This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2007, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
There's no official rulebook, no pamphlet or syllabus about how to conduct oneself when in the middle of the Brigham Young-Utah rivalry - though there is an article detailing the historic relationship between the two schools on http://www.wikipedia.com.
If there was a set of guidelines, though, Jeff and Joy Duke skipped the part about not giving birth to a daughter named Jessica Duke, who would eventually become a gymnast, who then would choose red and white over blue and white to become a Ute. And she would do it even though her parents graduated as Cougars and - get this - her dad served as the student body president.
"I never imagined ever in my life that I would be rooting for Utah," Jeff said. "But things change, people change, hearts soften.
"And it's a lot easier when you have your daughter on the gymnastics team."
Especially when your daughter is Jessica, a junior all-around competitor for the No. 3 team in the country, going into today's meet at Minnesota. Even if it means wearing some red when gymnastics season comes around. That includes when the Utes face BYU.
"The first couple times, it was a surreal feeling," Jeff said, about wearing red.
Duke trained and competed, for the most part, at the Olympus School of Gymnastics in Sandy. She was under the instruction of Mary Wright, a Utes volunteer coach who would take her pupil to meets at the Huntsman Center. The young gymnast would get caught up in the excitement of one day possibly performing in front of 10,000-plus people. She felt the same as a high school student at Waterford, when she was deciding what college she would like to attend.
"I would go to all the meets as a kid and I would just have more interest in Utah," Duke said.
BYU, however, did have some interest. Duke once attended her friend and fellow gymnast Brogan Jacobsen's senior night performance at BYU, but it wasn't the same as a Utes meet.
It's just unfortunate for the Cougars that Duke never saw in a BYU meet what she saw in a Utes meet. Some gymnasts and coaches say a Utah gymnastics meet is similar to a Utes football game, with all the cheerleaders and impromptu chants of "U-T-A-H" from the second-largest home crowd in women's college sports.
But Duke knew Utah coach Greg Marsden and his staff rarely signed local gymnasts - the last one was about eight years earlier, when Brighton High graduate Deidra Graham came to Utah. Marsden even was a little cautious about recruiting Duke, knowing of her parents' loyalty to BYU.
But the Utes offered Duke a scholarship, and she was in the same class as Ashley Postell, a national champion before she hit a college mat.
And that's how a child born into a BYU household became a Ute, whose parents can say they have a daughter on a Utah team that finished as the runner-up in last year's NCAA Championships.
Now, all mom and dad must deal with is the occasional teasing from Marsden, who once told Jeff, "You have to sprinkle some red in your closet now."
Duke file
* Jessica Duke is the only Utahn on the Utah gymnastics team.
* As an all-around performer, Duke is helping the Utes maintain a No. 3 national ranking - a position Utah has held for the past two weeks.