"Games and sweet music"

Hank Hersch & Richard O’Brien
Sports Illustrated
July 7, 1997

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The World Scholar-Athlete Games unfolded over the past two weeks at the University of Rhode Island with a very international, decidedly un-Olympic feel. The nearly 2,000 competitors, students ages 16 to 19, from 144 countries and all 50 states, played with, as well as against, their counterparts from other countries. "We had kids from Israel and Egypt playing doubles tennis together," says Dan Doyle, the former Trinity College basketball coach who created the Games, which were first held in 1993. "We had kids from Ireland and Northern Ireland on the same basketball team. There were cultural differences, and not everybody loved everybody else. But everyone got along."

Held under the auspices of the Institute for International Sport, the Games featured seven sports and several Division I-A prospects, including seven-foot Ajou Deng of Sudan, who has a basketball scholarship from UConn. Some students eschewed the rough and tumble for such cultural endeavors as dance, theater and music. Paul Fede, a two-sport star at Mount St. Charles Academy in Woonsocket, R.I., opted to play the French horn. "It's a sacrifice not to play sports at the Games," Fede said. "But the idea of people from all over the world coming together to play in an orchestra appealed to me more."

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