Chris Gay knows perseverance.

After leaving The University of Texas at Arlington in 1992 to pursue a Major League Baseball career, Chris Gay is back on campus to cross the stage in December with a bachelor's degree in interdisciplinary studies.

He owes it all to a UTA kinesiology professor and his daughter, who will graduate in the spring with a kinesiology degree.

Barry McKeown, a kinesiology professor who came to UTA in 1983, had Gay's daughter, Kristen, in his class. She told McKeown that her dad, Chris, played baseball at UTA.

After thinking about it a few seconds, McKeown asked if her dad was Chris Gay, who he had in his class about 25 years earlier. When Kristen said yes, the UTA professor did a little homework and discovered Chris needed only 28 hours to graduate.

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