“Overall, I would consider myself living the dream at the moment.”
What current DKE undergrad is ‘living the dream’ this semester? We’ll give you three hints: He’s on the Tar Heels basketball team, he was a nationally-recognized all star in another sport, and his dad was also a DKE.
Stewart Cooper is a junior from Winston-Salem, NC majoring in History. If you swing by the DKE house and don’t find him, there’s a good chance he’s at the Dean Smith Center.
Stewart is a six-foot-five walk-on forward on the Tar Heels basketball team. After spending two years on the junior varsity team, Stewart earned his varsity jersey before the 2010-11 season. Number 15 has seen action in 10 games this season, but his love of North Carolina runs much deeper than his stats do.
“I always wanted to go to UNC. And the fact that my dad went there I and my brother who is two years older also went gave me more incentive to go.”
Putting on a Carolina Blue jersey is the dream for many North Carolina high school basketball players. Despite a terrific high school career, scholarship offers were few and far between for Stewart. The road to the Smith Center was paved by his brother, and the Tar Heels JV team.
“My older brother is still a manager for the varsity team, so occasionally I would come early before games to watch the JV team play and I thought it would be a perfect fit and it was. I played my freshman and sophomore years and it was one of the best experiences of my life. It was a lot like playing a high school sport in terms of time commitment which was great, especially while pledging DKE.”
Speaking of pledging DKE, what was it like balancing Greek life with being an athlete?
“Practice did get me out of a few things during pledging which was always great, but at the same time it wasn’t too hard juggling playing on the JV team and making time for school and still having a social life. I have had to miss a few parties, mixers, and cocktails because of away games and stuff like that but it has definitely been worth it.”
Believe it or not, basketball might not have been Stewart’s best sport growing up. He led his high school soccer team to back-to-back state championships and was named to the Division II USSSA National all-star team during his senior year.
“Soccer was a pretty big part of my high school life along with basketball, and whenever people asked which I liked more I could never decide. A lot of my very close friends had been playing soccer with me since eighth grade and we had always talked about winning a state championship once we got to high school. However I always felt that I was a little better at basketball, or at least it came more naturally, especially since there are not too many six-foot-five soccer players around.”
DKE and basketball runs much deeper through the Cooper family than just Stewart. His older brother Bobby is the head manager of the Tar Heel basketball team, and his father Tim is a DKE from the early ‘80’s.
“Him (dad) being a DKE definitely influenced my decision but even more influential was my brother because I was able to visit him many times my junior and senior years of high school and got a good feel for what the DKE house was all about,” Stewart said. “During high school when I would visit my brother we would always hang out at the DKE house and I got to know a lot of the guys that were in it and I enjoyed hanging out with them. So I pretty much knew that I wanted to be a DKE going in. I’m sure he (dad) wanted me to be a DKE from the beginning but he said that the decision was up to me and no matter where I ended up he would be fine with it.”
Stewart’s father was instrumental in helping in helping him navigate the pledging process and making sure that DKE was the right place for him.
“He basically told me that it wasn’t going to be very much fun but that I was not doing anything that people such as himself or my brother hadn’t done and just to remember that all they really want to do is get you closer with your pledge class. As for rush, he said to try and go around to as many different houses as possible and to really try and enjoy it because of the fact that pledging was right around the corner.
A small percentage of Chapel Hill’s students participate in Greek life. A very small group of men and women are Tar Heel varsity athletes. But it is extremely rare to find someone like Stewart who excels in the classroom, on the court, and in the fraternity system.
“While I guess I’m a little biased, I consider myself to be in the best fraternity on campus as well as getting to play for one of the best basketball programs in the country, so I have been very fortunate to be able to do both.”
