"Brains, Brawn Put to Test at URI"

Mike Szostak
The Providence Journal
June 11, 2005

Touch football and tug of war will never replace varsity football and basketball on college campuses, but they are in the sports lineup this weekend at the University of Rhode Island.

So are volleyball, soccer and track, plus geography, intellectual trivia and debate.

Welcome to the inaugural Intercollegiate Renaissance Games, the latest offering from the fertile imagination of Dan Doyle and his crew at the Institute for International Sport in Kingston.

Student-athletes from five NCAA Division III colleges, as well as the University of Rhode Island and the University of Queensland in Australia have gathered at URI for a weekend of athletic and academic competition.

"This particular program we're looking at is a pilot. We'll see what happens," said Doyle, founder and executive director of the Institute. Teams are supposed to consist of 16 men and 16 women, but the Aussies arrived with seven competitors, four men and three women.

"We hope to have a bit of fun and meet lots of people from different universities," said Jon Erbacher, an Australian volleyball player.

The Aussies arrived in New York last Saturday. After touring the city over the weekend, they made their way to Kingston on Monday.

"We've had a look around the 'uni,' " Erbacher said.

Katie Obst, the team manager, said it's "great to be able to take a team of gifted students to something like this where they will be exposed to people of different cultures."

The University of Queensland is hosting the Australian Scholar- Athlete Games for Pacific Rim nations in January. Obst, coordinator for that event, is expecting 100 Australians and 200 students from island nations to compete in a tuneup for the 2008 World Scholar- Athlete Games, which should attract 3,000 student-athletes from around the world.

"It will be great to see how they run it here," she said.

The Institute for International Sport has run the popular Rhode Island, U.S. and World Scholar-Athlete Games at URI and has conducted three renaissance programs in Northern Ireland and one at Bates College in Lewiston, Maine. Doyle is an alumnus and a trustee of Bates. He said the Bates program caught the attention of college presidents. Suzanne Coffey, director of athletics at Bates and a staunch ally of Doyle, is chairwoman of these Renaissance Games.

One of Doyle's missions is to restore some semblance of scholarship to the term scholar-athlete. In doing research for a book he is writing on sports parenting, Doyle determined that Division I basketball players are spending 55 to 60 hours per week on their sport in season and do not have time to pursue academic interests beyond the bare minimum for degree requirements.

"If you go to a Division I school, I can tell you that there will be tradeoffs. If you go D-I, you're not going on to medical school. Division I athletes are not coming out with 'training of the mind' because they just don't have the time," he said.

The two days of competition in the Intercollegiate Renaissance Games will include four sports activities from among basketball, soccer, volleyball, touch football, softball, track and field, and mixed doubles tennis; two academic activities from among spelling bee, "mathletics," debate, poetry and short story, scientific discovery, intellectual trivia, speech and geography; two cultural activities from among visual arts, theater, instrument and voice; two team activities from among tug of war, capture the flag and a two-mile run/walk, and two recreational activities from among hole- in-one golf, putting, dribble relay, soccer kick for accuracy, softball throw for accuracy, football throw for accuracy, basketball shooting, long jump, jump rope, dodge ball, backgammon, chess, Scrabble and crossword puzzle.

The teams are from Lynchburg College, Randolph-Macon Women's College, Hampden-Sydney College and Bridgewater College, all Division III schools in Virginia; Bates, URI and Queensland.

Doyle said more D-I schools did not register because NCAA regulations "make it hard for schools to commit. A kid who plays NCAA basketball can't play basketball here."

The ideals of the Intercollegiate Renaissance Games - well- rounded individuals using their minds and bodies to complete tasks and solve problems in teams and to build bridges among academic, athletic and cultural pursuits -- are ideals expressed by administrators and coaches at every level of intercollegiate athletics. But a disconnect has developed between the ideal and the real. Even so, Doyle doesn't expect the Renaissance Games to replace the Final Four.

"Absolutely not. Not even close. Intercollegiate athletics are too ingrained, and there are too many good elements of college sports," he said.

He does envision the Renaissance Games as possibly supplementing college sports programs.

"This is an interesting way for kids to be on a team and represent their school," he said.