There's another Duke lacrosse story, one you won't hear as much about as the one that involves a party, a stripper, and a rape that never happened.
There's another Duke lacrosse player, one you won't hear as much about as those accused of brutally assaulting an exotic dancer in early 2006 at a Durham house party.
There's another Duke lacrosse legacy, one you won't hear as much about as the tainted and race-scarred one a corrupt D.A. left in his wake.
On February 9, 2006, Army Ranger Jimmy Regan died in northern Iraq when the vehicle he was riding in hit a roadside bomb. He was 26 years old.
Four years earlier, before four tours in the war on terror-- two in Afghanistan and two in Iraq-- Regan had scored four goals in the 2002 ACC Championship lacrosse game to lead Duke to the crown.
With a highly regarded Duke undergrad degree in economics, a scholarship offer to Southern Methodist University law school, and a job offer on the table with USB financial firm upon graduation, Regan decided to join the Army out of college. He even bypassed Officer Candidates School, for which he was eligible, because it would "slow down my ability to become a Ranger," he told a friend.
Former teammate and current Duke lacrosse assistant coach Kevin Cassese remembered Jimmy as, "the ultimate Duke lacrosse man-- a man of tremendous loyalty, character, and fortitude," whose decision to join the Army seemed natural to anyone who had seen him lead on the field. "Jimmy was a leader in every sense of the word, and the pride and honor of fighting for our country was something that meant a lot to him," Cassese said in an e-mail interview.
Regan's fiance Mary McHugh remembers what drove him to be a Ranger in the first place:
"He said, 'If I don't do it, then who will do it?'" said McHugh, a medical student at Emory University in Atlanta. "He recognized it as an option and he couldn't not do it."
McHugh and Regan were set to wed in 2008 when his stint in the Army was up. They wanted to move to Chicago, where her family lived, and Regan planned to be a social studies teacher and coach lacrosse.
Instead, Regan's three sisters--ages 25, 20, and 16--parents, fiance, and friends mourned him in Manhasset, N.Y. this week before