The Schools That Rule the Games | lones.biz

We know which countries produce the most Winter Olympic medals. But which colleges produce the most Olympians?

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John Quackenbos

Patrick Biggs competing for Dartmouth in 2003.

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Vancouver is lousy with Wisconsin Badgers, Minnesota Golden Gophers and other Big Tenners?at least 34. Wisconsin has at least a dozen current and former athletes at the Games, and Minnesota another six, because of their powerful ice-hockey programs. Michigan has six too, thanks to first-rate figure-skating coaching nearby.

Dartmouth, whose century-old ski program is believed to be the first of its kind, is well represented as always. The Big Green has at least nine Olympians, including cross-country skier Tucker Murphy, Bermuda?s flag bearer. But more than frigid schools are represented.

Bobsledder Chuck Berkeley ran track at California. Rachael Flatt, the 17-year-old American figure skater, has been accepted at Stanford. Some of theses athletes played a sport in college but didn?t take up their Olympic sport until later. Curt Tomasevicz was a linebacker at Nebraska before joining the U.S. bobsled team.

The Collegiate Olympians

Here?s an estimate of which colleges and universities around the world have produced the most Winter Olympians this year. The numbers are based on information from schools and coaches, and athlete profiles posted on the Vancouver 2010 Web site.

  • 1. University of Calgary (Canada): 23
  • 2. University of Minnesota Duluth: 15
  • 3. Matej Bel University (Slovakia): 14
  • 4. Westminster College (Utah): 14
  • 5. University of Wisconsin: 12
  • 6. Academy of Physical Education (Poland): 11
  • 7. Dartmouth College: 9
  • 7. IUT Annecy (France): 9
  • 7. University of Utah: 9
  • 10. Lviv State University of Physical Culture (Ukraine): 8
  • 10. National Sports Academy (Bulgaria): 8
  • 10. Ural State University of Physical Culture (Russia): 8
  • 13. National University of Physical Culture and Sport (Ukraine): 7
  • 14. University of Minnesota: 6
  • 14. Comenius University (Slovakia): 6
  • 14. University of Michigan: 6
  • 17. Colorado Mountain College: 5
  • 17. Harvard University: 5
  • 17. Latvian Academy of Sport Education (Latvia): 5
  • 17. Ohio State University: 5

Westminster College, a private school of roughly 2,000 undergraduates in Salt Lake City (site of the 2002 Games), has 14 students at the Olympics, including moguls bronze medalist Bryon Wilson. The University of Minnesota Duluth has somehow become intertwined with Swedish women?s hockey despite being 4,000 miles away. UMD counts six players on Sweden?s team.

When it comes to foreign colleges, the University of Calgary is the gold medalist. The Western Canadian school?which benefits from its proximity to the Olympic Oval, a world-class speed-skating facility?has at least 20 current or former athletes in this year?s Games. Austria?s University of Innsbruck, which is near world-class ski slopes and bobsled runs, has at least six Olympians this year?a typical haul for the school, which helps athletes by adjusting classroom requirements and test dates to fit their schedules. The school has so many Olympians, it doesn?t keep count. ?We can?t keep track of just the athletes,? says Uwe Steger, a university spokesman.

Many prominent Winter Olympians have had colleges listed on their r?sum?s. Figure skater Peggy Fleming, who won gold in 1968, attended Colorado College. Georgia football tailback Herschel Walker pushed a bobsled in 1992.

It?s impossible to know how many Olympians have college connections?or to figure out precisely how many went to any given school. There are some 2,600 athletes in this Olympics, and no one has made a comprehensive study of all of their biographies. The primary source for our estimates was the biographies provided to the Vancouver organizing committee, which can be seen on its Web site. When possible, we talked to the schools themselves and some coaches to verify our totals. Some schools? figures differed from the ones we calculated from the Vancouver Web site. The site suggests Minnesota Duluth has 12 Olympians, but the school?s women?s hockey coach says she has 14 current and former players participating.

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Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Charlie White and Meryl Davis, of the University of Michigan, compete for the U.S. in the ice-dancing free program this week.

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The numbers do make broader points. For one, college attendance isn?t a must for the winter games. Most events?like luge and ice dancing?don?t exist at the national collegiate level, so schools often contribute little to athletes? development.

Some athletes feel they can?t attend college because of the time their training demands. ?I really commend the people that can do both,? says former U.S. figure skater Tim Goebel, who won a bronze at the 2002 Salt Lake City Games. While training, he went to school full-time at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland?an arrangement that lasted all of one semester.

?It was impossible,? he says.

College hockey is flush with Olympians, particularly at Minnesota Duluth, a branch of the University of Minnesota system. UMD, which stresses foreign recruiting, has 14 current and former women?s hockey players in the Vancouver Games, including the Sweden six and three on Finland?s team.

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NCAA Photos/Associated Press

Erika Holst while at the University of Minnesota Duluth in 2001.

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?Stones were thrown initially,? UMD coach Shannon Miller says of the reaction to her recruiting foreign students, which helped the Bulldogs win four national titles between 2001 and 2008. ?Then people stopped throwing stones and got on the plane and started recruiting.?

As Team Canada?s coach at the 1998 Nagano Olympics, she had compiled a bunch of notes on players from other countries. When UMD hired her in 1998, she relied on that knowledge to recruit foreigners to the school?s nascent program.

Although other countries didn?t (and don?t) have nearly as many good players as the U.S. and Canada, there were some worth grabbing. Maria Rooth was UMD?s first from Sweden; Erika Holst followed. When they returned home, other players noticed their development?and started looking at UMD.

Michigan counts four ice dancers in Vancouver, including silver medalists Meryl Davis and Charlie White. ?They didn?t get mobbed too often before they left,? says Michigan senior Emily Hammond, a member of the Michigan Figure Skating Club, ?but they will when they get back.?

?David Crawford and Ben Cohen contributed to this article.

Write to Darren Everson at darren.everson@wsj.com and David Biderman at David.Biderman@wsj.com

Source: http://lones.biz/the-schools-that-rule-the-games-12

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First Academic Journal Dedicated to Secular Studies to be Launched ...

HARTFORD, CT, July 25, 2011 ? The world?s first journal dedicated to the

exploration of secularism and nonreligion will begin publication in

January 2012. The new journal is a partnership of the Institute for the

Study of Secularism in Society and Culture (ISSSC) at Trinity College in

Hartford, Conn., and the Non-religion and Secularity Research Network

(NSRN), an international and interdisciplinary network of researchers

founded in 2008.

The journal will be co-edited by Ryan T. Cragun, Assistant Professor of

Sociology at the University of Tampa, and Barry A. Kosmin, Research

Professor of Public Policy & Law and director of the ISSSC at Trinity

College. Lois Lee of NSRN and the University of Cambridge, England will

be Associate Editor.

The scope of the international academic journal, to be called Secularism

and Nonreligion, will be interdisciplinary. Its aim is to advance

research regarding all of the various aspects of ?the secular? across

societies and cultures.

Articles, written in English, will be accepted from experts in the

social science disciplines of psychology, sociology, political science,

women?s studies, economics, geography, demography, anthropology, public

health, public policy, law and religious studies. However, contributions

also will be considered from researchers in the fields of history,

neuroscience, computer science, biology, philosophy and medicine.

Articles published in the new journal will focus on the secular at one

of three levels: the micro or individual level, the meso or

institutional level, or the macro or national and international level.

Submissions should explore all aspects of what it means to be secular at

any of the above-cited levels, what the lives of nonreligious

individuals are like, and the interaction between secularity,

nonreligion and other aspects of the world. Articles will explore the

ideology and philosophy of the secular, secularism, nonreligion and atheism.

Although Secularism and Nonreligion will adhere to a traditional blind,

peer-review referee process, it will be an open-access journal, meaning

all articles will be freely available and able to be downloaded on the

journal?s Web site: www.secularismandnonreligion.org.

The editors are now accepting submissions of academic articles and book

reviews, with the first volume of the journal to be published in 2012.

Additional information about how to submit papers and publication

procedures can be found on the Web site.

Members of the journal?s international editorial board include Kada

Akacem at the University of Algiers in Algeria; Andrew Singleton at

Monash University in Australia; Nathalie Caron at the Universite de

Paris-Est Creteil in France; Stacey Gutkowski at the King?s College,

London in the UK; Stephen Bullivant at St. Mary?s University College,

Twickenham in the UK; David Voas at the University of Manchester in the

UK; Will Gervais at the University of British Columbia in Canada; and

Guy Ben-Porat at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel.

The editorial board members from the United States are John Alcorn at

Trinity College; Daniel Blackburn at Trinity College; Deborah Cragun at

the University of South Florida; Joseph Hugh Hammer at Iowa State

University; Karen Hwang Center for Atheist Research; Ariela Keysar at

Trinity College; Juhem Navarro-Rivera at the University of Connecticut;

Terry Parssinen at the University of Tampa; Frank Pasquale at the

Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture; Darren

Sherkat at Southern Illinois University; Donald Westbrook at Claremont

Graduate University; David Wulff at Wheaton College; and Phil Zuckerman

at Pitzer College.

For more information, contact Barry Kosmin at:

barry.kosmin@trincoll.edu, or Ryan Cragun at: ryantcragun@gmail.com

Source: http://www.isa-rc22.org/blog/?p=64

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