"RESPECT IS EARNED, NOT GIVEN" (MD.)

 by Aaron Gray
agray@digitalsports.com

(See video clips and interviews below)

It's a woman's world. Don't think twice about questioning that notion with Southern High School graduate Juliann Durkee.

The 17-year-old Harwood resident played three years of club ice hockey for the Bulldogs -- against the boys -- and was also an executive officer in the Naval Junior Reserve Officers' Training Corps Unit at Annapolis High School. Durkee's older brother, Rob, broke her into both ventures when she was younger and she stuck it out to the end.

Durkee never backed down and earned the respect of her male adversaries and that's why she is the Anne Arundel County female winner of the DigitalSports Applause Scholarship for the winter.

The DigitalSports Applause Scholarship is awarded in the amount of $500 toward the college education of an outstanding senior student-athlete who has exhibited great courage in overcoming adversity in order to make a positive contribution to his or her team.

A male and female athlete is awarded every season in Anne Arundel, Baltimore and Howard Counties along with Baltimore City. Similarly, one male from the Maryland Interscholastic Athletic Association and one female from the Interscholastic Athletic Association of Maryland will be honored during each of the three sports' seasons on a yearly basis.

When asked about how she was viewed by her fellow NJROTC members, Durkee snapped back like a quick salute.

"Respect is earned, not given," said Durkee, who is also a skilled and award-winning marksman. "I was in charge not because someone gave me the responsibility. It was because I knew I could do it. I was the right person for the job -- I earned it."

Durkee made the commute from Southern to Annapolis several times a week for the NJROTC program and moved up the ranks each year. She had to arrange her own travel between the schools and adjust her school schedule to fit everything in.

"Juliann was such a leader and it was a pleasure to watch her grow within the unit," said Lt. Cmdr. Baker (USN retired), one of the unit's instructors in Annapolis. "She never let anything get in her way and it didn't matter that she was a girl. She climbed the ranks every year and that's because she gained the respect of her peers."

Durkee is also very skilled with a rifle. The National Rifle Association presented her with its highest medal, the Distinguished Experts award, in March and she also participated in the NJROTC Eastern Regionals at Ft. Benning, Ga. More than 3,000 shooters tried out for the event and when the smoked cleared, Durkee was ranked among the top 11 percent in the nation.

In April, she and three other shooters from the Annapolis unit participated in the 2008 NRA 3 Position Junior Air Rifle Sectional Match and earlier in the year, the team shot at a postal match sponsored by Oxford High School in Oxford, Miss. and placed fourth of 104 teams nationwide.

At the rifle events, her gender didn't matter.

"Actually, rifle is a very female sport," said Durkee, who advanced to the Junior Nationals in Akron, Ohio during her junior year and placed 10th in her division. "You see a lot more girls up there than guys."

She competed in rifle events all four years of high school but had a big impact on the drill team during her junior year. Durkee shouted commands to marching students, disciplined her subordinates and helped make the Annapolis NJROTC unit one of the best in the country. The attention to detail and the overall discipline will help her in college, she said.

"Time management was a big thing," said Durkee, who will attend (and hopefully play ice hockey at) the Rochester Institute of Technology in upstate New York, her mother's alma mater.

"I've learned a lot about how to plan things, coordinate schedules and balance everything between work, school and ROTC. The patience I've learned through all of that is one of the biggest things."

When it came to ice hockey, Durkee was never afraid of hitting. To no surprise, she was on the back line and one of her duties was to be physical.

"Oh yeah, I played defense so I was the one knocking them to the ground," said Durkee, who also played for 11 years in the Bowie Hockey Club.

Playing with the other girls -- female ice hockey leagues do exist in Anne Arundel County -- never appealed to her. It was a decision Jim MacBride, her high school coach, applauded.

"As far as I know, she never played girls ice hockey," said MacBride, who played with Durkee's father, Rick, and also coached her older brothers. "When they start with the boys, they will miss that contact. I mean the girls throw some bumps and grind a little bit but not full checks. Juliann could handle the checks and then some."

MacBride said that Durkee's teammates never discouraged her because of her gender and that she became one of the leaders on the team.

"They saw her as an equal because she was a good defenseman, who played at a hard-hitting level," MacBride said.

Durkee said it all goes back to the influence her older brother, Rob, had on her at a young age. Rob Durkee is now in Canada pursuing a professional ice hockey career, but his roots go beyond the ice rink. When he graduated in 2005, Juliann's freshman year, he was the ROTC company commander and made sure that Juliann joined the unit.

The rest is history and now Durkee is ready to study Bio-Medical Engineering in college.

"My parents, my brothers -- my whole family had a big influence on me and what I've been able to accomplish," Durkee said. "I'm really happy with what I did at Southern and I'm really looking forward to the future."