Meaning Of Sports Fully Demonstated In Refreshing Style

In a world where youth sports leagues ban post-game handshakes for fear of violence and baseball players and owners can’t find a way to divide billions of dollars, Dan Doyle wants sports to stand for something other than greed and selfishness.

The 46-year-old former basketball coach at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn., is head of the Institute for International Sport at the University of Rhode Island, which he founded in 1986. Among other things, the institute stages an annual International Sportsmanship Day that was observed in March by more than 5,000 schools in 48 countries.

“I think sport has the capacity, unlike any other project or any undertaking, to bring people together,” Doyle said.

The organization’s quadrennial World Scholar-Athlete Games is an example. The event was held for the first time in 1993 and brought 1,600 teenagers from 108 countries to Rhode Island. Planning is under way for a larger 1997 edition.

The institute’s “Belfast United” program, run in conjunction with Northern Ireland’s University of Ulster, unites Protestant and Catholic youths on soccer and basketball teams that tour the United States.

Doyle, a graduate of Bates College in Maine, started the institute after getting a master’s degree from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University in Medford, Mass., where he wrote a paper proposing such an organization.

He was inspired in part by two overseas journeys - a 1968 trip to Europe as part of a prep school allstar basketball team, and a 1979 journey to Cuba, when his Trinity team became the first U.S. athletic squad to visit that country since Fidel Castro took power in 1959.

The 1968 trip came when antipathy toward Americans and their role in the Vietnam War was peaking in Europe, Doyle said.

“Ten days into the trip was when President Johnson announced he wasn’t going to run again,” he said. “It was a great time to be in Europe. … I remember we walked through a picket line in Sweden, then played the game. Afterwards, at a reception, we ended up becoming friends with some of the people who had been on the picket line.

“That was the first time I saw what sport could mean as a medium of friendship.”

Although he had success at Division III Trinity, Doyle resigned after the 1980-81 season. His intention simply was to spend more time with his oldest son, Daniel, who is autistic.

“I left thinking I would go back to coaching,” he said. Instead, “I decided I really wanted to do other things.”

Working with former Seton Hall basketball coach George Blaney, Doyle started the Irish-American Sports Foundation, which develops athletic programs for children in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland.

Doyle also decided to pursue a degree at Fletcher and, upon finishing that, founded the institute at URI. Since then, he has created programs designed to increase understanding through athletics.

At the first World ScholarAthlete Games, outstanding young writers, singers, artists and poets who also sail or play basketball, soccer, volleyball or tennis gathered at URI in June and July 1993.

Students are selected for their off-field talents, Doyle said, but must be on a sports team, even if that means they’re the last player off the bench.

Doyle said the sports played at the games - basketball, soccer, volleyball, doubles tennis and sailing - are chosen because they require teamwork. Student-athletes don’t know for what team they will compete until they arrive and are assigned to a squad of players from various countries, he said.

While sports are important, what takes place off the playing fields is given more emphasis, Doyle said.

“Each day a series of speakers come in,” he said. “The objective of the games is to develop positions which are then presented to the United Nations.”

Among the resolutions adopted at the 1993 scholar-athletes was “a position that every participant at the games would take full responsibility for any children they foster,” Doyle said.

“That became a big issue, that kids aren’t being brought up properly… . It was very powerful,” he said.

The institute’s impact is widespread. On International Sportsmanship Day, schools around the globe held essay contests, poster contests and assemblies, and high school and college athletes visited elementary and middle schools to speak to students and advise them how to balance academics and athletics.

Preparations are being made for the 1997 World Scholar-Athlete Games, where Doyle hopes to add 500 more participants and programs in theater, science and ice hockey. Negotiations also are under way to hold an Irish ScholarAthlete Games in Dublin next summer.

“There are a lot of unsavory aspects of sport, but there also are a lot of positive aspects,” Doyle said. “We try to create an event that brings out the best in people.”