Ivy@50

Angela Ruggiero
While there is so much to say about her as a hockey player, the legacy Harvard's Angela Ruggiero hopes to leave is one of service and commitment to mankind.

Where does one begin to describe Angela Ruggerio? U.S. Olympic Women's Ice Hockey Coach Ben Smith says of her "as a defenseman, she probably has no equal in the sport."

She's won Olympic and World Championship ice hockey gold medals, and is the first female non-goalie in North America to play professionally, competing for the Central Hockey League's Tulsa Oilers in 2005.

Ruggerio has also authored a book, Breaking the Ice, which battles misconceptions about her sport and serves to reach young women through athletics, and graduated cum laude with a government degree from Harvard.

She's also on "The Apprentice," sparring with Penn Wharton School graduate Donald Trump. She was selected over other Olympians in an NBC promotion last winter.

After three Olympic medals (including the gold in the inaugural event in Nagano, Japan, in 1998), you begin to wonder what's next in store for her next 26 years.

One of the greatest players women's ice hockey has ever known is now working hard to spread the sport -- and its life lessons -- as far and wide as she possibly can. Three of her four listed hobbies on The Apprentice website are traveling, coaching hockey and volunteering. Going to China to assess the sport's health and teach it to Chinese youth is clearly a labor of love.

"What Project Hope will ultimately do," Ruggiero said, "is create a blueprint that can be followed to develop hockey in other non-traditional hockey countries. The first phase is to develop scholarship opportunities here for Chinese children, while also building rinks and coaching clinics in mainland China.

"[Islanders owner Charles Wang] has invested a lot of his own money to get the project moving. The participation of our corporate and community partners -- as well as the Chinese government -- will be crucial to seeing the project reach its full potential."

It's not the first time Ruggiero has traveled far to help children. In the summer of 2004, she went to Uganda as an Athlete Ambassador for the Right To Play organization. The goal was to implement a sporting program for children in an effort to bridge communities and allow the U.N. and the Red Cross to provide both health education and vaccinations.

Not exacly a surprise from someone whose favorite quote -- "Be the change you wish to see in the world" -- comes from Gandhi.

Harvard coach Katey Stone says "as truly talented a hockey player as Angela is, it is her genuine humanitarianism that sets her apart."

Ruggiero also has her book which was written to inspire and encourage young women to be bold, confident and lead by example.

"I'm so lucky," says Ruggiero. "People have given me so many things in my lifetime, especially through hockey, and I feel like I can use hockey as a vehicle to give back to others ... I guess it's in my nature -- my mom taught me that."

— Brett Hoover

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This website will be hosting a year-long celebration of the 50th anniversary of formal Ivy League competition, featuring special articles every weekday through the end of May 2007.

Although some League rivalries predate the Civil War, and the term 'Ivy League' was used in newspapers as early as the mid-1930s, the Ivy League began formally with the Ivy Presidents' agreement of 1954, and the first year of formal competition was 1956-57.

The first formal Ivy League contest -- on Sept. 29, 1956, when the Columbia Lions' football team hosted the Brown Bears at Baker Field in upper Manhattan -- will be commemorated at that same site (now Wien Stadium) with a ceremony on Saturday, September 30, when Columbia hosts the Princeton Tigers.

Since that first contest, more than 75,000 Ivy athletes have played under a unique model of college sports, sharing a remarkably consistent goal: to provide successful athletics as an integral part of the full undergraduate experience -- combining the values and lessons of athletics with those of the classroom and laboratory, the campus and the community -- to produce leaders in every walk of life.

The 50th Celebration is not intended as a formal or complete history of each era, sport or school in the last half century. There's simply too much history to be able do that -- although the online Ivy League Record Book provides a wealth of information about Ivy League standings and All-Ivy teams, national successes in every sport, and individual athletic and academic achievements.

Rather, the Celebration will ask more than 200 former Ivy League athletes to tell the story of Ivy athletics through an almost-daily series of interview-based profiles. Combined with more comprehensive theme-based features (such as the Ivy League's long Olympic history), these profiles will cover every part of these 50 years at all eight schools -- all of the more than 30 Ivy women's and men's championship sports (the broadest collegiate athletic participation in the country) -- and the incredibly diverse backgrounds and careers of Ivy athletes.

Some of these alumni were stars or champions. Others -- like most athletes at every level of competition -- played more anonymously or with only modest team success. In their combined athletic and academic Ivy League experiences, however, each of them found values and habits that led to later success, whether in global arenas or in their own families and neighborhoods.

Special aspects of the Celebration will include:

a preview of each week's stories in the weekly Ivy League email newsletter, which is available free of charge on the left hand side of this page, beneath the menu. Just simply place your email address in that box and select 'GO.'
an earlier (preceding Friday) preview for members of the media, Ivy Sports Information Directors and other Ivy institutional staff (media may sign up by writing to Jane Antis).
archiving of all profiles and features on www.ivy50.com, chronologically as well as by both school and sport.

We welcome reprinting of all stories, with appropriate credit, in public media, and in all institutional media (including websites, weekly bulletins and calendars, game programs, and alumni magazines).

The Ivy League 50th Celebration will be Co-Edited by Ivy League Associate Director Brett Hoover and by Stephen Eschenbach, a long-time contributor to each of the Ivy alumni magazines who also will be Senior Writer. Other contributing writers will include two-time Olympian and 1990 Harvard graduate Meredith Rainey Valmon; former Ivy Public Information Assistants Josi Carlson and E.J. Crawford; current Ivy Public Information Assistants Wes Harris and Bethany Karantonis; and Ivy League Executive Director Jeff Orleans and Associate Director Chuck Yrigoyen.

We hope you will enjoy this special year-long Ivy feature, and we look forward to reading your comments and answering your questions, which can be sent to Hoover.