University of Washington - Home

Oct. 17, 2012

By Gregg Bell
UW Director of Writing

SEATTLE - Kelcey Dunaway and Jeremy Taiwo spoke for nearly 700 other Huskies student-athletes when they thanked their scholarship donors for their generosity.

And for something priceless: Their faith.

"Going to college, there was no guarantee I'd succeed. Because I'm human, there have been times I've doubted myself. When I've said, `This is too tough. I can't do it,' Dunaway said Tuesday.

The senior from Bainbridge Island, Wash., has gone on to be a three-time Pac-12 all-academic selection. And the senior middle blocker on the No. 5-ranked Washington volleyball team isn't exactly majoring in lawn mowing.

Try molecular cellular and developmental biology. With a minor in gender, women and sexual studies.

After Dunaway helps the Huskies in their run to a conference and national championship this winter and then graduation, she wants to increase access to reproductive care for women of all socio-economic status.

And she thanks the Lindquist Family Scholarship Endowment for that.

"For me, being a scholarship athlete adds another layer of support, adds more people to say, `Yes you can,'" Dunaway told a crowd of hundreds of UW contributors, head coaches and student-athletes at Husky Athletics' 15th annual Donor Appreciation Scholarship Luncheon at the Conibear Shellhouse.

"Thank you for not only providing your scholarships," Dunaway said, "but for your faith in our dreams."

This academic year, scholarship costs for Husky student-athletes will exceed $10 million. The current sum of the 158 endowments funded through the Huskies' Tyee Club donor group that were recognized Tuesday will pay 16 percent of that $10 million-plus cost. The self-sustaining UW athletic department covers the rest of the approximately $200 million it would take to fully fund Huskies student-athlete scholarships in perpetuity.

Those costs are skyrocketing. A fully funded in-state scholarship costs $650,000 per student-athlete. A fully funded out-of-state scholarship is currently worth $1.09 million - and is rising.

So, yes, former, current - even future - Huskies appreciate the endowments.

"It's amazing what they've provided me - a great education at the University of Washington. And faith," said Taiwo, a native of Renton, Wash., who was a 2011 indoor track All-American.

Later that year he won Washington's first conference title in the decathalon in 25 years -- by throwing the javelin with his left, off arm. He shrugged off a torn ligament in his right elbow (http://www.gohuskies.com/sports/c-track/spec-rel/051111aab.html).

Taiwo, who has also competed with a nearly torn hamstring as a Husky, is a two-time Pac-12 all-academic selection. He's about to earn his bachelor's degree in Latin America studies with a minor in global health.

"That's how important the tools are that you give us, the access to education," he told the UW donors in the Conibear dining room overlooking Union Bay and the Husky crew docks. "Tutors, internships, the Dinner with a Dawg event (where Huskies meet professionals in all walks of life to network), these are amazing opportunities."

Those opportunities have, um, "evolved" in the last half century.

Dick Reiten knows both sides of this athlete-donor relationship. He is a member of the Husky Hall of Fame as a member of the first Huskies baseball team to make the NCAA regionals - it came within one game of the College World Series. The member of the UW Class of 1961 also played basketball for the Huskies.

Reiten retired in 2008 as the chairman and chief executive officer of Northwest Natural Gas Co. in Oregon. He and his wife of 51 years - "a product of a basketball game at Oregon State," Reiten joked -- fund the Dick and Jean Reiten Endowed Scholarship for men's basketball. Sophomore forward Shawn Kemp Jr. is the current recipient of that funding.

Reiten began by telling the current Huskies "I don't mean to scare you." He then explained that when he was a Husky scholarship recipient 50 years ago the Athletic Association of Western Universities (the predecessor to the Pacific-8 Conference), mandated that as a provision of their scholarships student-athletes had to have campus jobs.

"No one was spared," Reiten said. "All-Americans were out there with the rest of us."

One such job was taking out the then-portable basketball floor inside Hec Edmundson Pavilion - and then have a competition to see which player could trap the largest rat living in the loose foundation beneath the floor.

Some of Reiten's other jobs as a Husky scholarship athlete? Cleaning the urinals and toilets inside Hec Ed. Carrying the finished crew shells that were being produced then at Conibear and carrying them up the hill to the railroad loading area near the campus power station. And cleaning the Husky Stadium press box.

That last one was a favorite to Huskies then.

"The biggest benefit to that? The phones in there," Reiten said. "To call home, to call girlfriends ...

"As a result of being a Husky scholarship athlete, I had a triple experience: athletics, academics and work," the Husky Hall of Famer and eventual CEO said. "It really prepared me for life.

"For Jeannie and I to be able to support student-athletes ... to be able to return the favor, it's truly a privilege."