BOWLING GREEN — A family leaves their native South Africa over a profound moral struggle with the evil of apartheid. A young violinist discovers football as a high school senior and wills his way to a Division I scholarship. A small-town newspaper reporter makes it big in another profession.
They’re the ingredients of an irresistible narrative.
And in another life, the subject of the story — new Bowling Green athletic director Derek van der Merwe — might have written it himself.
“Did you know I used to be in your business?” van der Merwe asked me the other day.