Brittney Reese - Ole Miss Graduate - Wins Olympic Gold

Long jumper Brittney Reese is the most dominant American female track and field athlete since the Beijing Olympics, winning three straight world championships and back-to-back Diamond League series titles.
Reese originally majored in basketball, getting a two-year scholarship to a community college in Mississippi. She switched to Ole Miss for another couple of years, and graduated from Ole Miss with a degree in English.

Shortly afterwards, Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf coast; and though they weren’t the worst affected, it was bad enough.
“We were living in a mobile home for two months. We didn’t have amenities, we didn’t have hot water. It was a real eye-opener. It made me more aware of a whole lot of things.

“I wanted to give something back, to the community; and I went to Beijing in 2008, planning to get a medal, and I finished fifth. I was devastated. I cried all the way back to the village. The whole Gulf coast had supported me, and I wanted to give them something back.”

Reese did find a novel way of giving something back last year. On Thanksgiving Day in 2011, she donated 100 turkeys to homeless and religious organizations in her home town of Gulfport. But now she has given them a gold medal.

She dedicated the London Olympic title to the people of Mississippi and others who are still rebuilding in the wake of the deadly and devastating Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

Ole Miss at 2012 Olympics

University of Mississippi students 

past and present
Competing & involved in the
2012 Olympics London

 



The University of Mississippi was chartered on February 24, 1844.
It opened its doors to 80 students four years later, and for 23 years it was
Mississippi's only public institution of higher learning.
For 110 years, it was the state's only comprehensive university.

Known affectionately as Ole Miss, Mississippi's flagship university established the fourth state-supported law school in the nation (1854) and was one of the first in the nation to offer engineering education (1854). It was one of the first in the South to admit women (1882) and the first to hire a female faculty member (1885).

Olympics 2012 ~ Year of the Woman

Olympic Poetry - 1912 Winner

                                     Ode To Sport

Georges Hohrod, & M. Eschbach

(Pseudonym Pierre de Coubertin)

Awarded a prize in the sports literature

competition in the V Olympiad - Stockholm 1912.

Ode to sport

Oh Sport, pleasure of the Gods essence of life, you appeared suddenly in the midst of the grey clearing which writhes with the drudgery of modern existence, like the radiant messenger of a past age, when mankind still smiled.

 And the glimmer of dawn lit up the mountain tops and flecks of light dotted the ground in the gloomy forests.

II.

O Sport, you are Beauty! You are the architect of that edifice which is the human body and which can become abject or sublime according to whether it is defiled by vile passions or improved through healthy exertion.

There can be no beauty without balance and proportion, and you are the peerless master of both, for you create harmony, you give movements rhythm, you make strength graceful and you endow suppleness with power.

Ill.

O Sport, you are Justice! The perfect equity for which men strive in vain in their social institutions is your constant companion. No one can jump a centimetre higher than the height he can jump, nor run a minute longer than the length he can run.

The limits of his success are determined solely by his own physical and moral strength.

IV.

O Sport, you are Audacity! The meaning of all muscular effort can be

summed up in the word ‘dare’. What good are muscles, what is the point of feeling strong and agile, and why work to improve one’s agility and strength, unless it is in order to dare? But the daring you inspire has nothing in common with the adventurer’s recklessness in staking everything on chance.

Yours is a prudent, well-considered audacity.

V.

O Sport, you are Honour! The laurels you bestow have no value unless

they have been won in absolute fairness and with perfect impartiality. He who, with some shameful trick, manages to deceive his fellow competitors feels guilt to his very core and lives in fear of the ignominious epithet which shall forever be attached to his name should his  trickery be discovered.

VI.

O Sport, you are Joy! At your behest, flesh dances and eyes smile; blood

races abundantly through the arteries.

Thoughts stretch out on a brighter, clearer horizon. To the sorrowful you can even bring salutary diversion from their distress, whilst the happy you enable fully to savour their joie de vivre.

VII.

O Sport, you are Fecundity! You strive directly and nobly towards perfection of the race, destroying unhealthy seed and correcting the flaws which threaten its essential purity.

And you fill the athlete with a desire to see his sons grow up agile and strong around him to take his place in the arena and, in their turn, carry off the most glorious trophies.

VIII.

O Sport, you are Progress! To serve you, a man must improve himself

both physically and spiritually.

You force him to abide by a greater discipline; you demand that he avoid all excess.

You teach him wise rules which allow him to exert himself with the maximum of intensity without compromising his good health.

IX.

O Sport, you are Peace! You promote happy relations between peoples,

bringing them together in their shared devotion to a strength which is controlled, organized and self-disciplined. From you, the young worldwide learn self-respect, and thus the diversity of national qualities becomes the source of a generous and friendly rivalry.

London Olympics