Olympics: a Return to Ideals

While money, politics and professionalism have dominated recent Olympic Games, a new organization with an unusual concept is trying to revive the original Olympic ideal of goodwill through athletics.

It’s called the Institute for International Sport, and it’s already brought Catholic and Protestant youngsters together in Northern Ireland, introduced basketball and other sports to a tiny African country and dusted off ideas such as ethics and sportsmanship.

The Olympics have gotten “too big, too competitive, too commercial, too nationalistic,” Wally Halas of the institute said. The modern Olympics were started 100 years ago to foster positive relationships between countries and athletes, and that need remains, he said.

The institute, a privately financed organization located at the University of Rhode Island, is trying “to help the world get better,” Halas said. “We truly believe sports can do something.”

Dan Doyle, former basketball coach at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn., created the institute in 1986 because of his lingering dissatisfaction with the United States’ decision to boycott the 1980 summer Olympic Games in Moscow. The boycott was to protest the Soviet invasion and occupation of Afghanistan.

The institute, financed by state and corporate donations, offers a graduate program in international sports management. It also coordinates a program called Sports Corps in which students work with young people through sports.

Recent envoys from the institute include Brian Gowdy, who spent six months teaching retarded children and adults in six Caribbean countries how to play soccer and volleyball, and Wendy Smith, a top lacrosse player who was assigned to work at the U.S. Association for Blind Athletes in Colorado Springs.

The institute’s most visible effort has been in Northern Ireland, where it has used sports to promote peace.

The program picks teams of six Catholic and six Protestant teen-agers, not so much for their athletic ability, but for their leadership qualities. The hope is that, as future leaders, they will have a deeper understanding of the religious conflict that has torn apart their country.

“These are the people who can change things for the better,” Halas said.

A program of soccer and, soon, volleyball, is secondary to teamwork of a different kind. Each team of 12 not only practices together, but eats together, lives together in volunteer homes and attends seminars together to talk about world and local issues.

The program runs about four months. New youngsters are picked each year, and each team tours the United States, playing games. Team members are assigned in pairs, one Catholic, one Protestant, to stay in volunteer homes.

“When you have a team, you form bonds,” said Halas, a former basketball coach at Columbia University. “These kids will be forever bonded through an athletic experience.”

The institute’s Sports Corps introduced basketball to Burundi, a country in east central Africa with no gymnasiums, no organized sports and little money. The institute supplied basketballs, sneakers, baskets and coaches, and the program has grown to the point that a team from Burundi toured the United States in November.

“Eventually, we’d like to have a program on every continent,” Halas said.

The institute also has held National Sportsmanship Days in the spring the past two years, asking grade schools, high schools, colleges and universities to set time aside to discuss fair play, ethics and sportsmanship. Hundreds of schools have taken part.

The institute’s most ambitious project is the first World Scholar-Athlete Games planned for early summer 1993 at Rhode Island. The institute is trying to raise $3 million for the 10-day event.

Athletes from every state and 125 countries, all amateurs between the ages of 16 and 19 who have reached certain academic levels, will compete in soccer, basketball, volleyball and tennis.

The unusual twist is that scholar-athletes will be assigned randomly so that no two competitors from one country will play on the same team. The goal is to underscore the emphasis on teamwork and understanding.