Blue Devil Prospects for Olympic Gold at Paris Games
20 alumni, students & coaches ready for the world’s largest athletic competition
Basketball
The Blue Devils will be well represented on the basketball courts. Head women’s coach Kara Lawson returns to the Olympics as an assistant coach of the U.S. women’s team. In the 2020 games, Lawson coached the U.S. women’s 3x3 basketball team to a gold medal. (She also was a member of Team USA, which captured the gold medal at the 2008 Summer Olympic Games in Beijing.)
BLUE DEVILS AT THE OLYMPICS
Women’s Basketball
Elizabeth Balogun (Nigeria)
Chelsea Gray (United States)
Kara Lawson* (Assistant Coach, United States)
Sofia Roma (Puerto Rico)
Men’s Basketball
Khaman Maluach (South Sudan)
Jayson Tatum (United States)
R.J. Barrett (Canada)
Golf
Ana Belac (Slovenia)
Celine Boutier (France)
Leona Maguire (Ireland)
Field Hockey
Leah Crouse (United States)
Fencing (Saber)
Pascual Di Tella (Argentina)
Track & Field
Simen Guttormsen (Pole Vault, Norway)
Lauren Hoffman (400m Hurdles, Philippines)
Brynn King (Pole Vault, United States)
Maddy Price (4x400m Relay, Canada)
Daniel Golubovic (Decathlon, Australia)
Soccer
Toni Payne (Nigeria)
Quinn (Canada)
Wrestling
Ethan Ramos* (86kg Freestyle, Puerto Rico)
* Lawson and Ramos are currently Duke coaches.
Lawson will be joined on the USA team by WNBA star Chelsea Gray, a 2014 Duke graduate. Gray won a gold medal with the USA team in the Tokyo Olympics. And Elizabeth Balogun, who played her 2022-23 senior year at Duke, will make her second Olympic appearance for Nigeria.
Sofia Roma will represent Puerto Rico in basketball. The power forward, who played here for two seasons in 2017-19, previously played for the Puerto Rican national team in the World Cup in 2018 and 2022.
In men’s basketball, Jason Tatum will be a key player for Team USA, trying to add a second gold medal to his resume following his first NBA team championship this spring with the Boston Celtics. In addition, freshman Khaman Maluach will represent South Sudan in the games. Maluach, a 7-foot-2, 250-pound center from the NBA Academy Africa in Senegal, was one of the top prospects this year and will join Coach Scheyer’s team following the Olympics. (In a pre-Olympics game this weekend, Maluach scored seven points and three rebounds as South Sudan nearly pulled off a historic upset against Team USA.)
Meanwhile, R.J. Barrett, a first-team All America and consensus National Player of the Year for Duke in 2018-2019, will lead Canada in the Olympic competition. The Canadian native is currently playing with the Toronto Raptors in the NBA.
It will be the eighth consecutive Summer Olympics in which a Duke basketball player has competed.
Golf
Three Duke women’s golfers – Ana Belac (Slovenia), Celine Boutier (France) and Leona Maguire (Ireland) – will represent their countries in golf. It will mark the third straight Olympics the Blue Devils will have golfers representing their home countries.
Maguire, a 2018 graduate, is one of 15 women golfers to have ever competed in three Olympics. She turned in the highest finish for Duke in the last Olympics as she placed tied for 21st in the 2020 games with rounds of 74, 65, 74 and 69 for a 2-under, 282. Belac graduated from Duke in 2020, while Boutier graduated in 2016. Boutier was a member of Duke’s 2014 national championship team.
Soccer
In women’s soccer, 2018 graduate Quinn will represent their home country of Canada at the Olympics for the third time. The star midfielder will look for another medal to add to their bronze in 2016 and gold in the 2020 games.
Quinn is one of the most decorated players in program history in their five-year career at Duke (2013-17). They helped the Blue Devils reach the national title game in 2015. In the memorable 2017 campaign that resulted in a College Cup appearance, Quinn became Duke’s first ACC Midfielder of the Year recipient, while also garnering first-team All-America and first-team All-ACC status.
In addition, 2017 graduate Toni Payne helped guide Nigeria to its first Olympic appearance since 2008. Payne was a teammate of Quinn’s on the 2015 Duke team that reached the national championship.
Track & Field
Duke track and field will be represented on the world stage this summer as two men and three women will compete at Stade de France in Saint Denis.
Canadian sprinter Maddy Price, a 2018 Duke graduate who remains Duke’s record holder in the indoor 4x200m relay, the 4x400m relay and the outdoor 4x200m relay events, will represent her home country in the women’s 4x400m relay and provisional 400m. It’s Price’s second Olympics, having been part of the 4x400 relay team that finished in fourth place, missing a medal by 0.6 seconds.
Lauren Hoffman will make her Olympic debut when she competes for the Philippines in the 400m hurdles. Her premier event during her time as a Blue Devil, Hoffman owns the Duke school record in the event.
Brynn King, who spent three years competing at Duke, will represent Team USA in the pole vault. In her final year at Duke in 2022, King earned second-team All-ACC honors and competed in the NCAA East Regional.
Norwegian Simen Guttormsen, who spent a graduate year in 2023-24 at Duke, will represent his country in the pole vault. Guttormsen had a phenomenal year in his one year at Duke, winning the ACC outdoor crown and setting a program-record clearance of 5.65 meters. He went on to win third place in the NCAA championships, earning All-America First Team honors.
Daniel Golubovic will compete for Australia in the decathlon. In his lone season at Duke (2017), he captured the ACC decathlon title and earned second team All-America honors in the NCAA championships.
The Olympic track and field competition begins in Paris Aug. 1 and concludes Aug. 11.
Field Hockey
In field hockey, former Duke standout Leah Crouse will represent Team USA. The 2022 graduate becomes the second Duke athlete to appear in the Olympics on the American team. A standout midfielder during her time with the Blue Devils, Crouse finished her career with 18 goals and 16 assists for 52 points. Crouse was a 2019 All-ACC second team pick and garnered All-Region second team honors in 2021.
One of Crouse’s Duke teammates, Jillian Wolgemuth is a selected member of the USA team but will be unable to compete in the Olympics because of an injury.
Fencing
Duke fencing alumnus Pascual Di Tella will compete in the saber competition, representing Argentina. A member of the Duke fencing squad from 2025-18, Di Tella is one of the most decorated Blue Devils in recent fencing history. He reached the NCAA championships four times, earning 10th place in men’s saber in 2018, and twice was named All-America. He also helped lead Duke to its first ACC men’s fencing championship in 2018.
Wrestling
In freestyle wrestling, Duke assistant coach Ethan Ramos will wrestle at 86kg for Puerto Rico. He joins Bert Govig, who participated in the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles as the only two athletes affiliated with Duke wrestling in the Games. In his third year at Duke as assistant coach, Ramos wrestled as an undergrad at UNC-Chapel Hill, where he won two ACC titles and earned All-America honors in 2015.
A majority of Duke representatives are female, an indication of the increasing presence of women at Olympic games. Organizers said the Paris games will be the first where there will be equivalent numbers of men and women competing. Other Blue Devils will be behind the scenes at the Paris Olympics. Two-time All-American, NCAA champion, Olympian, NBA Hall of Famer and Duke trustee Grant Hill will attend as managing director of USA Basketball. Meanwhile Duke basketball star Luol Deng serves as federation president for the South Sudan Olympic team.