It's Athens vs. Sparta in the World Scholar-Athlete Games

They've started appearing on athletic fields all around town, teenage athletes of every color and nationality participating in games including baseball, basketball and lacrosse. The young athletes are playing elbow-to-elbow with teens who live as near as West Hartford and as far away as Ireland, Africa and Israel. At night, they're bunked in at dormitories at the University of Hartford campus in West Hartford.

What has brought the students together is the result of one man's dream.

West Hartford's Dan Doyle spent years as a basketball player and award-winning coach. He saw time and again the power of sports to bring people together. He wondered what might happen if that force could be applied to some of the world's toughest problems. (Think Catholics and Protestants in Ireland, Hutus and Tutsis in Africa, Israelis and Palestinians in the Middle East.)

In 1987, Doyle created the Institute for International Sport, an organization that in its first year sent a group of student volunteers overseas to establish sports initiatives. Twenty-five years later, Doyle's Institute, or IIS, has grown into an internationally recognized global peace initiative. Under its banner, a multi-faceted group of programs have developed to include National Sportsmanship Day, the annual World Scholar-Athlete Games, and, new this year, the World Youth Peace Summit, which begins July 1 in Hartford, and the nascent Center for Social Entrepreneurship, which is establishing a permanent home in West Hartford.

As the institute has grown in size and ambition, it has attracted the support of world leaders including former President Bill Clinton, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Israeli leader Shimon Peres, and Gen. Colin Powell, who calls it, "One of the most compelling peace initiatives I have seen in years." Scholar-athletes with affiliations to the institute include former Sen. Bill Bradley, Grant Hill, David Robinson and Mia Hamm.

The growth of the institute and the universal popularity of its programs is something Doyle sees as an appeal to mankind's common denominators. "Sports and the arts give us examples of demonstrating to people how alike we are," he said. 

Doyle took time out to talk on Sunday while he was in the midst of registering youth athletes for the Scholar-Athlete Games. More than 1,000 students are participating in this year's event. Participants each paid $750 tuition for dormitory housing, meals and programs. (The tuition is subsidized by the institute, which raises funds all year to offset students' costs.) The students range in age from 15 to 19. All are honor roll or B-average students who compete in activities that include a variety of sports and artistic pursuits – from basketball and fencing to creative writing and digital photography. 

Students were divided into two groups – Team Athens and Team Sparta. The groups engaged in "friendly competition" and at the same time got to know each other through attempting a variety of events ranging from the 100-yard dash to a medley of Irish games.

Some of the scholar-athletes were suited up and playing their first game of baseball on a field at Kingswood-Oxford School in West Hartford. Sonya Adams, a West Hartford resident, watched her son, Ty Adams, a Kingswood student, play baseball with students from all over the world. "It's something he's never done before, interacting [with kids from foreign countries] and thinking about international affairs," she says. "I think it's opened his eyes."

David Hendrickson, a student from Waterbury, sat on the bench waiting for his turn to play. Since arriving June 26 for the games, he has met young people "from England, Scotland, and lots of places in the U.S.," he says.

Chris Laffin, a West Hartford resident recruited by Doyle to help with the games, says, "It's great that [the foreign athletes] have traveled this far. It's great that baseball is such a universal sport."

Sonya Adams notes that her son hasn't phoned home since he moved into the dorm room at UHa. "It's a really good sign that we haven't heard from him," she says. "It means he's having fun."

This year's Scholar-Athlete Games culminate in the institute's inaugural World Youth Peace Summit, which runs from July 1 to July 4 at the XL Center in Hartford. The idea for the summit was sparked in 1993, the first year of the Scholar-Athlete Games. "At the closing ceremony in 1993, there was so much idealism in that arena, we needed to move this forward," Doyle says.

The summit's mission is to develop scholar-athletes and scholar-artists from around the world into advocates for peace. The program consists of a series of lectures and workshops during which participants study peace policies with the goal of developing ideas to implement peace initiatives in their own communities.

"Ty doesn't have a peace initiative yet," says Sonya Adams. "He's waiting to see what the other students are doing."

Hendrickson doesn't have one either. "I'm sort of waiting on that," he says.

Secretary of State Clinton is scheduled to deliver Friday's opening address by video to the audience in Hartford. The summit winds down on July 3 with a live address by Gen. Colin Powell.

The intervening days will be jam-packed with speakers and workshops. Daily keynote speakers include musician Brad Corrigan, member of the band Dispatch; Nobel Laureate and educator Jody Williams; and Middlebury College professor Jon Isham and three social entrepreneurs – Bill Drayton, founder of Ashoka, Bill Rees, president and CEO of the International Youth Foundation, and Gara Lamarche, president and CEO of the Atlantic Philanthropies. A roster of other luminaries – from sitting members of Congress to United Nations diplomats to academics – are scheduled to share their views. Rounding out the list of events are practical workshops designed to launch individual Pathways to Peace projects, and to teach on topics including grant writing, and technology and the media.

The conclusion of the combined World Scholar-Athlete Games and World Youth Peace Summit promises to be what Ed Sullivan would call "a reeeeally big show." The closing ceremony will feature music by the World Scholar-Athlete Games choir and symphony, performances by World Scholar-Athlete theater and dance groups, and culinary and visual arts exhibitions by World Scholar-Athlete artists along with other activities. 

Powell's talk will include another institute first: the ceremonial opening of the Center for Social Entrepreneurship, which is developing permanent centers at the University of Hartford in West Hartford, and at Middlebury College in Middlebury, Vermont.  

Doyle chose West Hartford as one location because "we have a lot of friends here in the state," he says. 

Among the center's stated missions are the support of the summit's Pathways to Peace initiatives, and the planning of future summits, which will be held in five-year intervals. (The next World Youth Peace Summit takes place in 2016.)

Moving forward, Doyle says, "the primary focus [of the institute] will be on the Center for Social Entrepreneurship. The center will cultivate different initiatives" – some related to sports, the arts and peace, others tackling issues including the environment.

Now, that is some kind of dream.

For more information about the World Youth Peace Summit, visit www.youthpeacesummit.org. For more information about the Institute for International Sports' World Scholar-Athlete Games, visit www.internationalsport.org.