Conceived by the Institute for International Sport, which is based at the University of Rhode Island, the Renaissance Games will involve approximately 150 student-athletes from Division III schools, including Bates, Clark, Haverford and Washington & Lee, along with schools from six other countries.

The Games are intended to stress the all-around talents of the participants while enabling them to contribute to team efforts and derive the benefits of team participation.

Renaissance Games participants will be placed on one of two teams - Sparta or Athens. The two teams will participate in a competition in which every activity, from playing a basketball game to writing a poem, from delivering a speech on the environment or running a five-kilometer race, earns points for the team. The number of points awarded will be based on the outcome of a particular competition, or the proficiency with which a cultural or academic activity is executed. Students must select a total of four activities in which to participate - two academic/cultural and two athletic. The sports program will consist of basketball, soccer swimming, tennis track and field and volleyball while the academic/cultural activities will include creative writing, music theater, debate, art, Mathletics (a competition using math skills) and Scientific Discovery (a competition involving scientific laboratory skills), among others.

Participating schools are Bates College, Boston University, the University of California at San Diego, Clark University, Community College of Rhode Island, Concordia College, Eastern Connecticut State University, Emerson College, Georgetown University, Harvard University, Haverford (Pa.) College, McGill (Quebec, Canada) University, Northeastern State (Okla.) University, North Virginia Community College, Rhode Island College, the University of Rhode Island, St. Michael's (Vt.) College, Smith (Mass.) College, Syracuse University, Tel Aviv (Israel) University, Towson (Md.) University, University College of Cape Breton (Nova Scotia), Vassar College, Washington and Lee (Va.) University and Wesleyan (Conn.) University. Countries represented include the Bahamas, Burundi, Canada, Egypt, Gabon, Sri Lanka, Switzerland, Turkey and the Ukraine.

"In developing the Renaissance Games concept, we concluded that, while specialization in any activity at a young age Ð athletic, academic or cultural - is beneficial to certain individuals, more often than not such immersion is unwise, and even counter to the concepts of liberal-arts education," said Dan Doyle, founder and executive director of the Institute for International Sport. "We wanted to develop a program that would integrate scholarly, cultural and athletic pursuits."

"Bates is proud to serve as host to the inaugural Renaissance Games, and it is important for the College to play this important role," Bates President Donald W. Harward said. "The intersection of the mental, the physical and the spiritual has always been a central theme of the liberal-arts ethos. The Renaissance Games, with their intended goal of celebrating these three aspects, welcomes the contributions of all participants."

The Renaissance Games are based on several programs administered by the Institute for International Sport, including the World Scholar-Athlete Games, which this past summer drew 2,000 scholar athletes from 147 countries and all 50 U.S. states to Rhode Island for athletic and cultural competitions. The Renaissance Games model has been tested over four consecutive summers at Kingswood-Oxford School in West Hartford, Conn. Also, the model was used in Northern Ireland at the Institute's Irelands' Scholar-Athlete Games in 1995 and 1996, wherein Catholics and Protestants competed on the same team.

"The results of the Renaissance Games concept were extraordinary," said Ken Smyth, director of the Irelands' Scholar-Athlete Games at the University of Ulster in Belfast. "The program had remarkable success in drawing Catholics and Protestants together."

Doyle, who first thought of the idea during the inaugural World scholar Athlete Games, stated,"In the United States, and indeed in many countries, we honor the great athlete. We praise the scholar-athlete, but we really do not honor the scholar-athlete. The Renaissance Games was conceived to honor the true scholar-athlete.:"