman decided to minor in nursing.

The Bellarmine athlete of the year in 1983, Taurman had planned to pursue a degree in nursing and enter the Navy as a nurse. But those plans changed when, one day in 1984, she was using a hose to clean gutters when she fell off the ladder; hit a stair rail; and landed at the bottom of the stairs, covering a drain. Taurman was paralyzed and the water from the still-running hose flooded the area. By the time she was discovered, she was submerged in water.

"I would not have lived, but for the fact that doctors said I was in such tremendous shape," she said.

Miraculously, the accident left Taurman with no brain damage, but she faced life in a wheelchair as a quadriplegic. She didn't, however, give up her pursuit of a nursing degree, which she completed in 1985 while still in the hospital.

It was during rehab that she met some individuals who introduced her to the world of wheelchair sports, and specifically to wheelchair racing.

"There was wheelchair basketball available, but I didn't want to choose that because I was very good at basketball. It came very natural, and I did not want to diminish how well I had played. This is something I would never be able to compare before being hurt," she said.

Taurman's competitive nature reasserted itself and propelled her to international success in wheelchair racing. A former record holder in the 60-, 100-, 200-, 400-, 800- and 1,500-meter events in class IA, she collected four gold and three silver medals as a member of the U.S. National Team at the 1988 Paralympic Games in Seoul, Korea and the 1987 World Stoke-Mandeville Games in England. She also was a 16-time gold medalist in the National Wheelchair Games.

Later, Taurman took up wheelchair fencing and has represented the United States in domestic and international competitions.

"The wheelchair has allowed me to go further in sports that I would have ever gone on my feet," she said. "I could never knock the wheelchair. It has allowed me to go through doors that would never have been opened but for the fact that I broke my neck."

Even as she was enjoying success in athletics competition, Taurman continued to excel academically as well. She earned a master's degree in education at the University of Louisville in 1987 and a juris doctorate from the school in 1997. In addition, she is a nationally certified specialist in poison information and established her own law practice specializing in estate and probate law. Now Taurman spends her weekdays working as a lawyer and her weekends as a nurse affiliated with a national poison control center that provides recommendations on treatment options. She also finds time to serve as a motivational speaker.