A trio of recipients will be recognized with the NCAA Inspiration Award at the Honors Celebration January 7 during the annual NCAA Convention.

The Inspiration Award is not automatically presented each year, but recipients have been selected every year since the award’s establishment five years ago. The award is given to a coach or administrator currently associated with intercollegiate athletics or to a current or former varsity letter-winner at an NCAA member institution who when faced with a life-altering situation overcame the event through perseverance, dedication and determination to serve as a role model, giving hope and inspiration to others in similar situations.

The 2006 Inspiration Award winners are Raul Altreche, a senior lacrosse student-athlete at Amherst College; John Doar, a former basketball student-athlete at Princeton University; and Lois Taurman, a former three-sport standout at Bellarmine University.

Altreche

Both of Altreche’s parents died of AIDS when he was a child, leaving him and his two brothers orphans. The three boys bounced from relative to relative and lived off a small monthly stipend of $1,200. Consequently, by the time Altreche reached junior high school, he could barely read. Wanting something more out of life, he sought a counselor and a teacher who would help him improve his reading skills and earn entry into high school.

Ultimately, Altreche qualified for a program called “A Better Chance,” which places students of color from disadvantaged backgrounds into positive academic environments, and relocated to Connecticut, where he attended and excelled academically at Daniel Hand High School. He also took advantage of his first opportunity to participate in organized sports and became a three-sport athlete in football, wrestling and lacrosse. At Amherst, Altreche is a three-time letter-winner in lacrosse, a sport he had never played before high school, and has spent summers working with youth.

Doar

As a student-athlete at Princeton in the 1940s, Doar learned of the racial inequalities prevalent in the South. Years later, he accepted an opportunity to join the newly established Civil Rights Division of the United States Justice Department, and beginning in 1960, he helped enforce federal voting-rights laws by litigating cases in U.S. District Courts in Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana. During his eight-year tenure with the Civil Rights Division, Doar escorted James Meredith, the first African-American student to attend the University of Mississippi, on to campus, and he also was among the thousands who participated in the 1965 march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama.

Doar also served as special counsel for the House Judiciary Committee in the Watergate hearings. He continues to practice law in New York.

Taurman

Taurman was the only student-athlete in Bellarmine history to compete in three sports for four straight years. In 1984, she nearly drowned and was paralyzed when she fell off a ladder while cleaning gutters. As a quadriplegic in a wheelchair, Taurman took up wheelchair racing. A former record holder in the 60-, 100-, 200-, 400-, 800- and 1,500-meter events in Class IA, she earned four gold and three silver medals at the 1988 Paralympic Games in Seoul, Korea, and was a 16-time gold medalist in the National Wheelchair Games. Taurman also represented the United States in domestic and international wheelchair fencing competitions.

In addition to her athletics success, Taurman earned a bachelor’s degree in biology with a minor in nursing from Bellarmine as well as a master’s degree in education and a juris doctorate at the University of Louisville. Taurman spends weekdays working as a lawyer with her own law firm, and on weekends she works as a nurse affiliated with a national poison control center.