Carolina Alumni Review - November/December 2010

Chase Rice ’09:

Former UNC Linebacker
Tackles New Challenges
You have to give Chase Rice ’09 credit for not shying away from daunting chal-
lenges. He came to Carolina as a linebacker for the football team and dreamed of playing
in the NFL — then an ankle injury ended those aspirations. Now he’s in Nashville,
Tenn., trying to make it as a country music singer-songwriter. In the middle, he worked
as a jackman for a NASCAR pit crew — and competed in
Survivor: Nicaragua.

“Chase is just a really solid dude,” says Survivor executive pro-
ducer Dave Burris ’ 87. “He’s like the guy you’d want your sister
to marry. With the music and the football and the NASCAR,
he’s well-rounded. And the girls think he’s good-lookin.’ ”
Rice says he wasn’t a regular Survivor viewer before he tried
out for the show on a whim, but he describes the experience as
“right up my alley.”

Former Carolina football player Chase Rice ’09 worked out with a Marine to toughen up for his stint on Survivor, including eliminating sugar from his diet.

“I had an awesome time doing it,” Rice says. “Before going to Nicaragua, I contacted a Marine about toughening up. He got me on this diet with no sugar, to where my body didn’t need it anymore after about two weeks. I was working out regularly anyway, staying in decent shape, and I was training for NASCAR, too. So it was pretty active. It was great preparation.”

Don’t Hold Duke Against Her

UNC Medical Student Kelly Bruno:

Executive producer Dave Burris ’ 87 had some fun on Survivor this season with contestant Kelly Bruno, a second-year medical student at UNC. That’s because Bruno earned her undergraduate degree from Duke.

“Yeah, we’d tease each other a lot,” Burris says. “But you can’t hold that against her because
Kelly’s such a hero. She really is the complete package. She’s smart, beautiful, runs triathlons
— she ticks off all the boxes, just an amazing woman.”
Bruno was born with a defective right leg, which was amputated when she was an infant.

She’s never let that slow her down. In Hawaii in 2007, Bruno became the fastest female amputee ever to finish the Ironman World Championships. She’s also only the second amputee to compete on Survivor. While she had no problem with the show’s physical challenges, she was voted off in the sixth episode, apparently because some contestants feared she might win on sympathy.

Bruno will be at UNC until 2013, when she hopes to become an anesthesiologist. Meantime, she’ll keep trying to reconcile her roots at UNC and Duke.

“As long as they’re not playing each other in basketball, it’s easy,”

Bruno says with a laugh. “I’ve loved being at UNC, which I have to admit was a little surpris-ing because of everything I’d heard while at Duke. But it’s been a great experience. Part of that is being in med school, where you have a different relationship with faculty and classmates.”

UNC medical student Kelly Bruno is only the second amputee to compete on Survivor. Because of a birth defect, her lower right leg was amputated when she was an infant.

ONLINE: Read Chase Rice’s Survivor bio and watch him talk about how the show fits into the other challenges he’s faced recently: cbs.com/primetime/survivor/cast/21/chase/.

Read Kelly Bruno’s Survivor bio and watch her talk about her life, including her father’s death in the Haiti earthquake earlier this year: cbs.com/primetime/survivor/cast/21/kelly-b/.