Danute Bankaitis-Davis
Danute "Bunki" Bankaitis-Davis '80 1991 Volleyball
She was the embodiment of the term "student-athlete."
Danute Bankaitis - nobody ever called her anything but "Bunki" - was good at virtually any sport she tried her skills at. And she was just as good with a textbook in her hand as with a ball or racket.
There were not a great number of women's intercollegiate varsity sports to challenge her when she enrolled at Cleveland State in the fall of 1976.
She had been an outstanding tennis player at suburban Fairview High in the Fall of 1976, playing first singles and first doubles, but there was no varsity tennis program for women at CSU when she arrived.
So she threw her small, compact body into the sport of volleyball, a sport in which she had established a reputation in amateur circles with the Lithuanian AC during her high school days.
And in four glorious seasons as the Vikings' setter, she led her team to 99 victories against 62 defeats, to a fourth place finish in the 1977 Ohio championships and then to the 1978 Ohio collegiate volleyball title.
In that memorable championship year, she was named as the Most Valuable Player on the All-Ohio team, and was again selected as an All-Ohio player the next year.
She was also the winner of the CSU Athletic Alumni Association plaque as the `Most Outstanding Volleyball Player' in 1978 and 1979.
All this however, was merely prelude.
To cap her memorable senior year, she wrote a chapter in CSU athletic history which has never been copied by winning both the Athletic Alumni Association Award as the Female Athlete of the Year (1978-79) and the Director's Award for the highest cumulative average by a graduating senior athlete - a 3.77 average in chemistry. The average was not only the best for an athlete. It also earned her recognition as the University's top graduating chemistry major.
Her academic and athletic achievements did not end with her graduation from Cleveland State.
She went on to earn her doctorate in chemistry at the University of North Carolina, where she was to meet her future husband Fred "Chip" Davis.
Davis, a cycling enthusiast, persuaded her to give up her then-current sporting love, running (she would have been a standout in cross country at Cleveland State had the Vikings fielded a team in her undergraduate days) in favor of pedaling a bicycle.
Bunki never did anything at half speed. It took her less than four years to develop into a world class cyclist and earn a place on the U.S. women's cycling team which in turn won her a cherished place on the U.S. Olympic Team, with whom she competed in the 1988 Games in Seoul.
She has remained active in cycling, still competing on the national and international level at the time of her election to the Hall of Fame.
Still another honor came her way from her alma mater when she was presented the CSU Distinguished Alumni Award in the spring of 1980.
At the time of her induction into the Athletic Hall of Fame she mad her home with her husband in Boulder, Colorado where she was working as an analytical chemist with Syntex Chemicals, Inc. and looking to another Olympics competition in 1992.
There were more chapters to be written.
