Kenyon in the News

"Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid Jennifer Britz was quoted in the Monday, April 12 Washington Post. Education writer Jay Matthews wrote about how more and more well qualified high-school students are being rejected by top colleges and universities. Record numbers of students are applying to colleges, while the number of available spaces at the most sought-after undergraduate institutions has stayed roughly the same. Britz said that applications at Kenyon, which the Post notes is an increasingly selective school, have surged 80 percent in the past four years.

Kenyon's swimming Lords were featured on the cover of the April issue of Swimming World magazine. A story by Craig Hummer '87 heralded the Lords' twenty-fifth consecutive national NCAA Division III title and chronicled the history of swimming at Kenyon.

The March 29 issue of Sports Illustrated also featured the swimming Ladies and Lords in its "Scorecard Extra" section, which is distributed to select subscribers. "It is an understatement to say that Kenyon made history last Saturday by winning its NCAA-record twenty-fifth consecutive national title," said the story. "The fact is, Kenyon is the history of modern Division III swimming."

Coach Jim Steen and the swimming Lords also appeared in the March 16 edition of USA Today. The story included a photo of Steen and mentioned Kenyon as one of a handful of Division III programs that have been not only "absurdly successful" but so dominant they've ruled over their sports "like Colossus." "Coach Steen is an innovator," Gregg Parini, a member of Kenyon's first three title teams and now the swimming coach at archrival Dension University, was quoted as saying.

The March 17 Columbus Dispatch also featured the Lords' "Drive for 25." The piece told the story of Russell Hunt '05 from Upper Arlington, Ohio, who was a student at Indiana University, having won a swimming scholarship, but who looked around a cavernous lecture hall one day and realized that he didn't want to be one of four hundred students copying notes from an overhead projector. So he gave up his scholarship and transferred to Kenyon. "After a year there, I knew I wanted something different," Hunt was quoted as saying. "There's such a contrast between a big school and a little school, and Kenyon offered the type of community and environment where I felt I could flourish."

Jim Steen and the men's and women's swimming teams were also featured in a March 19 story in the New York Times. "Take Vince Lombardi, Casey Stengel, Red Auerbach, John Wooden--throw in Napoleon, too--and you still won't quite come up with Jim Steen," wrote Ira Berkow. The article recognized the importance of "balancing education and athletics, and all those national trophies." Berkow called Kenyon one of the "most distinguished liberal-arts colleges in the nation."

The midday news program on WCMH News Channel 4 in Columbus featured the men's swimming team on March 15, noting that the program is the most successful program in all of college sports. Kenyon senior Marc Courtney-Brooks and Assistant Swimming Coach John Young were interviewed in a segment that previewed the men's national championship meet. The Lords won their twenty-fifth consecutive national championship on March 20, one week after the women's team won its twentieth national title.

A March 14 story by the Associated Press also featured Jim Steen and Kenyon's swimming dynasty. The story noted that Kenyon's championship run is twice as long as the second-best streaks: Arkansas won twelve straight Division I indoor track and field titles from 1984 through 1995, and Hobart took twelve consecutive Division III lacrosse crowns from 1980 through 1991. Among other outlets, the story appeared in the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer (Georgia), the Contra Costa Times (California), the Duluth News Tribune (Minnesota), the Fort Wayne News Sentinel (Indiana), the Macon Telegraph (Georgia), the Monterey County Herald (California), the Myrtle Beacon Sun News (South Carolina), the San Jose Mercury News (California), the San Luis Obispo Tribune (California), and The State (South Carolina).

Jim Steen and the men's and women's swimming teams were featured in a March 13 story in the Financial Times. The article opened by noting Steen's opportunity to make history by winning twenty-five straight NCAA championships, then contrasted large universities--which can field strong teams across a range of sports because they offer lavish athletic scholarships--with colleges like Kenyon. "We're not into exploiting individuals for our success," Steen was quoted as saying. "Much the opposite, we feel it's imperative to find individuals who are pretty balanced. We want the person who can put in the hour and a half in the morning and the two hours at night, and then walk away and be a student and a member of the community."

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